Mordecai Richler was said to deplore the cult of “writer as
personality”, believing his books were important, he was not.
Nonsense, says writer Reinhold Kramer, and in this biography of
Mordecai’s life, sets out to show how the colourful novelist’s life and
times had a profound and pervasive influence on his writing. They
turned him in fact into a personality in his own right, just as
interesting and provocative as his books.
Kramer’s book is a long narrative, beginning with the story of
Mordecai’s grandfathers escaping the pogroms in Poland in the late l9th
and 20th centuries, to settle in the New World. One of these men was
a wily junk dealer, the other a highly educated Orthodox Rabbi. They
made their home in the East End of Montreal . Mordecai struggled with
their values until the end of his life.
Mordecai grew up in the St. Urbain district, attending the Baron
Byng High School,and Sir George Williams University. Restless by the
second year, he had already started writing, and scraped together the
fare for Europe, sailing in l950. His bohemian life in Spain, and the
Left Bank, Paris, led to a wider circle of writers and artists, and he
was on his way, precariously, to selling the occasional article, and
getting his first novel underway. From here on, the book reads like a
flashback to the whole story of Canadian writing with the names we now
take for granted, in both film and literature. Richler even spent some
time giving a seminar at Carleton University.
Kramer is thorough and sensitive as he reveals the details in
Mordecai’s life that come through in his novels, with their names often
changed. Richler of course did succeed, particularly when “The
Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” was published. Thereafter he became
rich and famous and what were once his left-wing leanings became more
conservative. The steady streams in his life seem to be his insistence
on hard work, and his devotion to his wife, Florence, and very happy
home life with his five children. The book strikes a balance between
the reckless, irreverent Richler and the solid qualities lurking in his
satire.
Book Review by Anne McDougall