Word: richler
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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FICTION: A Gentle Occupation, Dirk Bogarde •Falling in Place, Ann Beanie •Finding a Girl in America, Andre Dubus •Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party, Graham Greene •Joshua Then and Now, Mordecai Richler •Preparations for the Ascent, Gilbert Rogin •Rough Strife, Lynne Sharon Schwartz
FICTION: A Gentle Occupation, Dirk Bogarde ∙Falling in Place, Ann Beattie ∙Finding a Girl in America, Andre Dubus ∙Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party, Graham Greene ∙Joshua Then and Now, Mordecai Richler ∙Morgan's Passing, Anne Tyler ∙Preparations for the Ascent, Gilbert Rogin
With his eighth and best novel, Mordecai Richler, the wandering Canadian, comes home. It is a place of great vitality, unabashed tenderness, grotesque humor and a grouchy reverence for things as they were. In some respects, the book is a Jewish Brideshead Revisited, the sacred and profane memoirs of an exaggerated autobiographical character named Joshua Shapiro, a Montreal writer and TV personality. A resemblance to Evelyn Waugh's novel is not farfetched. Richler twice borrows the comic master's line about the companions of his youth: "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know." In addition, the prodigal North American...
Joshua's childhood has left little room for pretensions. Like the author, he was born and raised in the low-rent Jewish section of Montreal, the background for Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and St. Urbain's Horseman. Shapiro's father Reuben is an ex-boxer and oldtime bootlegger who helped the Colucci family collect gambling debts and gave unorthodox religious instructions to his son: "There are ten commandments. Right? Well, it's like an exam. I mean, you get eight out of ten, you're just about top of the class...
...Clearly Richler's hero does not have Alexander Portnoy's complaint. There are troubles enough. When first encountered, Joshua, 47, is recovering from multiple fractures suffered in an accident whose cause remains cloaked until novel's end. There are other details with delayed explanations. Why is this father of three and husband to the beautiful Pauline Hornby wearing lacy panties while talking to the police? Why is Pauline hospitalized with a nervous breakdown? Is Dr. Dr. Mueller (he has two degrees) really an ex-Nazi living on Ibiza...