Mordecai Richler (1931–2001)

Quite frankly, I'd never even heard of Mordecai Richler until I read the autobiography of his British editor and publisher, Diana Athill. She predicted he'd become the grand old man of Canadian literature, and apparently he did. Lord only knows what I was busy doing at the time. In any event, I picked up a cheap kindle copy of "Barney's Version". It's a book that should be, in certain ways, familiar to fans of the mid-century New York golden age -- Roth, Bellow, Mailer, and all the rest -- but we're in Montreal, Canada if we're not hanging around the bohemian quarters of Paris after the war, and the titular Barney's a die-hard Canadiens fan. Still, the novel's prose is a joy: equal parts nostalgic, quick-witted and swinging. Also, the frequent footnotes, that undercut Barney's eponymous version, prove themselves to be a surprisingly effective comic and literary device.

Barney, it must be said, is a bit more of a jerk than most of the main characters created by the aforementioned authors: acerbic, moneyed, hard-drinking. But he's not without his charm, or his attractions, at least to his three wives, all of whom are rendered wonderfully, if not exactly fondly. "Barney's Version" is a bit more of a comedy than the sort of book the aforementioned Big Three usually produced: Richler seems willing much more willing to play his main character's eccentricities, terrible decisions, pet peeves, and misfortunes for genuine laughs than any of those authors would have. Filled with good bits and big characters and even an unsolved murder mystery, "Barney's Version" is, if absolutely nothing else, a lot of fun to read.

But it's more than fun, really. Barney's more-or-less past his prime when we meet him, and much of the book's plot describes his slow slide into irrelevance. Barney's a grouch, sure, but Richler still presents his halting progress toward death with genuine pathos. Whatever mistakes he has made in his life, Barney has made sure to surround himself with friends and family, most of whom stick by him as he prepares to leave this world. Barney, we learn, has grown rich off of connections with talents bigger than himself and middling, often state-supported Canadian television shows. But the author goes out of his way to show us that never losing track of the neighborhood kids he grew up with and showing undying loyalty to his kids -- even at their most problematic, were two things that Barney -- God rest his soul -- did right. Recommended.… (more)