Appreciation:

6/7/01

Canadian Author Mordecai Richler Made Them All Mad

Canada is back to bland again: Mordecai Richler is dead. The provocateur author and social critic with a bent for tweaking upturned noses, Richler, who died on Tuesday at age 70, always scratched at blackboards in a country dedicated to tranquil passivity.
    He never shied from controversy, consistently pressing the soft underbelly button of his own people - Canadians, Quebeckers, and especially Jews - and others, including Israel and Germany.
    He was both of the clan, strongly identified as such, and distanced from it, on a perch from where he could form his perspectives on it. His penchant for the Jewish antihero led many to reactively label him an anti-Jewish writer, but more accurately, he was a Jewish antiwriter.
    Ironically, as a youth he was determined to become a rabbi, but rejected his talmudic studies for literature, and turned against his family's Orthodoxy, with near- vengeance.
    He was consistently both criticized, and critically acclaimed - and he was more comfortable with the former. 'I'm fair game,' he told this writer in a 1992 interview. 'I'm criticized by the feminists, I'm criticized by the Jewish establishment, I'm criticized by Canadian nationalists. And why not? I've had my pot shots at them. I'm fair game.'
    When he published a book savaging his Quebecois society for latent historic anti-Semitism, and delegitimizing its separatist movement as a'bourgeois conceit,' a howling storm of protest ensued, reaching all the way to the provincial parliament, where one legislator demanded his book be banned. Yet, instead of laying low, he pointedly maintained his routine, making himself available at his favorite Montreal watering holes, challenging his trust in the Quebecois' respect for civil dialogue. His faith was borne out.
    On the other hand, when he was called upon to receive the kudos, the awards, the flattery of requests for interviews by high-profile media, he only reluctantly left his typewriter - or barstool - to accept the plaudits.
    If he had sought greater recognition, he would not have remained in Canada, whose best talents usually flee for the indulgent fandom south of the border. Canadians are unsure of their champions until they're crowned elsewhere.
    He did leave, still in his 20s, to forge his literary career in Paris and London. Apologetic for not struggling on the way to success - his first attempt, The Acrobats, was published in 1954 - he remained an expatriate for 18 years, until realizing he was a Canadian-Jewish fish out of water, and returned home for good.
    Richler's subtle satire and cutting wit - if he seemed to be flattering you, don't read to the end of the sentence - filled 10 novels, several non-fiction books, dozens of magazine articles and newspaper columns, children's books and four major film scripts.
    He is best known for The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, his 1959 signature novel that he adapted for Hollywood in 1974. The film, which was nominated for an Academy Award, was praised by one critic as 'one of the best films [set in a Jewish milieu] ever made.'
    His delightfully barbed commentaries left politicians sputtering, yet in the end, it was Canada's prime minister, Jean Chretien, who delivered the most gracious tribute: 'Mordecai Richler was the quintessential Canadian man of words, and his loss leaves us grasping for words that can do justice to his importance in Canada's artistic landscape,' he said in a statement. 'He was quite simply one of the most brilliant, original and celebrated artists in Canadian history.'

WRITING THIS appreciation goes against the wishes of my aunts and uncles, who encouraged me, as a boy, to become a writer, if I desired, and 'make the world forget Mordecai.'
    As his first cousin (once removed, and very removed), I grew up venerating my famous relative. His name was Mudd in my Orthodox family, and poison to my grandmother. I often ruffled the auntly feathers by asking about him, and expressing my admiration. But 'he writes against the family, against the Jews, he rejects religion, he's a drunkard, and he married out - twice.'
    When he visited Israel in 1992, I asked to interview him for the Post. He consented, but grudgingly, as if it was an unavoidable family obligation.
    He was notorious as a difficult interviewee, grunting pat answers to usually formulaic questions. Ah, but I had something planned for him.
    After a few predictable questions, I provoked him into an angry debate. He scoffed at Quebec separatism, yet supported Palestinian statehood; how, I challenged him, can you propose a one-state solution there and a two-state solution here? Don't the Quebecois have the same rights and aspirations as the Palestinians?
    We argued vociferously back and forth, and most unsettled by my treacherous gumption, he snapped out of interview mode and provided wonderful material for a kinetic magazine piece, 'Make 'em mad, Mordecai Richler!'
    Perhaps after he finished stewing, he realized that I had Richlered him, and forgave me, because when he decided to write a book about Israel, he enlisted my help. His life ebbing from his futile battle with kidney cancer, a few weeks before he died, he ventured toward reconcilement by attending the shiva for my grandmother, his most vituperative antagonist.
    By then, the family's animosity toward him had subsided, and he was just Mordecai the writer.