Richler mordecai biography channel

Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up Log in. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass.

Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art. Internet Arcade Console Living Room. Open Library American Libraries. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Sign up for free Log in. It appears your browser does not have it turned on. Please see your browser settings for this feature. In addition to his regular essays in Maclean's, Richler published humorous and nostalgic pieces in magazines and journals ranging from Playboy to Atlantic to the New York Times Book Review.

A lengthy piece he published in the New Yorker, however, gained Richler the most attention with its examination of the attempts to restrict the use of the English language in public places in Quebec. Richler eventually published an entire book devoted to the subject of Quebec separatism, Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! Requiem for a Divided Country, in Richler's defiance of Quebec separatist demands made him a reviled figure in some quarters, and death threats were made against him after the book was published.

Richler fought the separatists with satire and humor. As he told an audience at the University of Waterloo in , "I manned the barricades, so to speak, for the legal right to munch unilingually labeled kosher matzos in Quebec for more than sixty days a year.

Richler mordecai biography channel

I also protested the right of a pet shop parrot to be unilingually English. As a consequence, nice people still stop me on the street and thank me for taking a stand. It's embarrassing, for my stand, such as it is, hardly qualifies me as a latter-day Spartacus or Tom Paine or Rosa Luxemburg. In declining health for some time, perhaps due to his favored pastimes of drinking malt whiskey and smoking, Richler had his kidney removed in a operation.

A recurrence of cancer led to more treatment, but Richler died on July 3, He was one of the most respected literary figures in Canada by the time of his death. Colleagues and friends memorialized Richler as a writer who was not overawed by his own success. His readers mourned the loss of one of the first internationally renowned Canadian writers.

Indeed, Richler's ability to describe the Canadian perspective was one of his greatest contributions to the country's culture. Speaking at the University of Waterloo in , he said: "One of our most attractive qualities, I think, is that we are a self-deprecating people. Had Babe Ruth , for instance, been born a Canadian rather than an American, he would not be celebrated as the Sultan of Swat, the man who hit home runs.

Instead he would be deprecated as that notorious flunk who struck out times. Richler, Mordecai, Oh Canada! Requiem for a Divided Country, Alfred A. Knopf, Born: Montreal, Quebec, 27 January Education: Sir George Williams University, Family: Married Florence Wood in ; three sons and two daughters. Career: Freelance writer, Paris, , London, , and Montreal, Member of editorial board, Book-of-the-Month Club, Awards: President's medal for nonfiction, University of Western Ontario, ; junior art fellowships, and , and senior arts fellowship, , Canadian Council; Guggenheim Foundation creative writing fellowship, ; Paris Review humor prize, , for section from Cocksure and Hunting Tigers under Glass; Governor-General's literary award, Canada Council, , for Cocksure and Hunting Tigers under Glass, and , for St.

Died: 3 July Urbain Street, ; The Wordsmith, Birbalsingh, in Journal of Commonwealth Literature, June , pp. Ramraj, ; "A. Bell, in New Republic, 19 , 7 May , pp. Mordecai Richler was one of North America 's most prolific, talented, and controversial Jewish authors, whose works explore themes ranging from Jewish identity and self-image and Holocaust-related guilt to the dilemma of how to live in a secular Canadian society where humanistic values have largely failed.

Richler grew up in the Jewish community of Montreal, Quebec Province, Canada, in the s and s, a period during which his secondhand knowledge of the atrocities of the Holocaust overseas combined with his immediate experience of anti-Semitism and Quebec's own Fascist movement. A stay in Europe in the early s put him into direct contact with expatriate existentialist ideas in the style of Ernest Hemingway and the disillusionment of the Beat generation.

These two major historical and literary trends have found unique expression throughout Richler's fiction. Although Richler's first novel-length work of fiction, The Acrobats , focused primarily on the angst of an expatriate Canadian painter-rebel without a cause rather than on Jewish issues, Richler found his voice and expressed his greatest comic and literary talent in exploring Jewish topics closer to home.

Much as William Faulkner 's fictional Yoknapatawpha County and its inhabitants became the basis for exploring twentieth-century themes in a microcosm, Jewish Montreal and particularly the area around St. Urbain Street became Richler's laboratory of character development for his protagonists. Son of a Smaller Hero concerns young Noah Adler's efforts to break free of a rigid and strict Orthodox Jewish family at the same time that he deals with the anti-Semitic attitudes of the Canadian Gentiles in the world outside his family.

Several years later Richler expanded his use of irony and satire to denounce hypocrisy and cruelty in all layers of Canadian society in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz This novel indirectly reflects the Holocaust experience in its portrayal of social hierarchies, victims, and exploiters. Although the Jews and Gentiles in this novel are removed from the immediate atrocities of the Holocaust concentration camps, the precarious position of Jews in Montreal society impels Jews such as young Duddy Kravitz, Mr.

Cohen, and Jerry Dingleman to become ruthless hustlers and exploiters in business so that they can avoid becoming victims themselves. At the same time, people such as Simcha Kravitz, Duddy's grandfather, are helpless and ineffective in their efforts to uphold traditional Jewish values against the onslaught of exploiters. Two other novels by Richler that confront the shadow of the Holocaust through the eyes of Jews from St.

Urbain Street are St. Urbain's Horseman and Joshua Then and Now In St. Urbain's Horseman, Jacob Hersh is a famous and successful writer with a fair amount of financial security, but he cannot escape the fears of anti-Semitic persecution that dominated his childhood in Montreal. Jacob Hersh finds personal meaning and identification with the victims of the Holocaust.

He travels to continental Europe and Israel in search of his cousin Joey, who was supposedly an avenger of the Holocaust and a type of mythical messiah for him, but his search proves fruitless. Joshua Shapiro, the protagonist of Joshua Then and Now, also has to deal with issues of guilt and moral crises. His father, Reuben, was an exploitative and ruthless businessman like Duddy Kravitz, and Joshua, a prominent sportswriter, feels guilty for his own success and his marriage to a Gentile woman, as well as for his family's history.

During a trip to Spain he tries to find truth and morality in identifying with the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. He recognizes, however, that the history of even his most beloved Spain is rife with anti-Semitism, and he is humiliated by an ex-Nazi whom he meets. In short neither Jacob Hersh nor Joshua Shapiro can find the equality, brotherhood, or moral resolution that he seeks inside or outside his own community.

Some works of Richler's journalism and nonfiction, such as This Year in Jerusalem: An Israeli Journal and the essay "The Holocaust and After," also demonstrate Richler's complex attitude toward the Jewish state and his view of Jews in the role of victim or oppressor. Richler continued to assert his claim that the writer is an advocate of the oppressed.

And while he stood for a Jewish state in the aftermath of the Holocaust, he also sympathized with the sufferings of the Palestinians. Richler's most important contributions to the literature of the Holocaust, however, are his works of fiction that portray North American Jews' responses to the anti-Semitism around them and to the Holocaust. The modern crises of Jews' identities in multicultural societies and in the face of a long and difficult history crystallize with incisive humor and satire in Richler's fiction, which illustrates the persistent barriers and prejudices that both Jews and non-Jews still must understand and overcome.

See the essay on The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Richler's satiric portrayal of Montreal's Jewish Main gained both prominence and notoriety in with the publication of his second novel, Son of a Smaller Hero. Published in Britain, this slim, young man's novel of leaving one's community caused a stir in Canada, with its depiction of working-class Jews coming to terms with the breakdown of tradition and the speed with which a prosperous postwar Canada allowed middle-class Jews to assimilate and suburbanize themselves.

These themes recur — more fully fleshed out and with greater humor — in Richler's breakthrough novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Richler's career would prove to be a writing away from and back to his childhood experiences in the neighborhood around Montreal's St Lawrence Boulevard, which existed as a Jewish enclave, with English Montreal to the west and French Montreal to the east.

Between the middle s and the early s Richler made his home in London, England, raising a family and supporting himself by writing screenplays. Upon returning to Montreal to stay, Richler told friends that he worried that being too long away from his home turf might weaken his relationship with his richest material. The major novels that best reflect his ability to weave Montreal Jewish themes into a larger fictional tableau are St.

In the first of the three, Montreal plays the slightest role, and Richler addresses the Holocaust with deft, dark humor and moral outrage. Joshua Then and Now presents a loving portrait of a St. Urbain Street childhood. And in Solomon Gursky Was Here , Richler's most ambitious book, he takes liberties with the Bronfman liquor dynasty, the role of Jewish wealth and power in Canada, alongside a fanciful consideration of Jews in the Arctic.

These major books confirmed Richler's place at the forefront of Canadian letters. Richler's output also included three children's books featuring a character named Jacob Two-Two, as well as an excellent memoiristic collection, The Street Alongside his fiction and memoir, Richler embraced freelance journalism and published regularly in Canada and abroad on subjects as varied as Israel and the sporting life.

His willingness to editorialize aggressively and acerbically placed him at the center of the political and cultural debate concerning Quebec's national aspirations. His influential, as well as provocative contributions to this discussion include a long essay, which appeared in The New Yorker in , and his full-scale study and memoir Oh Canada!

Oh Quebec: Requiem for a Divided Country With the latter's publication Richler found the Montreal Jewish community fully behind him — possibly for the first time in his career — as they applauded his criticism of Quebec nationalism. In his last years, Richler was elevated to the role of cultural icon in Canada, a development that propelled his final novel, Barney's Version , to bestseller status.

The novel also became an unlikely success in Italy, where readers embraced Richler's characteristic brand of political incorrectness. Ravvin, Norman " Richler, Mordecai. Ravvin, Norman "Richler, Mordecai. Richler, Mordecai gale. Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia. Works in Critical Context Although Richler's early work received mixed critical responses—particularly his works of satire—his later work has received almost universal acclaim.

Here is a selection of other works that take aim at the entertainment world: For Your Consideration , a film directed by Christopher Guest. Nearly forty years passed between the publication of Cocksure and the release of American Dreamz , yet their topics are very similar. In a short essay, compare the satire of each. What is each making fun of?

How do you react to these critiques? The Oxford Companion to Literature 2 ed. July 4, Retrieved August 20, New Criterion. New York Times Book Review. June 1, October 31, The New Yorker. May 30, New York Times Magazine. July 18, Atlantic Monthly. June Lament for a divided country". December The Globe and Mail. Retrieved May 31, March 31, Retrieved September 22, La Presse.

Canadian Forum. Oh, Quebec". Le Devoir. March 28, Qui a peur de Mordecai Richler. Toronto Star. March 13, CBC News. September 12, Canada's Walk of Fame. June 28, Archived from the original on July 10, Retrieved June 28, Retrieved December 25, March 12, Two of them are Richler's only works in Internet Speculative Fiction Database ISFDB , which catalogues them as juvenile fantasy novels and reports multiple cover artists and interior illustrators.

Retrieved July 25, National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved August 21, Oh Quebec! Requiem for a Divided Country, a collection of essays about nationalism and anti-semitism, generated considerable controversy. We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe. If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.

Forgot your password? Retrieve it.