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| Oh he would have had lots to write about ... |
Inside Television 526
Publication Date: 11-5-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn
I was thinking about how to start this, for there are both light and serious arguments to be made, when it occurred to me that I had just written a review and done an interview on Charles Foran’s excellent ‘Mordecai: The Life & Times.’ And I wondered, what would Mordecai Richler have made of these times?
For he wasn’t just a novelist, you know. People rarely think of him this way, but I’m willing to put Richler on a short list of the ten best journalists this country ever produced. He had the sharp observer’s eye for the telling detail, understood human foibles and our means and desire to cover them up, was brutally honest, explosively funny and didn’t give a good damn what anyone thought of him or his opinions.
It is a dangerous thing to attempt to guess the opinions of a man deceased for ten years about present events, so I won’t. But i do think I know my Richler canon well enough to surmise what would have fascinated and horrified him.
I believe he would have looked at the politics in the United States and its people as being akin to the Depression-era Jewish neighbourhood he grew up in; Montreal’s The Main. One took shelter in cultural neighbourhoods because the state was distant and belonged to Other People. Interestingly, that Federal riding twice returned an actual Communist MP to Ottawa. He was eventually locked up on sedition charges as was the Mayor of Montreal, Camilien Houde. They had opinions that ran contrary to the prevailing wind, opposing Canada’s entry into World War Two. On the bald face of it, yes, Canada has imprisoned people for having political opinions. Our hands are not that clean.
Nor are those of the hustlers and con men, the Boy Wonder and Duddy Kravitz, fleecing the good neighbours in order to finance grandiose real estate deals. Yes, I think Richler would have recognized those characters placed on a higher pedestal in the grand offices of wall Street. The difference is that Duddy had a conscience about it all. But then again, Duddy was a fictional character.
In culture, there was the same rendering of the family fabric both then and now. Young Mordecai, his brothers and friends were drawn to the exciting new media of comic books, radio thrillers and multiple bills at the local cinema - which now had colour! In the meantime the elders were composing the last audiences cum mourners of the dying Yiddish theatre, just as today’s elders watch a television that is increasingly being taken over by content similar to that produced for telephones. From Action Comics and Superman to iPhones and apps.
Had Richler lived, he would have found ample forums for his views. One good thing about our times is that we live in the golden age of social satire. Even besides The Daily Show, Colbert, Conan and all the other offspring of Saturday Night Live’s Jovian forehead, I don’t think there was one of the fifty or so novels I read so far this tear that didn’t have some sort of pungent social comment. Yes, even the historical ones.
When I talked to Foran he summed up by saying that he hoped that his work would help keep Richler’s canon alive. I suggest that is a fine idea for the reader to adopt. For if you look at the images slipping past our screens, both great and small in size and significance, it might help if you imagine seeing them through the eyes of Molrdecai Richler.
And because that is much too kindly a way of ending a piece about the great cynic, I must add - that a shot or two of The Macallan wouldn’t hurt either. Be seeing you.
Publication Date: 11-5-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn
I was thinking about how to start this, for there are both light and serious arguments to be made, when it occurred to me that I had just written a review and done an interview on Charles Foran’s excellent ‘Mordecai: The Life & Times.’ And I wondered, what would Mordecai Richler have made of these times?
For he wasn’t just a novelist, you know. People rarely think of him this way, but I’m willing to put Richler on a short list of the ten best journalists this country ever produced. He had the sharp observer’s eye for the telling detail, understood human foibles and our means and desire to cover them up, was brutally honest, explosively funny and didn’t give a good damn what anyone thought of him or his opinions.
It is a dangerous thing to attempt to guess the opinions of a man deceased for ten years about present events, so I won’t. But i do think I know my Richler canon well enough to surmise what would have fascinated and horrified him.
I believe he would have looked at the politics in the United States and its people as being akin to the Depression-era Jewish neighbourhood he grew up in; Montreal’s The Main. One took shelter in cultural neighbourhoods because the state was distant and belonged to Other People. Interestingly, that Federal riding twice returned an actual Communist MP to Ottawa. He was eventually locked up on sedition charges as was the Mayor of Montreal, Camilien Houde. They had opinions that ran contrary to the prevailing wind, opposing Canada’s entry into World War Two. On the bald face of it, yes, Canada has imprisoned people for having political opinions. Our hands are not that clean.
Nor are those of the hustlers and con men, the Boy Wonder and Duddy Kravitz, fleecing the good neighbours in order to finance grandiose real estate deals. Yes, I think Richler would have recognized those characters placed on a higher pedestal in the grand offices of wall Street. The difference is that Duddy had a conscience about it all. But then again, Duddy was a fictional character.
In culture, there was the same rendering of the family fabric both then and now. Young Mordecai, his brothers and friends were drawn to the exciting new media of comic books, radio thrillers and multiple bills at the local cinema - which now had colour! In the meantime the elders were composing the last audiences cum mourners of the dying Yiddish theatre, just as today’s elders watch a television that is increasingly being taken over by content similar to that produced for telephones. From Action Comics and Superman to iPhones and apps.
Had Richler lived, he would have found ample forums for his views. One good thing about our times is that we live in the golden age of social satire. Even besides The Daily Show, Colbert, Conan and all the other offspring of Saturday Night Live’s Jovian forehead, I don’t think there was one of the fifty or so novels I read so far this tear that didn’t have some sort of pungent social comment. Yes, even the historical ones.
When I talked to Foran he summed up by saying that he hoped that his work would help keep Richler’s canon alive. I suggest that is a fine idea for the reader to adopt. For if you look at the images slipping past our screens, both great and small in size and significance, it might help if you imagine seeing them through the eyes of Molrdecai Richler.
And because that is much too kindly a way of ending a piece about the great cynic, I must add - that a shot or two of The Macallan wouldn’t hurt either. Be seeing you.
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