Mordecai Richler CC (January 27, 1931 – July 3, 2001) was a Canadian writer born in Montreal, Quebec. He is most famous for writing novels about Montreal's Jewish community, such as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and Barney's Version (1997). His books St. Urbain's Horseman (1970) and Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) were nominated for the Booker Prize. He also wrote the Jacob Two-Two fantasy series for children.

In addition to writing fiction, Richler worked as a journalist. His non-fiction writing included essays about the Jewish community in Canada and about Canadian and Quebec nationalism. His book Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! (1992), which was based on an essay originally published in The New Yorker, caused a lot of discussion.

For his work in literature and culture, Richler received the Companionship of the Order of Canada in 2001. He also won the Governor General's Award for Literature twice (in 1968 and 1971) and received the Giller Prize in 1997.

Biography

Mordecai Richler was born on January 27, 1931, in Montreal, Quebec. His parents were Lily Rosenberg and Moses Isaac Richler, who worked as a scrap metal dealer. He grew up on St. Urbain Street in Montreal’s Mile End area. Richler spoke English and Yiddish fluently but had trouble understanding French. He graduated from Baron Byng High School and began studying at Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) but did not finish his degree. Later, his mother wrote an autobiography that described his birth, childhood, and their sometimes difficult relationship. His grandfather, Rabbi Yehudah Yudel Rosenberg, was a well-known rabbi in Poland and Canada. He served as the chief rabbi of Montreal and wrote many religious books, including works about science and history for religious communities.

Richler’s parents had an arranged marriage that his mother disliked. In 1944, she began a relationship with a boarder and later divorced her husband. This event deeply affected 12-year-old Mordecai.

At age 19, Richler moved to Paris to follow the example of writers from the 1920s who lived there. He spent time studying and writing at a café called Mabillon on St. Germain des Prés, which he considered similar to university experiences.

In 1952, he returned to Montreal and briefly worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He moved to London in 1954, where he wrote seven of his ten novels and produced many articles.

In 1972, Richler returned to Montreal, saying he felt disconnected from his roots. He often wrote about Montreal’s Anglophone community and his former neighborhood, describing them in several novels.

In 1954, Richler married Catherine Boudreau, who was nine years older than him. Before their wedding, he met Florence Mann, who was married to his friend Stanley Mann. Later, Richler and Mann divorced their previous spouses and married each other. They adopted Mann’s son, Daniel, and had four other children: Noah, Emma, Martha, and Jacob. These events inspired his novel Barney’s Version.

Mordecai Richler died of cancer on July 3, 2001, in Montreal at the age of 70. He was also a second cousin of novelist Nancy Richler.

Journalism career

Richler wrote articles about current events and contributed to magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Look, The New Yorker, The American Spectator, and others. Later in his life, he wrote regular columns for The National Post and Montreal's The Gazette. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he wrote monthly book reviews for Gentlemen's Quarterly.

Richler often criticized both Quebec and Canadian federalism. He also frequently wrote about the Canadian literary movement of the 1970s and 1980s, which received government support. Journalism played an important role in his career, providing him with income between his work on novels and films.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

In 1959, Richler published his fourth novel, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. The book explored a common theme in Richler's work: Jewish life in the 1930s and 1940s in Montreal's neighborhood east of Mount Royal Park, including St. Urbain Street and Saint Lawrence Boulevard (also called Boulevard Saint Laurent, or "The Main"). Richler described the neighborhood and its people, showing the challenges they faced as a Jewish minority.

To someone unfamiliar with the area, the streets might have seemed similar, each with small shops like cigar stores and grocery stores, and fruit vendors outside. Staircases were everywhere—some winding, some wooden, and some rusty and unsafe. Some areas had well-kept grass, while others had overgrown weeds. The neighborhood had many balconies in need of repair and empty lots, creating uneven spaces.

— The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Penguin Books, 1964, p. 13

After the book was published, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature noted that Richler became "one of the foremost writers of his generation."

Reception

Many critics separated Richler the author from Richler the person who argued strongly about issues. Richler often said his goal was to be an honest witness to his time and place, and to write at least one book that would be read after his death. His work was supported by journalists Robert Fulford and Peter Gzowski, among others. People who admired Richler praised him for being brave enough to share difficult truths; Michael Posner’s oral biography of Richler is titled The Last Honest Man (2004).

Some critics disagreed with how Richler included his journalistic writing in his later novels, believing this made his work seem lazy or repeated. Richler’s mixed feelings about Montreal’s Jewish community were shown in Mordecai and Me (2003), a book written by Joel Yanofsky.

The novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz was turned into a film, for which Richler wrote the screenplay. It was also performed in live theatre productions in Canada and the United States.

Controversy

Richler had many disagreements with members of the Quebec nationalist movement. In articles written from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, Richler criticized Quebec's rules that limited the use of certain languages and the growing support for Quebec independence. Critics were especially upset about Richler's claims that Quebec had a long history of antisemitism.

Soon after the Parti Québécois (PQ) won its first election in 1976, Richler published an article titled "Oh Canada! Lament for a Divided Country" in the Atlantic Monthly. The article caused controversy because he claimed the PQ used a song from the musical Cabaret as their anthem. Later, Richler admitted he was wrong about the song and said he had taken the information from an article by Irwin Cotler and Ruth Wisse. He apologized for the mistake, calling it an "embarrassing gaffe."

In 1992, Richler published Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!: Requiem for a Divided Country, which mocked Quebec's language laws. He supported a book by Esther Delisle about French-Canadian antisemitism before World War II. The book was criticized by Quebec independence supporters and some English-speaking Canadians. Critics said Richler had an outdated and unfair view of Quebec society and that his work could worsen relations between French-speaking and English-speaking Quebecers. A sovereigntist named Pierrette Venne, who later became a Bloc Québécois MP, called for the book to be banned. Another critic, Daniel Latouche, compared the book to Mein Kampf.

Nadia Khouri noted that some critics of Richler used words like "not one of us" to suggest he was not a "real Quebecer." She found that some critics had misquoted his work, such as when a passage about Quebec women being treated like "sows" was misunderstood. Some Quebec writers, including Jean-Hugues Roy and Étienne Gignac, believed critics had overreacted. Defenders of Richler said he might have been wrong about some details but was not racist or anti-Québécois. Nadia Khouri praised Richler for his courage in challenging Quebec society's traditions. He was described as "the most prominent defender of the rights of Quebec's anglophones."

Some people were worried about the strong reactions to Richler's book, saying it showed that antisemitism still existed in parts of Quebec. Richler received death threats, and an anti-Semitic journalist yelled at one of his sons, saying, "[I]f your father was here, I'd make him relive the Holocaust right now!" An editorial cartoon in L'actualité compared him to Hitler. One critic claimed Richler was paid by Jewish groups to write his essay on Quebec. His defenders said this accusation used old stereotypes about Jews. When Jewish community leaders were asked to distance themselves from Richler, a journalist named Frances Kraft said this showed they did not see Richler as part of the Quebec "tribe" because he was Anglo-speaking and Jewish.

Around the same time, Richler created the "Impure Wool Society" to give the Prix Parizeau to a non-French-speaking Quebec writer who made important contributions. The name of the group was a play on the phrase "Québécois pure laine," which refers to people with deep French-Canadian ancestry. The prize, worth $3,000, was given twice: once to Benet Davetian in 1996 for The Seventh Circle, and once to David Manicom in 1997 for Ice in Dark Water.

In 2010, Montreal city councillor Marvin Rotrand presented a petition with 4,000 signatures asking the city to honor Richler on the 10th anniversary of his death by renaming a street, park, or building in his old Mile End neighborhood. The city council first refused, saying it would harm the neighborhood's heritage. Later, the city announced it would renovate and rename a bandstand in his honor. The project faced delays but was completed in 2016. Richler has also been honored with a mural and the renaming of a library.