Mordecai Richler facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Mordecai Richler
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Pencil sketch of Mordecai Richler
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| Born | January 27, 1931 |
| Died | July 3, 2001 (aged 70) Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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| Resting place | Mount Royal Cemetery |
| Education | Baron Byng High School |
| Alma mater | Sir George Williams University |
| Occupation | Writer |
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Mordecai Richler CC (January 27, 1931 – July 3, 2001) was a Canadian writer. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and Barney's Version (1997). His 1970 novel St. Urbain's Horseman and 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here were nominated for the Booker Prize. He is also well known for the Jacob Two-Two fantasy series for children. In addition to his fiction, Richler wrote numerous essays about the Jewish community in Canada, and about Canadian and Quebec nationalism. Richler's Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! (1992), a collection of essays about nationalism and anti-Semitism, generated considerable controversy.
Contents
Biography
Early life and education
The son of Lily (née Rosenberg) and Moses Isaac Richler, a scrap metal dealer, Richler was born on January 27, 1931, in Montreal, Quebec, and raised on St. Urbain Street in that city's Mile End area. He was fluent in English, French and Yiddish, and graduated from Baron Byng High School. Richler enrolled in Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) to study but did not complete his degree. Years later, Richler's mother published an autobiography, The Errand Runner: Memoirs of a Rabbi's Daughter (1981), which discusses Mordecai's birth and upbringing, and the sometimes difficult relationship between them. (Mordecai Richler's grandfather and Lily Richler's father was Rabbi Yehudah Yudel Rosenberg, a celebrated rabbi in both Poland and Canada and a prolific author of many religious texts, as well as religious fiction and non-fiction works on science and history geared for religious communities.)
Richler moved to Paris at age nineteen, intent on following in the footsteps of a previous generation of literary exiles, the so-called Lost Generation of the 1920s, many of whom were from the United States.
Career
Richler returned to Montreal in 1952, working briefly at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, then moved to London in 1954. He published seven of his ten novels, as well as considerable journalism, while living in London.
Worrying "about being so long away from the roots of my discontent", Richler returned to Montreal in 1972. He wrote repeatedly about the Anglophone community of Montreal and especially about his former neighbourhood, portraying it in multiple novels.
Marriage and family
In England, in 1954, Richler married Catherine Boudreau, nine years his senior. On the eve of their wedding, he met and was smitten by Florence Mann (née Wood), then married to Richler's close friend, screenwriter Stanley Mann.
Some years later Richler and Mann both divorced their prior spouses and married each other, and Richler adopted her son Daniel. The couple had four other children together: Jacob, Noah, Martha and Emma. These events inspired his novel Barney's Version.
Richler died of cancer on July 3, 2001, in Montreal, aged 70.
He was also a second cousin of novelist Nancy Richler.
Journalism career
Throughout his career, Richler wrote journalistic commentary, and contributed to The Atlantic Monthly, Look, The New Yorker, The American Spectator, and other magazines. In his later years, Richler was a newspaper columnist for The National Post and Montreal's The Gazette. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he authored a monthly book review for Gentlemen's Quarterly.
Richler was often critical of Quebec but of Canadian federalism as well. Another favourite Richler target was the government-subsidized Canadian literary movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Journalism constituted an important part of his career, bringing him income between novels and films.
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
Richler published his fourth novel, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, in 1959. The book featured a frequent Richler theme: Jewish life in the 1930s and 40s in the neighbourhood of Montreal east of Mount Royal Park on and about St. Urbain Street and Saint Laurent Boulevard (known colloquially as "The Main"). Richler wrote of the neighbourhood and its people, chronicling the hardships and disabilities they faced as a Jewish minority.
To a middle-class stranger, it is true, one street would have seemed as squalid as the next. On each corner a cigar store, a grocery, and a fruit man. Outside staircases everywhere. Winding ones, wooden ones, rusty and risky ones. Here a prized lot of grass splendidly barbered, there a spitefully weedy patch. An endless repetition of precious peeling balconies and waste lots making the occasional gap here and there.
Following the publication of Duddy Kravitz, according to The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, Richler became "one of the foremost writers of his generation".
Representation in other media
- St. Urbain's Horseman (1971) was made into a CBC television drama.
- In 1973 The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz was adapted into a film of the same name starring Richard Dreyfuss as Duddy.
- The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz has repeatedly been adapted as a musical play, i.e. in 1984 (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), 1987 (Philadelphia), and 2015 (Montreal).
- The animator Caroline Leaf created The Street (1976), based on Richler's 1969 short story of the same name. It was nominated for an Academy Award in animation.
- In 1978 Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang was adapted into a theatrical film as Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang (1978 film).
- In 1999 Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang was adapted into a television film as Jacob Two Two Meets the Hooded Fang (1999 film).
- In 1985 Joshua Then and Now (1980) was adapted into a film of the same name.
- In 2003 Jacob Two-Two was adapted into an animated series of the same name loosely based on the titular character of the book series.
- In 2009 Barney's Version was adapted for radio by the CBC.
- In 2010 Barney's Version (1997) was adapted into a film of the same name.
Awards and recognition
- 1969 Governor General's Award for Cocksure and Hunting Tigers Under Glass.
- 1972 Governor General's Award for St. Urbain's Horseman.
- 1975 Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy for screenplay of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.
- 1976 Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award: Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang.
- 1976 Ruth Schwartz Children's Book Award for Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang.
- 1990 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Solomon Gursky was Here
- 1995 Mr. Christie's Book Award (for the best English book age 8 to 11) for Jacob Two-Two's First Spy Case.
- 1997 The Giller Prize for Barney's Version.
- 1998 Canadian Booksellers Associations "Author of the Year" award.
- 1998 Stephen Leacock Award for Humour for Barney's Version
- 1998 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Canada & Caribbean region) for Barney's Version
- 1998 The QSPELL Award for Barney's Version.
- 2000 Honorary Doctorate of Letters, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec.
- 2000 Honorary Doctorate, Bishop's University, Lennoxville, Quebec.
- 2001 Companion of the Order of Canada
- 2004 Number 98 on the CBC's television show about great Canadians, The Greatest Canadian
- 2004 Barney's Version was chosen for inclusion in Canada Reads 2004, championed by author Zsuzsi Gartner.
- 2006 Cocksure was chosen for inclusion in Canada Reads 2006, championed by actor and author Scott Thompson
- 2011 Richler posthumously received a star on Canada's Walk of Fame and was inducted at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto.
- 2011 In the same month he was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame, the City of Montreal announced that a gazebo in Mount Royal Park would be refurbished and named in his honour. The structure overlooks Jeanne-Mance Park, where Richler played in his youth.
- 2015 Richler was given his due as a "citizen of honour" in the city of Montreal. The Mile End Library, in the neighbourhood he portrayed in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, was given his name.
Published works
Novels
- The Acrobats (1954) (also published as Wicked We Love, July 1955)
- Son of a Smaller Hero (1955)
- A Choice of Enemies (1957)
- The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959)
- The Incomparable Atuk (1963)
- Cocksure (1968)
- St. Urbain's Horseman (1971)
- Joshua Then and Now (1980)
- Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989)
- Barney's Version (1997)
Short story collection
- The Street (1969)
Fiction for children
- Jacob Two-Two series
- Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang (Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), illustrated by Fritz Wegner
- Jacob Two-Two and the Dinosaur (1987)
- Jacob Two-Two's First Spy Case (1995)
Travel
- Images of Spain (1977)
- This Year in Jerusalem (1994)
Essays
- Hunting Tigers Under Glass: Essays and Reports (1968)
- Shovelling Trouble (1972)
- Notes on an Endangered Species and Others (1974)
- The Great Comic Book Heroes and Other Essays (1978)
- Home Sweet Home: My Canadian Album (1984)
- Broadsides (1991)
- Belling the Cat (1998)
- Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! Requiem for a Divided Country (1992)
- Dispatches from the Sporting Life (2002)
Nonfiction
- On Snooker: The Game and the Characters Who Play It (2001)
Anthologies
- Canadian Writing Today (1970)
- The Best of Modern Humour (1986) (U.S. title: The Best of Modern Humor)
- Writers on World War II (1991)
Film scripts
- Insomnia Is Good for You (1957) (co-written with Lewis Griefer )
- Dearth of a Salesman (1957, starring Peter Sellers ) (co-written with Lewis Griefer )
- No Love for Johnnie (1962) (co-written with Nicholas Phipps, based on the novel by Wilfred Fienburgh)
- Life at the Top (1965) (screenplay from novel by John Braine)
- The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974) (Screenwriters Guild Award and Oscar screenplay nomination)
- The Street (1976) (Oscar nomination)
- Fun with Dick and Jane (1977, with David Giler & Jerry Belson, from a story by Gerald Gaiser)
- The Wordsmith (1979)
- Joshua Then and Now (1985)
- Barney's Version (2010, screenplay by Michael Konyves, based on Richler's novel of the same name; Richler wrote an early draft)
See also
In Spanish: Mordecai Richler para niños
- List of Quebec authors
- Jews in Montreal
