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Writing Mr. Richler

In the spring of 2000, I sent Mordecai Richler an essay I had written on verb tense in his 1998 novel, Barney's Version. I didn't ask for his comments - I simply offered the essay for his consideration and included a self-addressed postcard for a reply. I wouldn't have objected to more substantial correspondence, but reasoned that he had more productive things to do with his time than critique a linguistic analysis of one his books. Of course, I should mention that despite my stated concern about making demands upon him, I didn't stop at sending him the essay - I also enclosed the first chapter of a satiric novel about a high school that I was then working on, but have since abandoned.

It had never before occurred to me to send an essay to its subject. I think previously I had an unwarranted sense of writers' fame and only over time came to realize that while Mordecai Richler is one of Canada's best known writers, he isn't that famous. Like Atwood, Ondaatje, or Munro, he is renowned, but only within a certain sphere. Canadian writers aren't Oprah or Eminem - they don't travel with an entourage or employ staff to send out autographed pictures to their fans. Still, there seemed to be something slightly bold about writing Mr. Richler: I knew him, but he didn't know me.

Richler was then splitting his time between the Eastern Townships southeast of Montreal and London; I had neither address and so wrote him in care of the Montreal Gazette, for whom he was writing a weekly column. Several months later, I received a standard business size envelope with the return address, M. Richler, Austin, Quebec. It contained a piece of unfolded cream-colored card stock with the letterhead RICHLER, followed by a Montreal address. Typed on the card was the following: "Dear Mr. Lehnert, Thank you for sending me your perceptive piece about Barney's Version." It was obvious that it was from the man himself as he had resisted the transition from typewriter to computer. He omitted mention of the novel chapter, but that was fine; I was glad to receive a non-generic response, brief as it was. Less than a year later, he died of cancer and was probably sick when he wrote me. I'm glad that I sent him the essay; I don't know if he really thought my essay was perceptive, but I'd like to think that he was at least pleased that someone was taking his work seriously enough that they would analyze its use of verb tense.

Barney's Version

Richler's talent for satire and his reputation as a controversial curmudgeon helped put him on bestseller lists, but it has also contributed to a relative lack of serious study of his work. The writerly aspects of Richler's fiction, of how he creates meaning at the level of language, have often been overlooked. This is unfortunate, as Richler was a skilled craftsman who wrote a number of ambitious and sophisticated novels worthy of close textual reading. In Barney's Version, it is instructive to look at Richler's use of verb tense and its connection to narrative, memory and memoir; in other words, the relationship of the building blocks of language to the "version" crafted by narrator Barney and author Richler. It was such an exploration that I sent him.

Barney's Version is told in the first person by Barney Panofsky, a sixty-nine year old Montreal film producer. He wishes before he dies to state his "version" of events. But which events? The memoir suggests several, chief among them his three marriages and the death of his friend Boogie thirty-three years before, a crime for which Barney was charged but never convicted. Barney's Version joins earlier novels by Richler, notably St. Urbain's Horseman, Joshua Then and Now, and Solomon Gursky was Here as novels particularly concerned with the role of memory and one man's attempt to explain and justify his past. Barney has a desire both to thumb his nose at his critics, and to demonstrate that he isn't such a bad guy after all. His narrative reveals him as an expert at dissembling and spin such that the truth, if such a thing even exists without quotation marks around it, lies buried in an avalanche of supposition, doubt and innuendo from all quarters.

Unlike Richler, whose writing career began in his early twenties and spanned five decades, Barney gets a late start as an author. His first "book" is a memoir and his stated mission in writing it is to defend himself against charges, including one of murder, made by rivals and ex-wives. Barney is hardly a reliable narrator as not only does he wish to use his book to settle old scores, he further allows that his recollection of events is untrustworthy as he is suffering from the early effects of Alzheimer's disease. Not surprisingly, he is prone to factual errors, and Richler provides footnotes written by Barney's son to correct these lapses. The son, however, is only able to correct trivial mistakes such as incorrect scores of hockey games or botched book titles; as to whether Barney killed Boogie or if he was a faithful husband, we have only Barney's recollection, and this account is jumbled and self-serving.

In Barney's Version, the narrator recalls events spanning a lengthy period, but does so in hopscotch fashion. The telling begins in the present (the mid 1990s) and goes back as far as the 1930s. The chapter headings, "Clara 1950-52", "The Second Mrs. Panofsky 1958-1960", and "Miriam 1960", suggest that a chronological telling will be employed, but it is not, and the events recounted appear to be in little logical order. The memoir's rambling conversational tone mirrors the way the mind typically works as it moves back and forth from past to present; this movement across time is not random, but neither is it neatly sequential. Barney's Version, like most novels and "real" memoirs, is replete with what Gerard Genette calls "anachronies," or chunks of text that appear in other than their logical or chronological place in the narrative. In fiction and particularly in memoir, anachronies are chiefly analapses (flashbacks), although prolepses (flashforwards) are occasionally employed. Barney's activity in the book's present is chiefly that of remembering and recording past events, and Barney's Version consists of a series of analapses, (often embedded in one another) with occasional reversions to the narrative present.

Barney's Version is a work of meta fiction in that its ostensible subjects: Boogie's death and Barney's marriages, are pretexts for an investigation of memory and writing. Richler suggests that memoir, and memory for that matter, are not simply about recalling and recording the past, rather, they involve a continual reinterpreting and even reconfiguring of the past in order to serve present ends. Barney does not resolve the issue of Boogie's death (although an afterword by his son appears to) but he does unburden himself and respond to his critics. Memory and the written word are thus not tools used to illuminate the truth; rather, they are weapons deployed in the war to establish one's version of reality. The skillful use of verb tense (the details of which I sent Mr. Richler) in Barney's narration is one way that the constructed nature of Barney's tale is revealed. An examination of narrative tense reveals that Barney's memoir is anything but neutral - certain events are foregrounded and privileged, while others are minimized and downplayed. The choices that Barney (and Richler) make in this regard are not incidental; they form part of the story in and of themselves.

St. Urbain's Iconoclast

Barney's Version turned out to be Richler's last major work and its themes: memory, the search for truth and the struggle between personal ambition and ethical conduct, are important ones for Richler. He explored this terrain for almost fifty years, crafting a distinctive Anglo Jewish Montreal in which his authorial presence looms large. Richler's protagonists included Duddy Kravitz, Joshua Shapiro, Moses Berger and Barney Panofsky, all memorable figures in biting satires about the struggles of Montreal Jews to make good, and once they had, to figure out how to live.

Richler's fiction and non fiction detail a love of cigars, booze, hockey and Montreal, as well as a contempt for Quebec separatists, pretentious social climbers, old and new money, and hypocritical do-gooders. Richler could be an acerbic social critic and he was decidedly un "PC" long before that shopworn expression came into use. But what those who are offended (variously Quebec sovereigntists, Canadian nationalists, Jews, and women, amongst others) by particular elements in Richler's oeuvre forget is that the body of his work is critical of self-righteousness, snobbery, tribalism and conformity in general. He was an equal opportunity offender ever willing to mock foolishness and pretense, regardless of its source. Richler was ultimately a champion of the individual, not of the group, and while he was an Anglophone, a Jewish Quebecer and a Canadian for whom place, history and culture were essential, his individualism made the notion of his owing allegiance to any cultural, religious, national, or regional group anathema. Not surprisingly, the conceit of Barney's Version: an unreliable old man attempts to "set things straight" and respond to critics, was an attractive one for Richler.

I wish there could be another installment to this piece, one in which I write about having sent Richler a second essay (this one). I would hope that this effort would be received with the same polite if reserved interest on his part as was the first; and if not, could at least serve as a suitable coaster for a glass of Macallan. His death has sadly deprived me of that opportunity, and more importantly, the chance to enjoy further Richlerian versions.