Richler Mordecai - Mordecai: the life and times of Mordecai Richler

Praise for Mordecai: The Life & Times

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Winner of the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction
Winner of the Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award
Finalist for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction
A Globe and Mail Best Book
A National Post Best Book
An Amazon.ca Editors Pick
A Quill & Quire Book of the Year
A Toronto Star Gift Pick

With the insight of a novelist and the accuracy of a journalist, Charles Foran vividly renders the life of Mordecai Richler, in all his complexity and with all his contradictions. A great, authoritative biography, as entertaining as it is informative. Yann Martel

In the hands of an expert biographer, a life can take on fresh meaning and reveal a new shape. Thats what happens to one of the most remarkable lives of modern Canada in Mordecai Robert Fulford

Foran has written a big, rich book for a big, rich life. Richler was not only a man of letters, but a true mensch as well, and Foran has done him justice. Toro Magazine

Charles Foran has written the fullest biography of Richler yet. The great strength of Mordecai is in the much deeper picture Foran gives of Richlers relationships. Foran gives a convincing and complex portrait of Richler. Winnipeg Free Press

Engaging and entertaining. Foran provides an intimate and insightful portrait of a great man who, for years before his death, was already considered the lion of Canadian literature. Winnipeg Jewish Review

Riveting, revealing and definitive. Martin Knelman, Toronto Star

Forans magisterial biography of a great Canadian novelist revealed the unexpectedly tender dimensions of a wicked satirist and, in so doing, reminded Canadian writers and readers alike that outsized literary ambitions and bold literary lives can certainly play out in this country too. Randy Boyagoda, The Globe and Mail (Favourite Book of the Year)

Meticulously researched. This volume not only overshadows its predecessors, its also the standard against which future biographers will have to measure their efforts. Novelist and essayist Charles Forans authoritative Mordecai is the first bo ok to attempt to capture the full breadth of Richlers long life and career. It is also the first to be as broad in scope, as sympathetic in approach, and as full of characters as one of Richlers own novels. Quill & Quire (Book of the Year)

If you cant buy or borrow a copy of Charles Forans blockbuster biography of Mordecai Richler, steal one. The 738-page volume ranks with the best biographies I have ever read. Ottawa Sun

The book is so detailed, so exhaustive, so astute and authoritative, that one cant imagine there is anything more to add. Biographer Charles Foran is a beautiful writer: a stylist. A tough-minded book, worthy of its subject. Foran proves fearless in probing his subjects psyche. Ken McGoogan, Ottawa Citizen

An invaluable companion to Richlers own writing. The Georgia Straight

Gives the reader an amazing insight into the streets and schools that shaped Mordecai Richler the writer, as well as the love story between a moody Mordecai and lovely Florence. However, the real story, so capably captured by Foran, was Mordecais work ethic. He wanted to be a writer, he wanted to earn a living as a writer and he wanted to write one great book. Jack Rabinovitch, The Globe and Mail (Favourite Book of the Year)

Easily the most thorough accounting of Richlers life. An absorbing, sympathetic and often funny account of a fundamentally decent man who worked like a demon at his craft. Nathan Whitlock, Toronto Star

Mordecai absolutely sets a standard for future literary biographers. This book, this beautiful wonderful book, is the precise manifestation of how one should go about the business of combining absolutely exhaustive research with a firm grip on the elements of narrative that the reader thirsts for when first lifting the book off its shelf. The literary biography of the year and likely of the last ten years. Hubert OHearn, By The Book Reviews (blog)

Mordecai: The Life & Times meets the immense challenge of writing about one of Canadas most talented and controversial authors. Charles Foran has created a rich and compelling portrait of the man and his times. Charles Taylor Prize jury citation

It was a full, rich life, and its a full, rich book. We judge a man by his life, a writer by his books. Charles Foran has done a thorough and thoughtful job of the first. Time will do the second. Nick Mount, The Walrus

Also by Charles Foran

Sketches in Winter
Kitchen Music
The Last House of Ulster
Butterfly Lovers
The Story of My Life (So Far)
House on Fire
Carolans Farewell
Join the Revolution, Comrade
Maurice Richard

VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2011

Copyright 2010 Charles Foran

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without
permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote
brief passages in a review.

Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada
Limited, Toronto, in 2011. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Alfred
A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, in 2010.
Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited.

Vintage Canada with colophon is a registered trademark.

www.randomhouse.ca

constitute a continuation of the copyright page.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Foran, Charles, 1960
Mordecai : the life & times / Charles Foran.

eISBN: 978-0-307-37602-2

1. Richler, Mordecai, 19312001. 2. Novelists, Canadian (English)20th century
Biography. 3. Authors, Canadian (English)20th centuryBiography. 4. Jewish
authorsCanadaBiography. 5. Montral (Qubec)Biography. I. Title. II. Title:
Mordecai : the life and times.

PS 8535. I 38 Z 67 2011 C 813.54 C 2011-900821-1

v3.1

I n February 1973, Mordecai Richler was on the touring Can. Lit. writers circuit, as he dubbed it. He had agreed to speak at a Jewish student conference in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Then forty-two, and twice winner of the countrys top literary prize, he stood at the vanguard of a literature fiercely aligned at the time with the wider phenomenon of cultural nationalism. His status was indisputable; no Canadian literary figure could claim such a high local profile and international reputation alike. It was also problematic for Richler. He did not care for nationalisms, cultural or otherwise. Nor was he interested in being bannered a Canadian author, having gone to some trouble to establish himself first in England. He wasnt disputing the stamp on his passport, or on his character, courtesy of a Montreal childhood. He knew that his fiction was at its best when he wrote about his homeland. But Mordecai Richler, in addition to being the sort of artist who, like Groucho Marx, wouldnt join any club that would have him as a member, didnt fit any recognizable mould of how a Canadian author should behave, think or write. More to the point, a single-category mould would soon have shattered under his outsized sensibility. As a writer and public figure, he was singularhis own club, in effect.