Customer Reviews (1)

Barbs And Bouquets From Canada's Famed Controvertist
Reading this collection of essays from 40-plus years ago is a bracing exercise in discovering just how much more artful one had to be as an adversarial pundit in the early 1970s. You couldn't just jab at this or that person, but explain yourself and what you thought. Mordecai Richler never had trouble with that, as "Shovelling Trouble" shows.

A collection of essays and book reviews published in magazines from 1960 through 1970 and published in 1972, "Shovelling Trouble" presents Richler having at everything from Norman Mailer to comic-book ads, explaining his approach to writing at a critical juncture in his career, and expressing more than once a sadness about the fact his literary generation doesn't quite measure up against the famous "Lost Generation" (Hemingway, Picasso, et al) of the 1920s.

This last point comes to the fore in the collection's best essay, "A Sense Of The Ridiculous", Richler's detailed remembrance of his younger days as a writer in the early 1950s in Paris, the city from whence the Lost Generation sprang and whose collective shadow haunted Richler and his mates. "We were not, it's worth noting, true adventurers, but followers of a romantic convention," he writes.

Of the politics and poseurs of that time and place, Richler writes with great amusement and humor, while summoning an atmosphere of quiet, all-encompassing collapse. Walking into a cheap hotel room that once was part of a Wehrmacht brothel, Richler notes, he first would hammer at the door to scare away the rats and ghosts. The ghosts still linger in these pages.

A more pleasant spirit dominates another essay from this collection, "Gordon Craig", about a fellow Richler knew in his Paris days who actually pre-dated the Lost Generation but still lingered around the city in his 80s, outtalking the youngsters with whom he discoursed on matters of art and love. Craig recalls a trip to Soviet Russia: "They're the most shocking prudes, you know. They were scandalized because my secretary was pregnant."

In both of these essays, and in an introductory piece "Why I Write", Richler's command of detail and biting asides reminds you how much non-fiction writing can read like fiction with the right writer at the helm.

The rest of the book is not up to this standard. In "The Holocaust And After" Richler explains his proud, continued hatred for Germans as a Jew. "The Germans are still an abomination to me...I rejoice in the crash of each German Starfighter." Richler then lays out a piercing account of Holocaust suffering, but writes more from the spleen than from the head, especially when denouncing as "immoral" modern entertainments that use the Nazis as stock bad guys rather than sacred figures of deepest evil.

In a later essay, Richler even criticizes Elie Weisel for forgiving the Germans. I think Weisel was in a better place to offer it than a Jew who spent his war years in Quebec.

The essay here that got my back up most was his take on James Bond. It starts out an amusing, straightforward account of Bond's improbable career and author Ian Fleming's constant focus on earlobes in describing Bond villains. But then it becomes a lengthy attack on Fleming for harboring various anti-Semitic views and using them in his characters, with descriptions that echo stock Jewish stereotypes. Richler continues in this vein even as he acknowledges Fleming made a point of saying villains like Goldfinger and Ernst Stavro Blofeld weren't Jews, as if by raising the point Fleming was appealing to the prejudices of his audience anyway. One villain mentioned as having a Jewish bridge partner is enough for Richler to bring up "Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion". It's too much.

The rest of the collection is mostly book reviews documenting assorted literary feuds while asking the pregnant question of if any one of these literary lions will ever produce the equivalent of "Ulysses". It's a question Richler also asks of himself, poignantly, in "Why I Write", realizing the answer may not come in his own lifetime. "Put plainly", he concludes, "nothing helps." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Brilliant or Just Crazy: You Decide!
This is a very unusual book and I would compare it with Anthony Burgess's Clockwork Orange or Orwell's 1984 or a some similar book. It is not a classic and it is not as good as either of those two books but that is the type of book that Richler has written: it is experimental or on the "acceptable edge" of writing.

By the way, this is a book that Anthony Burgess liked, and interestingly or as a bit of trivia he wrote positive comments about Cocksure which are reproduced on the hardcover jacket of Richler's later novel St. Urbain's Horseman. The book shows a lot of creativity and ability by Richler to remove self imposed limits on his writing - a problem that many writers have - and he writes in a very liberated fashion in the present book, far more so than some of his later works. This novel is by Richler during his British phase and it has a lot of sexual obsessions in it. The book title refers to a male's anatomy.

As a point of reference, I have read all of Richler's major works and a few of his early novellas.

Modecai Richler (1931 to 2001) grew up in Montreal and that city is the setting for many of his stories - but not all. Many of his novels are about Jews living in Canada and Britain post WWII.

He is best known for his tales of life in and around St. Urbain Street. That is an area of three story buildings or walk up row houses located just east of the mountain in Montreal, and north of the commercial center of the city. At one time this was the center of Jewish immigrant life. Many Jews coming to Montreal started there but then moved on to Outrement, Hamstead, and other districts. His father was a scrap dealer and he graduated from a heavily Jewsih high school, Baron Byng High School, which has other famous alumni including William Shatner of Star Trek fame. Some of the local establishments such as Schwartz's Deli on St. Laurent are still in business. He uses much of those biographical experiences in the book.

His break out novel is the present novel Duddy Kravitz which is still a great read whether you have seen the movie or not. Also, I like his last book, Barney's Vision, which is probably his most balanced and best written piece of work. That novel lacks the edge and drama of Duddy Kravitz. Along the way, he experimented with different themes and the use of sex in the plots, and usually he did that with a lot of humor.

For the present novel, the plot or story is a bit weird and convoluted and has included a bit of the big brother touch. It is about a British based editor, his sex life, and his interaction with a controlling boss and other people. The book takes many twists and turns and has numerous provocative sexual passages.

Many of his critics claim that he re-cycles his characters and deals only with one topic, but in general his books are far from the predictable and this book is an example.

This is an unusual read. 5 stars for creativity.

"Now more than ever..."
Brilliant satire. This is the only book that has ever made me laugh at loud. But it's not all humour. It's also intelligent and shocking. In the throes of a sexual revolution but hung up on political correctness, the world Richler describes seemseerily close to the western society of today, in which Aguilera can sing about getting "dirrrrty" on a Saturday morning kids' show while race and religion are untouchable fodder(unless of course you ridicule white men and their Christianity). It is very thought provoking to say the least. I still consider myself an open-minded left-winger but Richler challenged me to decide how liberal my views are or should be. And the book also gives a warning about how far we should let things go before we decide good taste has been breached. Richler doesn't come right out and say what his views are but deciphering them is half the fun of this clever read. ... Read more

Product Description
First Edition assumed. G. P. PUTNAMS SONS, NY 1954. THIS IS A VERY HARD TO FIND TITLE IN THE FIRST EDITION. THIS IS THE CANADIAN BORN MORDECAI RICHLERS FIRST NOVEL. THE BOOK IS SET IN POST WORLD WAR II SPAIN. Rare. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Astonishingly good
I am quite surprised that this book is as difficult to find as it is.I've read it cover to cover twice, and will probably go back and start it again at some point.It's an incredibly rich and varied collection of writers' observations during the War, and although I've read a fair amount about WWII, I've never come across a source like this one.The editor shows great care in selecting sources, from poets to novelists to combat journalists; and even includes some thoughtful observers from the Axis countries.I would unreservedly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the history of the War. ... Read more