Joshua allora e oggi

by Mordecai Richler, Giovanni Ferrara degli Uberti (Translator)

Quasi nulla piace ai lettori di Mordecai Richler quanto addentrarsi nell'albero genealogico di Barney Panofsky, sperando prima o poi di imbattersi nel vero progenitore romanzesco di uno dei personaggi più amati degli ultimi anni. Bene, con questo libro del 1980 la singolare caccia all'uomo iniziata, in Italia, tredici anni fa può considerarsi conclusa. Entra Joshua Shapiro, scrittore e giornalista di successo ricoverato in ospedale dopo la misteriosa sparizione dell’amatissima moglie, e dopo essere stato coinvolto in un clamoroso scandalo di natura sessuale. Nello stato confusionale in cui si trova, Joshua non è in grado di dire quale delle innumerevoli voci che circolano sul suo conto sia fondata, e quale invece debba considerarsi una calunnia. Per riuscirci, dovrà infatti andare molto indietro nel tempo, fino a un'infanzia affidata in parti uguali alla madre, nota nella zona di St. Urbain Street per i suoi spogliarelli, e al padre, un pugile a riposo e furfante in attività, molto ansioso di trasmettere al figlio i segreti del suo (secondo) mestiere. Cominciando dall'inizio – attraverso gli anni, le donne, gli amici, e la solita, incontenibile frenesia vitale – Joshua riuscirà, a modo suo, a comporre il rompicapo. Sarà una ricerca movimentata e molto lunga, per lui: ma per il lettore, come sempre e anche di più, persino troppo breve.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Canadian Literature, Jewish, Literary Fiction, Novels, Humor

466 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Working-class Jewish background based novels, which include The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and Saint Urbain's Horseman (1971), of Canadian writer Mordecai Richler.

People best know Barney's Version (1997) among works of this author, screenwriter, and essayist; people shortlisted his novel Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) for the Man Booker Prize in 1990. He was also well known for the Jacob Two-two stories of children.

A scrap yard dealer reared this son on street in the mile end area of Montréal. He learned Yiddish and English and graduated from Baron Byng High School. Richler enrolled in Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) to study English but dropped before completing his degree.

Years later, Leah Rosenberg, mother of Richler, published an autobiography, The Errand Runner: Memoirs of a Rabbi's Daughter (1981), which discusses birth and upbringing of Mordecai and the sometime difficult relationship.

Richler, intent on following in the footsteps of many of a previous "lost generation" of literary exiles of the 1920s from the United States, moved to Paris at age of 19 years in 1950.

Richler returned to Montréal in 1952, worked briefly at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and then moved to London in 1954. He, living in London meanwhile, published seven of his ten novels as well as considerable journalism.

Worrying "about being so long away from the roots of my discontent", Richler returned to Montréal in 1972. He wrote repeatedly about the Jewish community of Montréal and especially portraying his former neighborhood in multiple novels.

In England in 1954, Richler married Catherine Boudreau, a French-Canadian divorcée nine years his senior. On the eve of their wedding, he met Florence Wood Mann, a young married woman, who smited him.

Some years later, Richler and Mann divorced and married each other. He adopted Daniel Mann, her son. The couple had five children together: Daniel, Jacob, Noah, Martha and Emma. These events inspired his novel Barney's Version.

Richler died of cancer.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mordecai Richler brought his own highly conflicted brand of existentialism to the front and centre of the Canadian literary establishment with this blockbuster! And, you know, for a change even our homegrown cinematic version was half-decent.

Back in 1976, I didn’t quite know what to make of the man. But I knew I LOVED his writing.

I have vivid memories of driving to a nearby drive-in theatre to catch that outrageously macabre (looking back on it now) counter-cultural film Fritz the Cat, and having this book next to me to enjoy during the waning sunset hour.

Doesn’t that choice of films speak volumes for where my head was at in those wasted days? Thanks Heaven I was to totally change my outlook four years later, on reaffirming my Christian faith.

O tempora - O mores!

But, as I say, the book was great.

It is the sequel to Saint Urbain’s Horseman, and it picks up again on Jake Hersch’s flagging efforts to restore some credibility to his media-slurred identity by going back to his early childhood. A man needs to go back to his roots when his name has been defamed!

Jake is alienated, you see - just as I was then. Jake was an object of scorn; I was a target for bullying.

Without the altruism that started to inform my life in 1970, I woulda been dragged to the dregs for sure. It was the right way. Thinking of others instead of ourselves is our only possible rugged road to recovery.

And Jake recovers in the end, too. The same Time that wounds all heels - also heals all wounds. I was wounded, but knew I had deserved it. So my healing started.

Jake is a lovable rascal - as Richler’s fellow Montréalais Lenny Cohen would put it, a Beautiful Loser.

And we all know Jake will probably fall again.

But Richler, the Canadian Dean of the Picaresque, knows we’ll always take Jake’s side:

Because he’s so like us!

And so like me back then.

I managed with Grace to pull myself out of that pit.

So if you AVOID all similar stories of the Low Life -

Avoid this BOOK!

[Troy Parfitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joshua Then And Now is a compelling novel penned by Canada’s most intriguing writer. Joshua now is in hospital with broken limbs and a battered visage. Journalists are snooping around his house looking for tips. Joshua is a local writer, a celebrity of sorts, and there is rumour he has done something illegal, has had a split with his wife, and has been involved in a homosexual affair. Scandal is in the air. His father, Reuben, a former prize fighter, keeps the reporters at bay; he doesn’t seem concerned.

The novel flashes back to Joshua then, from his childhood in Montreal to his days spent on Ibiza to the months and weeks prior to his apparent accident – and what a ride it is. Richler fans should delight in the bits about Ibiza, having fun wondering just how much of it is true. We know Richler lived on the Spanish isle, and we know he had trouble with a German named Mueller (Dr. Dr. Mueller in the novel; in Austria each doctorate deserves a title) and that he had to leave suddenly, like Joshua Shapiro did. We also see Richler’s imagination flowing and spinning from his summer home at Lake Memphremagog, featured in Barney’s Version. And we see variations on Richler’s classic characters: the blue-blooded Hornbys, “rotten to the core” and cognizant of it, Jack Trimble: a man who scraped and clawed his way to the top, ignored by Westmount’s and McGill’s elite until they needed him to make money for them; Reuben: Joshua’s ostensibly dopey but street-savvy father, Joshua’s sex-starved Jewish mother, uncle Oscar: forced to drive a cab at age 69, Joshua’s brother-in-law, a 40-year old rich brat (one of the Hornbys) who we think has been horribly framed.
This book really drew me in, but then I got lost a little in the middle. The flashback sequences are not dated, but like with Richler’s subsequent Solomon Gursky Was Here it’s not so much a matter of figuring out when the time-shift is but why. However, unlike the weightier and more literary Solomon Gursky, Joshua Then And Now novel didn’t make me wonder if Richler knew where he was going and if his descriptive wanderings weren’t inspired by too many glasses of scotch. In Joshua, storyline straightens out, right on cue, and you see the method in the madness. At page 150, I was thinking, ‘This might be one of his weaker ones,’ but by p. 250, I was marvelling.

What a shame Mordecai Richler is no longer with us. There is no one in Canada writing books like his nowadays, and there is one less social critic to lampoon the politically correct CBC, insincere Canadian politicians, or the politics of special pleading. What humour, what wit, what intellect; they just don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.

Troy Parfitt is the author of Why China Will Never Rule the World

[Makis Dionis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ένας κλασσικός Richler, με πρωταγωνιστές εστέτ, αλάνια, συγγραφείς και παραλίγο ήρωες... Πραγματικά απολαυστικός!!

[Caleigh · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was just WAY too much going on in this book. Too many characters (all Jewish men of similar age, description and name - just to ensure optimal confusion), too many time periods, too many sub-plots. I'd have to read this book a couple of times to make sense of it, and I didn't enjoy it enough to try.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

The more I read, the more I admire and down right worship Richler.

Another great work. Montrealers (everyone really), if you haven't read any of his works - once again - get to it!

[Paula Dembeck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mordecai Richler who died in 2001, was one of Canada’s most celebrated writers, a novelist, an essayist, and social critic who took home the Giller Prize and twice won the Governor General’s Award. He was known for his sharp irreverent wit, his controversial criticisms and his uncomfortable questions, always wrapped in his own unique comedic sensibility. This is one of his later novels, the fictional, semi-autobiographical story of Joshua Shapiro, a celebrity sports writer and TV personality, now middle aged, who takes a sentimental look back on his life. Richler avoids a stream of narrative events, choosing instead to structure the novel as a series of vignettes from Joshua’s life that skip and jump over time, going backwards and forwards at a dizzying pace. In truth, although more difficult to follow, it reflects the way most people look back at their lives.

Readers first meet Joshua as he lays in bed in a hospital room, his leg in a cast, his ribs broken, thinking about his life, wondering where his wife Pauline is and brooding about a current sex scandal that has just hit the papers. There are no answers to what has happened to him, where his wife is or what the sex scandal is all about. Instead, Joshua heralds back to his unusual childhood growing up in the Jewish community on St Urbain Street in Montreal during the thirties and forties. His father Reuben (aka Ruby) was a small-town boxer, who also worked for Sonny Calucci and his people. Reuben had a prison record and was sometimes on the lam when the authorities came too close. He loved his son dearly, taught him what he understood about religion, what he knew about sex and shared his perspective on life in quiet moments while the two sat drinking Labatt’s beer. His mother Esther was a free spirit, born in Outremont from an affluent cultured family, who married into a family of thugs, choosing a struggling boxer for her husband. Esther was entirely unlike the mothers of Joshua’s friends. She was beautiful, had a full figure and often practiced her sex strip routines at home with the blinds closed and the lights dimmed. She had no interest in who Joshua hung out with, how he did in school or whether he became a lawyer or a doctor. Instead, she taught him his wide-ranging knowledge of sports records. When her husband was away, she entertained lovers and at various times in her life was a porn star, a massage parlor operator and in her final years when her body failed her, she joined the women’s movement.

Given his erratic home life, Joshua’s experience growing up was filled with brawls with the neighborhood boys, shoplifting, stealing cars and a period in reform school. But he always dreamed of becoming a writer and disappointed he had missed the Spanish Civil War, traveled to Europe when he was just nineteen. He spent time in Spain, Paris and London sampling European life, more interested in being a writer than actually writing. But it was during that time his fledgling career working freelance and writing sports stories and columns for magazines, began to take off. It was also during that time that he and his friend novelists Sidney Murdoch created a scheme to make money by forging letters about their bogus homosexual affair, to sell to a university as part of a literary archive. It was a crazy scheme that landed him in hot water later in life.

During a brief stop in London, he met Pauline Hornby at a ban the bomb demonstration. He fell head over heels for her and proposed, despite the fact she was already married. They proved to be an interesting couple, Joshua, the son of an exotic dancer and a small-town hood from the Jewish tenements of Montreal, who had a high school education and whose summer vacation consisted of a few visits to Belmont Park and she, the daughter of a Canadian senator from the upper streets of Westmount, who attended private schools and McGill and summered with the wealthy community at Lake Memphremagog. Pauline came from the kind of life Joshua had spent so much time criticizing, that of a privileged white Anglo Quebecer. And she wasn’t Jewish. But he was completed besotted with her.

After a decade away from Canada and with Joshua’s writing career continuing to flourish, the couple decided to return home to Quebec. But things took a drastic turn when Pauline reunited with her childhood friends at the lake, Jane Trimble, her husband Jack. And then her brother Kevin, the black sheep of the family, the handsome charming boy with lots of pipe dreams but few skills, returned home after a long absence in Bermuda.

Joshua’s reminiscences go back and forth in time, shifting without warning, often confusingly. If there is any continuing thread among the many set pieces he describes, it is that of Pauline, Jane and Kevin and the chaos Kevin created when he returned home, destined for tragedy.

Some of these set pieces are hilarious, some less so and not as interesting. Everyone who reads them will experience Richler’s cutting criticisms, his nasty mischief and his take on Quebec politics. He describes Joshua’s alcohol fueled reunions with his high school buddies who formed the William Lyon Mackenzie King Memorial Society; the barbs he throws at the entitled smug upper classes; the mean revenge he takes on childhood friends who had crossed him or who he felt had been too successful in life and flaunted it, and shares his caustic criticisms of both Jews and Gentiles.

Among the set pieces are several standouts, including his mother’s strip tease performed at his bar mitzvah party and his father’s lessons on sex, his take on the bible, the Jewish religion and Jewish history. And there is also the tizzy the Anglo Quebecers were thrown into in November of 1976, when the Parti Qubecois came to power, surprising themselves and everyone else. Real estate values plummeted, safety deposit boxes were emptied and moving vans were everywhere as corporations packed up and began their steady move across the border to Toronto. For those who experienced that time and those place in Quebec, Richler provides a wonderful montage of memories, of streets (Belvedere, Upper Lansdowne and Summit Circle in Westmount), places (The Lookout a prime place for necking overlooking the sparking lights of the city) restaurants (The Beaver Club, Café Martin, Ruby Foos and the Troika) sports teams (the Habs with Rocket Richard and the Expos) bars (The Maritime Bar at the Ritz Carleton, Rockheads and Toe Blake’s Tavern) and stores (Holt Renfrew and Ogilvy’s). Quebec has its own favor and tones, its own sacrosanct locales and celebrities. They are probably not as meaningful to those in other parts of Canada, but those who lived in that time and in those places will experience a walk down memory lane.

Some criticize Richler for writing the same thing over and over, just giving his novels different titles. He repeats his deprecating style, consistently aimed at the same targets, but his writing must be acknowledged for its bite, its humour and it irreverent take on all things Quebec. He produces a flippant, funny narrative and shows himself to be a devious, nasty and vindictive man.

In a process not unlike that many middle-aged readers have taken, Joshua Shapiro in the midst of a mid-life slump, looks back on his life and tries to put, what appears to be a life in shambles, into some sort of perspective. It is a fun read, wistful and raucous, as Joshua traces his journey from his past to his present, traveling from his inauspicious beginnings in Montreal’s Jewish ghetto to become a successful journalist.

[Frabe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Solomon e Barney
diedi stelle in quantità.
Ne do tre sole a Joshua:
troppa frammentarietà!

[Czarny Pies · Rating 2 out of 5]

Au début des années soixante, Mordecai Richler était l'enfant terrible de la littérature canadienne. Il avait déjà publié "Mon père, ce héros" et "L'apprentissage de Duddy Kravitz" on s'attendait à de très grandes choses. Avec la sortie, de "Joshua" en 1980 les gens raisonnables auraient du perdre espoir.
"Joshua" suit trop la recette de Saul Bellow qui comme Richler a été un juif né à Montréal. Joshua, le protagoniste, vient du tout bas de l'échelle sociale. En plus d'être juif, son père un ancien boxeur vit des services musclés qu'il rend pour la mafia. La carrière de Joshua tourne en ronds. Ayant écrit dans sa jeunesse un livre sur la guerre d'Espagne, il gagne sa vie comme journaliste sportif. Malgré sa religion et les activités criminelles de son père modestes Joshua épouse la fille d'un sénateur anglo-protestant.
Au cours des années l'amour de Joshua pour sa femme s'intensifie. Parce que sa femme et ses parents l'ont accepté malgré ses origines, Joshua croit son mariage est à l'abri de tout péril. Il ne voit pas le danger posé par son beau-frère un perdant-né que sa femme adore. Quand il voit que la faillite de sa firme est inévitable, le beau-frère se suicide. La femme de Joshua lui reproche de n'avoir rien fait pour sauver son frère chéri. Joshua semble avoir perdu la chose qui lui était la plus importante dans sa vie, l'amour de sa femme.
Le concept de base est intéressant "Joshua" est trois fois trop long. En plus il bourré de passages obscènes et des commentaires phallocrates. La manière dont Richler présente des Juifs de Montréalais comme étant des nouveau riches et vulgaires dérange beaucoup. Parce que Richler est juif, on ne peut pas dire qu'il est antisémite mais son portrait qu'il présente des ses coreligionnaires est de très mauvais gout.
Richler ne présente pas les événements dans l'ordre chronologique ce qui inquiète beaucoup le lecteur qui est toujours conscient du fait qu'il manque des éléments importants nécessaires à la compréhension du roman. L'avantage de cette manière ce qu'elle cache au lecteur le fait que les trois- quarts du roman sont consacré aux choses sans importance. Curieusement les passages superflus sont parmi les meilleurs du roman. Notamment la très comique description du strip-tease effectué par la mère de Joshua lors de son Bar-mitzvah n rien à faire avec l'intrigue centrale. On peut dire la même chose pour les passages qui parlent du club de fans de Mackenzie King qui a pour but de régler les contes avec un antisémite notoire.
Joshua fait rire constamment mais finalement c'est un roman exécrable. Ce qui est le plus étonnant, c'est la manière dont Richler s'est ressaisi avec les deux derniers romans de sa carrière. Quatre ans plus tard il a publié l'excellent "Gursky". Ensuite, il a écrit son chef-d'œuvre "Le monde de Barney".

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this reminded me of Brook, because it's is the sort of book I'd have handed him when I was through with it and said "here, you'll enjoy this far more than me". It is what I'd qualify a "guy's story" - a tale of a man looking back at his past and coming to terms with his aging, passing through reunions of old school friends and memories of fantastical sexual encounters to reach the eventual realization that the past is gone and life just keeps moving on.

Not that such themes can't be applicable to both genders, but there's a lot of old-fashioned "women as other" in this story, too. Women are mysterious beings whose ambitions and desires are seldom explored and prove baffling to all the male characters - the women in the story get upset or throw themselves at men or have nervous breakdowns and the menfolk just shrug and file it away with the literary equivalent of "bitches be crazy". Even Pauline is reduced to little more than an obstacle on the road to Joshua's fulfillment - in order for him to grow as a character, he requires a wife at home he can push away and then win back. Ultimately, this probably comes down less to authorial malice and more to the book being, well, a "guy's story". The women are devices to keep the mens' plots moving along, which is problematic in its own way, but understandable in the context.

These flaws aside, the book is well-written, as you'd expect from Richler, and a much slower boil, story-wise, than his other work that I recently read, "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz". Where the latter grabs you from the start with Duddy's distinct personality and schemes, in Joshua Then and Now nothing much happens in the opening chapters, there's no single great climax to the story, but ordinary (more or less) events happen throughout, and the story develops with a blend of past and present, and it's full of subtle humour and passages like this:

Grudgingly, his father came to a decision. He dipped into his inside jacket pocket and unfolded a sheet obviously torn from a medical book. "I've been to the library on your behalf," he said, shoving the page at him. "That's what it looks like close up."
"What?"
"Her thing, that's what! The snatch."
Joshua groaned; it looked so uninviting.
"You must understand," his father said with some tenderness, "that this is merely a scientific diagram. A map, like."
"Uh huh."
"Look, if I showed you a relief map of the Rockies, in black and white, you think you'd be impressed?"

[Niki · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book that I struggled to not be offended by. That being said, the characters were strongly drawn & were interesting, but I didn't come away with the sensation that I had read something that shaped something in me.

[Bardamu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richler è uno dei miei autori favoriti: nessuno sa scrivere i dialoghi meglio di lui, pochi sanno tratteggiare meglio, con pochi schizzi, i personaggi, nessuno ha più coraggio nell'affrontare temi scabrosi da un punto di vista spiazzante.
Ad un certo punto, in questo romanzo amaro e divertente, si permette persino di criticare certi tratti della religiosità ebraica. Se non fosse stato scritto da un ebreo sarebbe sicuramente stato messo all'indice.
La frase, poi, che mette in bocca a Trimble a pagina 129 su Nixon è insieme esilarante e sconcertante per i lettori "politicamente corretti", almeno quanto lo era l'esaltazione del senatore McCarthy fatta da Barney Panofsky nella celebre "Versione di Barney" ( tra i miei 10-15 libri preferiti ).
Un po' come Woody Allen fa per i suoi film su New York Richler scrive quasi esclusivamente dell'ambiente ristretto degli intellettuali, per lo più ebrei, del microcosmo anglofono del Canada francofono.
Ma quanto sono universali i temi e i risvolti di questo piccolo mondo.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Piper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dizzying.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious.

[Gabriele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alzi la mano chi non ha mai letto "La versione di Barney". Bravi, ora andate pure a vergognarvi in un angolino. Per tutti gli altri, "Joshua allora e oggi" è l’ultima pubblicazione italiana (il libro è datato 1980, ma da noi arriva con un po’ di ritardo) del canadese Mordecai Richler, autore che i più – se non tutti – conosceranno proprio grazie a "La versione di Barney", libro stra-letto e da cui è stato tratto anche l’omonimo film con Dustin Hoffman (così così a mio parere, ma pare sia stato apprezzato). Bene, che "Joshua allora e oggi" sia stato scritto dallo stesso identico autore si capisce fin dalle prima pagine, prima di tutto per lo stile della narrazione, e poi per le vicende e i protagonisti. Il libro segue le avventure di Joshua Shapiro, giornalista e scrittore, ed in particolare lo strano incidente che l'ha condotto all'ospedale proprio all'indomani di uno scandalo a sfondo sessuale che lo vede coinvolto e, non bastasse, al ricovero per esaurimento e la successiva sparizione della moglie. Il libro, oltre 460 pagine fitte fitte ma che si leggono tutte d’un fiato, cerca così di raccontare tutti gli avvenimenti che hanno portato Joshua a questa situazione, un continuo rivangare nel passato che alla fin fine ci presenta l’intera vita del protagonista, dall'infanzia vissuta con un padre pugile e non proprio ligio alla legge ma fedele lettore del Libro Sacro e una madre dedita a spettacoli a luci rosse, al matrimonio con la bella e ricca Pauline, figlia di un senatore, ai tanti amici che dall'infanzia Joshua non ha smesso di frequentare nonostante numerosi viaggi in Europa. Se avete amato "La versione di Barney", in "Joshua allora e oggi" troverete un altro personaggio tipicamente richleriano, scorretto e truffaldino in un mondo che lo è sicuramente più di lui, ma capace di riscattarsi e lasciare il segno in tutti i lettori.

[1.1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

”Not to be missed.” “A minor masterpiece.” “Brilliant.”

This book is partly about being young, partly about middle age, partly about writing, partly about avoiding writing, and definitely not middling. The title says it all. Or does it?

It’s classic Richler, through and through, with bits and pieces reminiscent of other novels, some potential autobiographical moments, particular angsts and enmities as well.

I wouldn't recommend this as anyone's FIRST Richler novel. No, it would probably turn you off of him. Everyone in Canada is forced by the Canlit committees to start with The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz when they start on Richler's books. There are no exceptions. That's just how it is. And, honestly, it's the best way to do it.

There are some wonderfully bitter and ironic scenes which are balanced by more humorous parts—some are basically slapstick, which was surprising but also not entirely unexpected.

It may be easy to put this down as yet another kind of shitty man with a midlife crisis and a literary bent novel. Sure, it is kind of a ‘dude novel’ in many ways, but it’s also funny, with what turns out to be a great narrative, and an interesting rhythm to the telling.

It’s definitely a novel written 40 years ago, for better and for worse. You probably need to like Richler to really dig it.

Chronology and setting jump around a fair bit, but it’s not hard to follow and the cast stays small as well, making this novel easily digestible and not too demanding for what you (may) get out of it. All in all, for what it's worth, etc... I really enjoyed this book. Richler rocks.

"It's a mug's game."

[Simone Subliminalpop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prima di Barney Panofsky, diciassette anni prima, c’è stato Joshua Shapiro. Un altro protagonista scritto con sapiente maestria da Mordecai Richler e un romanzo che se non è perfetto come il suo più famoso, comunque mette in scena la tragicommedia umana sapendo cogliere quando è il momento di far ridere, riflettere o piangere il lettore.
Una storia ricca di tanti personaggi e tante situazioni che continua a spostarsi sia sulla linea temporale, partendo dall’infanzia molto particolare di Joshua, sia su quella geografica, Montreal, Londra, Ibiza, Los Angeles, e che sonda anche importanti questioni politico sociali come le enormi differenze tra la popolazione di Montreal e la guerra civile spagnola.
Sarcasmo, umorismo, occhio attento e sensibilità, ma soprattutto e prima di tutto un grande affabulatore.

http://www.subliminalpop.com/?p=8676

[Will Ansbacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just reread this after some 20 years. It's good - well, excellent really - but not as good as Barney’s Version. In fact you can see all the themes and character styles forming here, right down to the same complexity of time shifts that BV has. As in virtually all of Richler's novels, it's from Montreal to Europe and London, between the 30's and the present (well, the 70's - that still feels like the present to me). I think the reason it is not as good as Barney is that it is too self-consciously comic. It’s as though the novel had to be adapted to accommodate the comic set pieces.

[Tom Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a novel about a very deep anger. Joshua Shapiro is a very angry man. He is also a man with many acquaintances butut no friends. He is a man who has let his profound anger taint all of the human relationships around him. He is a man who ahs come to the understanding that if he were his wife's father, he wouldn't want her to marry Joshua Shapiro.

For me that is the essence of this novel. Joshua is a Jew. He has seen and felt the prejudice of antisemitism. He is angry and justifiably angry about this. But he has allowed this anger to be teh basis of his relationship with society

[Suzanne Thorson · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite book that I have read at least a 1/2 dozen times but probably more. I love the device of jumping back and forth in time. I love the main character who I can't help but think is Mordecai himself and all the follies that Joshua endures. Hard to compare but only "To Kill a Mockingbird" is above this book in my estimation but they are such disparate books that perhaps they are each at the top of their respective genres

[Leigh-ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a much easier read than "Soloman Gursky", but at the same time, I didn't find it quite as rewarding. Still loved all the Canadian history that Richler effortlessly tosses in, and I was pleased with the ending.

[Alberto · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ho adorato 'La versione di Barney' e speravo di godermi una nuova avventura, purtroppo le mie aspettative sono andate deluse. Procedere con la lettura e' stato difficilissimo, sicuramente anche a causa del periodo complicato che sto vivendo, non sapro' mai se in un altro momento sarei stato in grado di gustarmi questo romanzo.

Invece non mi son gustato nulla. L'apparente disordine delle vicende di Barney era stimolante e talvolta soprendente, nelle vicende di Joshua ho trovato un caos non interpretabile, alla lunga noioso, quasi forzato. Ad ogni cambio di ambientazione ripartivo con piu' fatica, ad un certo punto persino con fastidio.

I pochi e purtroppo brevi spunti interessanti non bastano a risollevare il giudizio per un'opera da cui non sono riuscito a ricavare quasi nulla. Se non un leggero nervosismo.

[Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once upon a time, not that long ago, and maybe still, to be Canadian was to feel oneself inferior to anything British, and to be Jewish and Canadian, well now, that was an especially tough stone to curl, to be one of the frozen chosen. That is the reality into which Joshua Shapiro, writer, father, and sometimes gangsterish son of a former boxing champion is thrown by birth and upbringing, and we get to go along for a very strange and entertaining ride. The relationship between Joshua and his father, Reuben, between Joshua and his wife, Pauline, and between Joshua and his time as a young man in Ibiza, all are important as the narrative unfolds to a satisfying ending. Along the way the reader is treated to Richler's typical irreverent and delicious sense of humor and sarcasm, along with witticisms galore. A very rewarding read.

[PF Albano · Rating 1 out of 5]

A hard read that I kept hoping would become better; but it failed to hook me.

This is a non-linear story that puts together the life of a columnist. Very early on in the book I wasn't impressed with the voice of the author and I gave it several chapters before giving up on it. It's baffling because the book is certainly not devoid of detail both personal had historical; and it has a number of incidents that should have been interesting. The prose just never got any traction with me.

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[Mark Edlund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fiction - Joshua Shapiro grows up in Montreal with a boxer/enforcer father and a mother who is an exotic dancer. He becomes a sports journalist with a fixation on the Spanish Civil War. He relentlessly pursues the woman who becomes his wife and then the mother of his children. Yet he has trouble being happy. You have to pay attention to the time changes in the chapters. The backdrop is the rise of Rene Levesque in Quebec and how the Anglos are being pushed out. Raunchy, rude and several characters I found to be complete jerks.
Canadian references - set in Montreal
Pharmacy references - characters go into a drug store

[Dan Lalande · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mordecai Richler resuscitates many of the elements from his earlier 'St Urbain's Horseman' to accommodate a larger quest for closure and dignity - namely, two sticky imbroglios differentiated by time and geography: a blackmail scheme in post-war Spain and a familial-financial fracas in modern Montreal. As always, the titular hero has to cut through an eclectic swath of poseurs and proletariats to settle scores and soothe his soul. Published in 1979, it was Richler's most ambitious and deft book to date.

[Ji Le · Rating 5 out of 5]

C'est le premier roman que je lis de cette grande figure littéraire montréalaise, et probablement pas le dernier.
Outre le souffle littéraire qui l'anime, et s'inscrivant dans la tradition humoristique juive (la parenté avec l'univers de Philip Roth est évidente), c'est la découverte d'une culture montréalaise anglophone dominante, mais riche et vibrante, où les "français-canadiens" n'étaient pas considérés (les fameuses deux solitudes ...) qui a été révélatrice. Situé en partie, en 79, au moment où le parti québecois prenait le pouvoir, le combat social du roman se placé entre les minorités ethniques (juives) et l'élite wasp. La "chute" de la culture était imminente, mais en filigrane, comme si ç'avait été impossible que la francophonie allait se relever au Québec.
Fascinant de découvrir une ville (où le nom des rues anglophones ont été débpatisées au profit de toponymes francophones) et une culture alternative, dans une réalité quasiment parallèle.
Plus qu'un roman, un document.

[JRT · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent Never connected on this book when it first came out. I think I enjoyed it more now than if I had read it then. Part of the attraction for me is that it is a most Canadian novel. The story, the back ground , the characters pure Canadian. A primer for a non Canadian.
Also while in University attended a writing seminar at the U of M put on by MR . Most engaging and enlightening and practical. I asked him when he was new he a novel was finished ,expecting him to give us some much needed advice. His reply was he knew he was finished when his publisher called and said if he didn’t get his novel in in a couple of days he wasn’t getting paid.
That aside , this novel stands on its own as a prime example of Canadian literature and as relevant today as it was at the time of its first publication

[MCT · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last year it was Robertson Davies in January and this year it was Richler. This book is a 5 but I had to take off a point for the racist/dated language. Love Montreal. Love Richler. Thought I’d read this before but hadn’t and thinking I got mixed up because I saw (at least parts of) the 1985 movie - don’t bother!

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Zzzzzz long winded, overblown snooze fest. I wanted to give up numerous times but plowed through. I don’t know why. It wasn’t worth it. It was just very pretentious. Some book to start out my reading challenge but give it a miss largely. There were a few parts I did chuckle. It is a dark comedy after all but I’d say give it a miss.