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A Brief Chat with Mordecai Richler

© Paula E. Kirman

Mordecai Richler is a man of few words -- when he is speaking, that is. He is one of those artists who would prefer his work to speak for itself. At least, that was the impression I got when I spoke to him in late 1998.

Barney's Version, his first novel in ten years, had just been released in paperback and Belling the Cat, a collection of journalistic essays had just been published by Knopf/Random House. On the phone from his hotel room in Toronto, Richler was curt and abrupt but still had many intriguing things to say about writing.

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Kirman: Barney's Version is your tenth novel. How has your process of writing changed between the time you wrote your first novel and now?

Richler: The process hasn't changed, but the writer has developed, I hope. I still get up every morning and go to work.

Kirman: Are there any differences for you when you're writing in Quebec as compared to when you're writing in London?

Richer: Well, the only difference really is that we live in the country, and I have a huge library there. When we go to London for the winter I never know which books to take, and of course I can't take 200 books with me; I never know what I am going to need. So that's the only disadvantage.

Kirman: Since Barney's Version is the first novel that's you've written in the firs person, a lot of people have been saying that's very autobiographical. Is it any more or less autobiographical than your previous novels?

Richler: No, but it's very glib. I knew I would be open to that kind of thing once I wrote a novel in the first person. My father wasn't a police detective, I haven't been married three time, and I have not yet been faced with a murder charge. Some of the attitudes of Barney are certainly attitudes I share -- some, but not all. But no, when I wrote the novel I was Barney Panofsky, but not before and not after.

Kirman: In Barney you incorporated Duddy Kravitz, one of your most famous characters. Why did you decide to do that, and did you have any reservations that presenting him as older might shatter people's images of him?

Richler: He also appears in St. Urbain's Horseman, so it's not the first time. It seemed logical to be in that novel, with all the characters coming from the same district in Montreal. We know each other, and would meet at one point. No, it didn't trouble me at all. In fact, I enjoyed inserting him in the novel.

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