Joshua Then and Now
New York, N.Y. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1980. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. [10], 435, [3] pages. "With the Compliments of the author" card laid in. Stamp on bottom edge. DJ has small tears at edge. Mordecai Richler (January 27, 1931 – July 3, 2001) was a Canadian writer. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and Barney's Version (1997). His 1970 novel St. Urbain's Horseman and 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He is also well known for the Jacob Two-Two children's fantasy series. In addition to his fiction, Richler wrote numerous essays about the Jewish community in Canada, and about Canadian and Quebec nationalism. Richler's Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! (1992), a collection of essays about nationalism and anti-Semitism, generated considerable controversy. Joshua Then and Now is about Joshua Shapiro today, and the Joshua he was. His father was a boxer turned honest crook, his mother an erotic dancer whose greatest performance was at Joshua’s bar mitzvah, Joshua has overcome his inauspicious beginnings in the Jewish ghetto of Montreal to become a celebrated television writer and a successful journalist. But Joshua, now middle-aged, is not a happy man. Incapacitated by a freak accident, anguished by the disappearance of his WASP wife, and caught up in a sex scandal, Joshua is besieged by the press and tormented by the ghosts of his youth. Set in Montreal, the novel chronicles the rocky journey we all make between the countries of the past and the present. Raucous, opinionated, tender, Joshua Then and Now is a memorable excursion into Mordecai Richler's comic universe. Derived from a Kirkus review: The years have added on a certain girth Richler's fiction; this novel is funny, of course, but wistful too, rounded as well as raucous. Joshua Shapiro, a well-known Montreal sports columnist and TV commentator, looks back at his life. Never was it "normal"--nor is it now. His father was Reuben, prizefighter and bootlegger and mob handbreaker and marvelous interpreter of Bible stories and the facts of life. His mother was Esther, a.k.a. Esty Blossom, an exotic dancer who gave the boy-guests at Josh's bar mitzvah a thrill they would never forget. The Spanish Civil War is a moral benchmark in the lives of Joshua and his high-school gang. Richler comes closest to a conventional plot with Joshua's position as an outsider in the WASP society of wife Pauline--especially his antipathy to Pauline's old rival Jane and her brother, the ne'er-do-well, tragedy-destined Kevin. There's a wonderful abundance of rich novel pieces: Josh, with novelist-pal Sidney Murdoch, running a manuscripts-for-sale scheme; the humiliations of success that attend Josh's high school buddies in middle-age; life among the artistic left-wing in London of the Fifties. All these vignettes are joyous and smooth, oiled with the good-grade, Canadian-Jewish cynical-yet-feeling humor that Richler has mastered. Enjoy his fiction, enjoy it--as a loose but richly bursting package. Condition: Very good / Good.
Keywords: Joshua Shapiro, Montreal, Sports Columnist, Television, Commentator, Reuben Shapiro, Spanish Civil War, Sidney Murdoch, High School, Esty Blossom, Exotic Cancer, Mobster, Bootlegger, Prizefighter, Pauline Shapiro, Manuscripts
ISBN: 0394493516
[Book #81134]
Price: $60.00