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Richler still ignites passions in Quebec

Mordecai Richler was regarded by some Jews as an anti-Semite.

Oh Mordecai, Oh Quebec.

Was Mordecai Richler anti-Québécois?

Or did he just try to skewer everybody without discrimination - Jews, separatists, the Irish and WASPs alike?

Nine months after his death, family, friends and foes weighed in yesterday on the writer's legacy in Quebec, where his name is still a dirty word on the nationalist side of town.

The setting was a panel discussion titled Mordecai de Montréal, held entirely in French to an audience of about 100 people at the Blue Metropolis literary festival.

On the agenda: Richler's unflattering portrayals of French Canadians in his novels, and his journalistic screeds against Quebec nationalism in the New Yorker magazine and in books like Oh Canada, Oh Quebec.

"He was totally out of touch with the social reality of Montreal," said Sherry Simon, a translator and French professor at Concordia University.

As a polemicist, Richler "succeeded in driving home the differences and aligning the polarities, without leaving us the possibility of building bridges between the two" communities, French and English, Simon said.

Especially destructive was the "dark" view of Quebec he gave to the rest of Canada and the world in his much-publicized 1991 New Yorker article that dwelt on the extremes of Quebec politics, she said.

"It was a rather disagreeable depiction."

Author and editor Victor-Lévy Beaulieu took Richler to task for his unsympathetic portrayal of French Canadians in his novels, not just his journalism.

In The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, for example, a farmer in the Laurentians won't sell the young protagonist a piece of land because not only is he anglo, he's a Jew.

"It's the same in every other novel," Beaulieu complained. In Barney's Version, for example, "every time he mentions a French Canadian character, it's 'French Canadian pig'."

Passages Highlighted

A self-described "unilingual French socialist indépendantiste," Beaulieu read from a French translation of the novel. Pasted throughout were yellow Post-It notes highlighting the objectionable passages.

"He's not much nicer to the Irish: he calls them drunks," Beaulieu said. "But Irish or francophone, what's the difference?"

A hint of the roots of Richler's problem with French Canada may lie in the words of the book's title character, who says he is "cheered by the faults of those who dominate me socially," Beaulieu said, quoting in French.

Richler was always a controversial figure in French Quebec, especially near the end of his life, but he was not as hated as some think, said author and translator David Homel, who chaired yesterday's panel.

At the dépanneur he goes to in his Plateau neighbourhood, Homel, an American, was frequently asked by French-speaking staff to explain Richler's latest declarations about Quebec.

"They were angry, but they never failed to call him Mordecai," said Homel. "And when you call someone by his first name, you can't be really angry at him. There was a curious kind of acceptance there, I think."

Did Richler try to know Quebec, the French as much as the English?

His son Noah, a Toronto literary critic, recalled yesterday how no one in his family was isolated from the French fact growing up - quite the contrary.

Educated in French

Richler sent his children to French school and made them read Gabrielle Roy and Roch Carrier as well as separatist tracts like White Niggers of America, his son recalled. "He wanted us to know the two solitudes."

In his novels, "if he didn't write much about Quebec francophone characters, it's because he don't know them," said Noah Richler. "He was honest, so he wrote about the Jewish milieu he knew."

It's upsetting that even today his father isn't considered a Quebec writer, Richler said. "He's still treated as someone who doesn't belong."

Why?

"One of the things that makes Quebec a really distinct society is that culture, to borrow the idea of (the Italian communist philosopher) Antonio Gramsci, is seen as an essential part of political enterprise," Richler said.

"That's why the government celebrates an artist such as (the late painter Jean-Paul) Riopelle and preserves the personal effects of (the late hockey player) Maurice Richard."

He added jokingly: "It's just a good thing they don't do the same with my father's typewriter."

Richler was the classic outsider, and that was his strength, said panelist Nadia Khouri, author of the 1995 book Qui a peur de Mordecai Richler?

"His refusal to belong slavishly to this tribal 'us' was the sine qua non condition of his liberty as a writer. It was this refusal - a Refus Global, in fact" that made Richler a writer whose works are "powerful and without borders," she said.

Room for Disagreement

Others disagreed.

It's irritating, said author Pierre Nepveu, that even in French translation Richler stuck to calling Montreal streets and landmarks by their English name in his novels - Mount Royal, for example, instead of Mont Royal.

Unlike other Canadian writers like Michael Ignatieff, whose views on Quebec have become more nuanced with time, Richler didn't show "a lot of curiosity about Quebec culture," Nepveu said.

Should he have? Would he have been better appreciated?

Probably not, said his writer friend Naïm Kattan, a francophone, in a separate, English panel on Richler that followed the French one yesterday.

Richler was the type who could just as easily alienate his fellow Jews - many of whom considered him an anti-Semite, in fact - as ruffle the feathers of francophones, Kattan said.

"His relationship with French Canada was as difficult as it was with the Jews. This was his way with everybody, including English Canadians - he was terrible with them, too."

-The Blue Metropolis festival ends this evening at the Renaissance Montréal Hotel, 3625 Park Ave.

- Jeff Heinrich's E-mail address is jheinrich@thegazette.southam.ca.