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Mordecai and Me, an Appreciation of a Kind (review)

Mordecai and Me, an Appreciation of a Kind, by Joel Yanofsky. Calgary: Red Deer Press, 2003. 336 pp. $34.95CDN. $24.95US. The first-name intimacy of Joel Yanofsky's title-Mordecai and Me-implies that this book grows out of a close relationship between biographer and subject. Such is not the case. Yanofsky's self-described "really unauthorized" biography confesses to the distance between these two men, despite their shared vocation, city, and cultural heritage, and despite the biographer's various attempts to bridge that distance during Mordecai Richler's lifetime. Perhaps such candour accounts for the ambivalent subtitle. Yanofsky argues that An Appreciation of a Kind tips readers off to the fact that this isn't a hagiography. Indeed. But surely the word "appreciation" betrays a certain admiration; and the confessional tone of sections of this book betrays more-disappointment that the relationship wasn't closer, that brief conversations were cut short. Yanofsky's reader is disappointed too, since Yanofsky opts not to explore other sources of information-interviews with Richler's friends and family (with the exception of conversations with Richler's friend William Weintraub, which inform much of the book), close analysis of Richler criticism, or scrutiny of Richler's unpublished papers. Instead, and more curiously, Yanofsky pursues conversations with his own family and friends, including transcriptions of various conversations with his wife and his dream analyst about his obsession with Mordecai and his anxiety over the biographical project. This is the Me part of the book: a self-conscious discussion of a writer's concerns, written as if in the heat of the writerly project. The titular Me also signals that this is memoir as well as biography, although Yanofsky's name recognition is less than that of the traditional memoirist. (Ever candid, Me admits as much.) But, as a Jewish Montrealer, career journalist, and writer of fiction, Yanofsky brings something valuable to the writerly conversation. He is intimately familiar with the Montreal literary scene, with both those who live and work in it and with those who have written about it (William Weintraub, for example). He has reviewed their books, including those by Richler and Richler's children, and interviewed them for print, radio, and television. If this is a book about writerly concerns, it is also a book about Montreal: Mordecai and Me and Montreal. Another intimacy evoked by the phrase Mordecai and Me, an intimacy upon which this book and its sales ultimately depend, has more to do with its reader than its author. …