Mordecai Richler

I've just finished two novels by the Canadian writer Mordecai Richler:

Son of a Smaller Hero and A Choice of Enemies.

The latter is set in the expatriate American/Canadian community in 1950s London. This group for the most part is in flight from the McCarthyist oppression and conformity of North America. I stumbled upon Richler when surfing for 'cultural conflict' writers. A Choice of Enemies is a somewhat rambling and definitely scene-driven novel. It has problems with plot structure. But dialogue and characterization are excellent. The (anti)hero, Norman Price, realizes his 'enlightened' circle is as close-minded and orthodox as the system they have fled or from which they have been chased.

I read Richler with hope of inter-cultural conflicts and insights, and in this respect, Son of A Smaller Hero, although an inferior work (juvenilia), proved more to the point. The story involves a young hero from the Jewish Quarter of Montreal, trying to break free of the parochialism of his community (in the 50s), only to find that loyalties and meanings are more complex than his vain and somewhat naive 'truth seeking'.

Here's a quote from Richler himself I really love. Loyalty is a tricky thing. True loyalty is not what most conformists would champion. This quote expresses something I wish I had. I think the quote especially apt for the Irish-American experience: that is, a commitment to conforming, a denial of anything most in need of being addressed in family or interpersonal matters, and an excess of gooey goshandbegorrah sentimentality.

I am actually quoting this document:

it is pointed up in Richler's comment that he is especially interested in criticizing "the things I believe in or I'm attached to" - liberal values, Jews, Canada .2

And another quote from the same document: "liberals of the best traditional sort: undoctrinaire, hypersensitive of conscience, self-questioning."

Amen.