Don't let Hollywood's sugary adaptation put you off reading Mordecai Richler's acid novel, Barney's Version
From behind his Coke-bottle glasses, the bookseller on the Charing Cross Road focused his magnified eyeballs as narrowly as he was able. "Mordecai Richler?" he said, releasing a frisson of fine dust. "Now there's a name from the past."
For those of us to whom the ghost of Canada's greatest satirical writer remains a biting presence, this was not the most reassuring of statements – especially issuing from a bookseller who himself gave the appearance of having been not so much born as unearthed in some archaeological dig. But such was Mordecai Richler's currency when I checked recently in London – where he lived for two decades and about which he often wrote, largely from the expat's point of view. To wit: none of the used bookshops on the Charing Cross Road carried any of Richler's 10 novels.
From behind his Coke-bottle glasses, the bookseller on the Charing Cross Road focused his magnified eyeballs as narrowly as he was able. "Mordecai Richler?" he said, releasing a frisson of fine dust. "Now there's a name from the past."
For those of us to whom the ghost of Canada's greatest satirical writer remains a biting presence, this was not the most reassuring of statements – especially issuing from a bookseller who himself gave the appearance of having been not so much born as unearthed in some archaeological dig. But such was Mordecai Richler's currency when I checked recently in London – where he lived for two decades and about which he often wrote, largely from the expat's point of view. To wit: none of the used bookshops on the Charing Cross Road carried any of Richler's 10 novels.
- 1/27/2011
- by Chris Michael
- The Guardian - Film News
Conrad Black's wife has launched a scathing attack on Henry Kissinger, charging that the former Secretary of State heartlessly abandoned her disgraced press-baron hubby during Conrad's trial for fraud and obstruction of justice. Writing in Maclean's magazine, Barbara Amiel, whose husband put Kissinger on his board of directors at Hollinger International, fumes: "We knew the rats had left the ship, taking with them the last shreds of their integrity: directors like Henry Kissinger, who had sworn eternal loyalty . . ." She accuses Kissinger and others of...
- 8/3/2008
- NYPost.com
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