Great Story. Funny, biting satire. Perfect ending.When I finished reading it again for this blog, I agreed with that opinion.
In the year 2000, there was a great age difference between me and Barney Panofsky. Now Barney and I are the same age, and I see him in a completely different light. Now I understand his frustration at ageing.
When you hold this book in your hands, you are holding Barney's Version written by Mordecai Richer. But when you are reading this book, you are reading the life of Barney Panofsky written by Barney Panofsky. The book is edited by Barney's son Michael. You find his footnotes and comments throughout, along with an Afterward. This all adds to the conceit that this book is written by Barney. Michael has to correct his fading memory as he mixes up movies, actors, dates and places. I thought this worked beautifully and was one of my favourite things about the book. This is one feature that makes the book much better than the movie version. If you have seen the movie and didn't like it, try the book.
The first paragraph of the book sets up the whole story. It tells us exactly what this book is about.
Terry's the spur. The splinter under my fingernail. To come clean, I'm starting this shambles that is the true story of my wasted life (violating a solemn pledge, scribbling a first book at my advanced age), as a riposte to the scurrilous charges Terry McIver has made in his forthcoming autobiography: about me, my three wives, a.k.a Barney's troika, the nature of my friendship with Boogie, and, of course, the scandal I will carry to my grave like a humpback. Terry's sound of two hands clapping, Of Time and Fevers, will shortly be launched by The Group (sorry, the group), a government-subsidized small press, rooted in Toronto, that also publishes a monthly journal, the good earth, printed on recycled paper, you bet your life.
Barney is a man of his times and his experiences. He is not a modern man. He is a curmudgeon, but certainly not a lovable one. He treats people badly, both men and women. He smokes cigars. He drinks too much. He causes scenes in public. But in telling his story he is honest about his faults. He knows he can be an SOB. He would like to be different in some ways, but I think he also likes the way he is. He wonders,"My problem is, I am unable to get to the bottom of things. I don't mind not understanding other people's motives, not any more, but why don't I understand why I do things?" I think the answer is because he doesn't really try.
With all his faults, I liked Barney. I liked his honesty, his crazy pranks, his loyalty to his friends, his sense of outrage at antisemitism, racism and sexism. His fear of looking foolish; his desire to be taken seriously, his vulnerability regarding his third wife, Miriam. As his son Michael tells us in the Afterword, "Barney Panofsky clung to two cherished beliefs: Life was absurd, and nobody ever truly understood anybody else."
Barney came of age in Paris in the 1950's as part of a group of young expatriate writers and artists. It is his friendship with Boogie, a writer with unfulfilled promise, that leads to the "scandal" that changes his life. Boogie disappears while visiting Barney at his cottage in the Laurentians. Barney is accused of his murder and even stands trial. He is acquitted, but most people believe he got away with murder. This truly haunts him for the rest of his life. He always maintains his innocence. He talks about "waking up more than once recently no longer certain of what really happened that day on the lake. Wondering if I had corrected the events of that day even as I have embellished other incidents in my life, enabling me to appear in a more favourable light."
Some of my favourite passages:
- On the Past: "Yes, carbon paper, if any of you out there are old enough to remember what that was. Why, in those days we not only used carbon paper, but when you phoned somebody you actually got an answer from a human being on the other end, not an answering machine with a ho ho ho message. In those olden times you didn't have to be a space scientist to manage the gadget that flicked your TV on and off, that ridiculous thingamabob that now comes with twenty push buttons, God knows what for. Doctors made house calls. Rabbis were guys, Kids were raised by their moms instead of in child-care pens like piglets. Software meant haberdashery. There wasn't a different dentist for gums, molars, fillings and extractions - one nerd managed the lot. If a waiter spilled hot soup on your date, the manager offered to pay her cleaning bill and sent over drinks, and she didn't sue for a kazillion dollars, claiming 'loss of enjoyment of life'. If the restaurant was Italian it still served something called spaghetti, often with meatballs. It was not yet pasta with smoked salmon, or linguini in all the colours of the rainbow, or penne topped with a vegetarian steaming pile that looked like dog sick. I'm ranting again. Digressing. Sorry about that."
- On Canadian Culture: "Our latest, godawful expensive pilot was rich in meaningful, life-enhancing action: gay smooching, visible-minority nice guys, car chases ending in mayhem, rape, murder, a soupcon of S&M and a dab of New Age idiocies. I had hoped it would fill CBC-TV's nine p.m. Thursday slot."
- On Growing Old: "I freshened my drink and sensed that I was now in for one of those old fart's nights, rewinding the spool of my wasted life, wondering how I got from there to here. From the sweet teenager reading The Wast Land aloud in bed to the misanthropic, ageing purveyor of TV dreck, with only a lost love and pride in his children to sustain him."
- On Wanting Others to Think Well of Him: "I got into bed with Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, the book I always travel with because I want them to find it at my bedside should I expire during the night."
I liked this book. Mordecai Richler is an excellent writer whose characters live and breathe on the page. I also liked the specific view of Canadian life and culture, based in Montreal, that he presented. I liked that the book was divided into three parts - one for each of Barney's wives. Each of the wives played an important role in his life. I also liked the end. It was perfect. No other ending would have been as good. Make sure you read to the very end of the Afterward so you don't miss anything.
I am left with one question after reading the book: Will people who don't live in Canada enjoy it as much as I did? Do you have to be Canadian to appreciate the satire...or is it universal? If you are not Canadian and you read the book, please leave a comment with your view.
NEXT: 1998 The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro (Short Stories)
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