Bile with Style
Jefferson Chase on a sharp-penned Canadian who both writes and drinks whisky – Mordecai Richler
In 1899 a man named Robert Barr wrote an essay arguing that Canadians couldnât write literature because they drank too much whisky. Ninety-nine years later, Jewish-Canadian author Mordecai Richler published a book that refutes Barrâs assertion on both counts.
Barneyâs Version is the fictional memoir of a thrice-married septuagenarian and producer of TV schlock, who was once accused of murdering his best friend. Fortified with single malts and Montechristos, Barney Panofsky has decided to tell his side of his story and prove he wasnât such a bad guy after all.
Itâs a difficult undertaking â and not just because the ageing Montrealerâs memory is failing. Dancing around with a tumbler of Highland malt, for instance, Barney describes his estranged third wifeâs partner:
There are some people out there who take Blair to be a fine fellow. A scholar of distinction. Even my sons defend him. We appreciate how you feel, they say, but he is an intelligent and caring man, devoted to Miriam. Bullshit. A drudge on tenure, Blair came to Canada from Boston in the
Sixties, a draft dodger, like Dan Quayle and Bill Clinton, and consequently a hero for his students. As for me, I'm dumbfounded that anybody would prefer Toronto to Saigon.
âBile with styleâ is how one reviewer described this book, and Iâll second that. Or if one prefers alliteration to rhyme, a âCardhu curmudgeonâ.
But Barney also has his sentimental side. Once a year, he visits his fatherâs grave, .....
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By Jefferson Chase
Section : Whisky Literature
Page number : 47
