Last Honest Man Mordecai Richler An Oral Biography

Although he had told Jack McClelland in January 1963 that he was coming home to Canada, the Richlers (now with three children) moved again that fall from north London to the country. Florence found a large, rambling house in Kingston Hill, Surrey, about a half-hour drive south of London, with a large backyard garden and a third-floor office/study for Mordecai. Initially, the children were enrolled in the state school, but Richler was "horrified" by the results. "So like all good Socialists we ended up sending our kids to private schools." McClelland was not pleased. "I'm skinned, but skinned, man," Richler wrote, announcing the house purchase. To which McClelland replied: "What the hell do you mean you've bought a house? I thought your change in plans was temporary only. You mean you aren't coming back here at all? How the hell are we supposed to sell your books with you living in England? Bill Bailey won't you please come home." Richler wasn't joking about financial pressure. In the summer of 1963, he asked Brian Moore for a loan. Moore wrote him in agreement, saying he could lend him "$1,300 Cdn. in September, another $1,500 in October and perhaps another $1,500 in January." Richler's books weren't exactly flying off Canadian bookstore shelves. "What's going on," the writer inquired in one 1963 letter. "Is anything going on? I understand my book [his fifth novel, The Incomparable Atuk] is still unavailable in any mtl bookshop except eatons. Man, this is disgraceful." McClelland explained: "It just hasn't caught on the way one might have hoped. Will sell 2500 maybe less. Sometimes these things can't be explained." Ron Bryden I got to know Mordecai in 1961. I was literary editor of the Spectator in London. This meant I was wooed by publishers and got to know Diana Athill at Andre Deutsch. Andre, as an East European emigre, specialized in bringing in names from the east, while Diana recognized early on, very cleverly I thought, that the most interesting new writing in England were the boys and girls from the Commonwealth who were coming back to London Mordecai, V.S. Naipaul, Dan Jacobsen from South Africa. Mordecai reviewed some books for us and then in 1962, the Spectator cleaned out all its lefties, including me, and moved far right... and I went to a rather nasty picture magazine called Town. One of my jobs became finding short stories, and I bought a short story that later became the first chapter of Cocksure. This, in a way, was his launch as a popular writer. I probably paid him fifty pounds. I think it was written as a short story and changed for the novel very dirty and funny. Stanley Price a screen and television writer gave a dinner party to which he invited me and my wife and Mordecai and Florence and Philip Roth. My best memory of Mordecai is this evening in Hampstead at Stanley's dinner table, Mordecai having just published either this chunk of Cocksure or maybe the novel and Roth who was then cooking up Portnoy's Complaint. He and Roth decided to have a contest to see how far you could go in obscenity. I can't remember any of the obscenity, but it went pretty far, extreme for that time, and now it sounds silly. But I remember chiefly the faces of the three wives at the table Roth was alone. Stanley's wife, the hostess, was pale with horror that it was happening in her house and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Stanley wasn't going to step in. There was my wife, who was justPosner, Michael is the author of 'Last Honest Man Mordecai Richler An Oral Biography', published 2005 under ISBN 9780771070242 and ISBN 0771070241.