Articles



Writing the Tripple Whammy: Canadian-Jewish Québécois Identity, the Comedy of Self-Deprecation, and the Triumph of Duddy Kravitz
Abstract:

Mordecai Richler, as a Jewish-Quebecer-Canadian, was a member of a despised minority, living in a province alienated from and marginalized within the dominant national culture, in a country forever looking enviously, anxiously over its shoulder at its more illustrious, more powerful neighbour. As a writer and satirist, however, this triple whammy was a blessing rather than a curse. This article explores some of the ways in which Mordecai Richler’s status as a member of three different stigmatized groups provided material for the self-deprecating humour that characterizes his work. I argue that Richler’s trebly-displaced protagonists, exemplified by Jake Hersh, tend to turn their comedy inward, punishing themselves for their perceived inferiority both to ‘other interlopers’ and to the (non-Canadian) arbiters of culture. In contrast, I suggest that Duddy Kravitz is Richler’s greatest creation because he both embodies and transcends the comic stereotype of the Jew on the make, exploiting but finally rejecting the masochism and internalized anti-Semitism of his relatives and his peers.


Writing, History, and Music in Do Not Say We Have Nothing: A Conversation with Madeleine Thien
Abstract: This conversation focuses on, but is not limited to, Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016). In the first section, Thien dwells on creative writing’s mediating role in historical representation; she also comments on her relationship with characters and readers. The second section discusses the inspiring role of music in the creation of the novel and probes the meaning of music, silence and mathematics in politics and for individual characters. In the third section, Thien deliberates on the motif of “the Book of Records” and the implications of taking “compiling” and “copying” as creative forms. In the last section, Thien turns to her approach to June Fourth by linking it to the history of the Cultural Revolution. She also compares her writing with Ma Jian’s Beijing Coma and discusses writing as a way to connect generations.

Wyndham Lewis at Windsor
Abstract: IΝ THE LATE SUMMER of 1942, while I was visiting St. Michael’s College, Toronto, I walked over to Sherbourne Street, ...