Joshua Then And Now is a compelling novel penned by Canada’s most intriguing writer. Joshua now is in hospital with broken limbs and a battered visage. Journalists are snooping around his house looking for tips. Joshua is a local writer, a celebrity of sorts, and there is rumour he has done something illegal, has had a split with his wife, and has been involved in a homosexual affair. Scandal is in the air. His father, Reuben, a former prize fighter, keeps the reporters at bay; he doesn’t seem concerned. The novel flashes back to Joshua then, from his childhood in Montreal to his days spent on Ibiza to the months and weeks prior to his apparent accident – and what a ride it is. Richler fans should delight in the bits about Ibiza, having fun wondering just how much of it is true. We know Richler lived on the Spanish isle, and we know he had trouble with a German named Mueller (Dr. Dr. Mueller in the novel; in Austria each doctorate deserves a title) and that he had to leave suddenly, like Joshua Shapiro did. We also see Richler’s imagination flowing and spinning from his summer home at Lake Memphremagog, featured in Barney’s Version. And we see variations on Richler’s classic characters: the blue-blooded Hornbys, “rotten to the core” and cognizant of it, Jack Trimble: a man who scraped and clawed his way to the top, ignored by Westmount’s and McGill’s elite until they needed him to make money for them; Reuben: Joshua’s ostensibly dopey but street-savvy father, Joshua’s sex-starved Jewish mother, uncle Oscar: forced to drive a cab at age 69, Joshua’s brother-in-law, a 40-year old rich brat (one of the Hornbys) who we think has been horribly framed. This book really drew me in, but then I got lost a little in the middle. The flashback sequences are not dated, but like with Richler’s subsequent Solomon Gursky Was Here it’s not so much a matter of figuring out when the time-shift is but why. However, unlike the weightier and more literary Solomon Gursky, Joshua Then And Now novel didn’t make me wonder if Richler knew where he was going and if his descriptive wanderings weren’t inspired by too many glasses of scotch. In Joshua, storyline straightens out, right on cue, and you see the method in the madness. At page 150, I was thinking, ‘This might be one of his weaker ones,’ but by p. 250, I was marvelling. What a shame Mordecai Richler is no longer with us. There is no one in Canada writing books like his nowadays, and there is one less social critic to lampoon the politically correct CBC, insincere Canadian politicians, or the politics of special pleading. What humour, what wit, what intellect; they just don’t make ‘em like that anymore. 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.Troy Parfitt is the author of Why China Will Never Rule the World
'Joshua' was written about mid-way in Richler's career. It is one of his better books, unfortunately it is usually forgotten in favor of other 'big' books written before and after. The big three in Richler's opus, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, St. Urbain's Horseman, and Solomon Gursky Was Here, should be a big four, with Joshua Then And Now. Joshua Then And Now opens with Joshua having suffered a serious injury. We are not told how or what. Almost immediately the book begins to jump back and forth through Joshua's life. We learn that his wife has had a traumatic experience, we learn something happened in Ibiza, Spain, which had a profound effect on their lives. We learn many other things, all of which are used as teasers to keep us reading for more detail. As the novel progresses we move through Joshua's entire life. Gradually more detail is provided, and other mysteries raised. For the most part this complex structure works brilliantly. Joshua is both a mildly likeable and mildly unlikeable character, which is a Richler trademark. The mystery in Ibiza doesn't amount to very much, and so the sequences there could have been cut down drastically. We see how Joshua gradually, and unwittingly, sets himself up over many years for an eventual fall. Most of this is handled with finesse, but the LA events related to this are absurd. Otherwise, the LA scenes, and the Montreal and Paris scenes, are excellent. There is much humor layered within the story, but at times Richler inserts an awkward 'comic scene', as though thinking random sequences of comic relief are needed to break up a story which has plenty of humor already. The mother character is prominent in the early sequences, but is used largely for comedy, and dismissed as 'loopy'. In two great scenes, we get the mother's point of view. There is excellent drama in these scenes, but their potential goes unused. She returns to brief 'comedy' references, and disappears for the last half of the book, excepting one brief mention. Also, given that Joshua is present in these dramatic scenes, it is absurd that he would, given what occurs, later in his life dismiss her with the epitaph 'my loopy mother'. The Lake scenes, though good, sometimes try the reader's patience, largely because they are not up to the quality of the best scenes in the Montreal, Paris, and LA sequences. Toward the book's end, most remaining questions are answered, and the story finally returns to the 'present' of the opening. As the book ends, the hero, if not much wiser, is at least temporarily repentant.
What do You think about Joshua Then And Now (1991)?
Alzi la mano chi non ha mai letto "La versione di Barney". Bravi, ora andate pure a vergognarvi in un angolino. Per tutti gli altri, "Joshua allora e oggi" è l’ultima pubblicazione italiana (il libro è datato 1980, ma da noi arriva con un po’ di ritardo) del canadese Mordecai Richler, autore che i più – se non tutti – conosceranno proprio grazie a "La versione di Barney", libro stra-letto e da cui è stato tratto anche l’omonimo film con Dustin Hoffman (così così a mio parere, ma pare sia stato apprezzato). Bene, che "Joshua allora e oggi" sia stato scritto dallo stesso identico autore si capisce fin dalle prima pagine, prima di tutto per lo stile della narrazione, e poi per le vicende e i protagonisti. Il libro segue le avventure di Joshua Shapiro, giornalista e scrittore, ed in particolare lo strano incidente che l'ha condotto all'ospedale proprio all'indomani di uno scandalo a sfondo sessuale che lo vede coinvolto e, non bastasse, al ricovero per esaurimento e la successiva sparizione della moglie. Il libro, oltre 460 pagine fitte fitte ma che si leggono tutte d’un fiato, cerca così di raccontare tutti gli avvenimenti che hanno portato Joshua a questa situazione, un continuo rivangare nel passato che alla fin fine ci presenta l’intera vita del protagonista, dall'infanzia vissuta con un padre pugile e non proprio ligio alla legge ma fedele lettore del Libro Sacro e una madre dedita a spettacoli a luci rosse, al matrimonio con la bella e ricca Pauline, figlia di un senatore, ai tanti amici che dall'infanzia Joshua non ha smesso di frequentare nonostante numerosi viaggi in Europa. Se avete amato "La versione di Barney", in "Joshua allora e oggi" troverete un altro personaggio tipicamente richleriano, scorretto e truffaldino in un mondo che lo è sicuramente più di lui, ma capace di riscattarsi e lasciare il segno in tutti i lettori.www.GNdeveloper.wordpress.com_
—Gabriele
This book is even better than Duddy Kravitz, in my opinion. The whole book is scattered episodes from the life of Joshua, a man whose life has been a real Odyssey from a lower class childhood to fame and wealth as an adult. The scenes carefully reveal more and more information about Joshua's life, from the time his mom performed an exotic dance at his childhood birthday party to the time his wife was committed in a mental hospital. Joshua is an eccentric but believable character, whose story is told in a way that is often hilarious. The book has great insight into the culture of North American Jews, as well as the culture of Montreal.
—Andrew
Reading this reminded me of Brook, because it's is the sort of book I'd have handed him when I was through with it and said "here, you'll enjoy this far more than me". It is what I'd qualify a "guy's story" - a tale of a man looking back at his past and coming to terms with his aging, passing through reunions of old school friends and memories of fantastical sexual encounters to reach the eventual realization that the past is gone and life just keeps moving on.Not that such themes can't be applicable to both genders, but there's a lot of old-fashioned "women as other" in this story, too. Women are mysterious beings whose ambitions and desires are seldom explored and prove baffling to all the male characters - the women in the story get upset or throw themselves at men or have nervous breakdowns and the menfolk just shrug and file it away with the literary equivalent of "bitches be crazy". Even Pauline is reduced to little more than an obstacle on the road to Joshua's fulfillment - in order for him to grow as a character, he requires a wife at home he can push away and then win back. Ultimately, this probably comes down less to authorial malice and more to the book being, well, a "guy's story". The women are devices to keep the mens' plots moving along, which is problematic in its own way, but understandable in the context. These flaws aside, the book is well-written, as you'd expect from Richler, and a much slower boil, story-wise, than his other work that I recently read, "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz". Where the latter grabs you from the start with Duddy's distinct personality and schemes, in Joshua Then and Now nothing much happens in the opening chapters, there's no single great climax to the story, but ordinary (more or less) events happen throughout, and the story develops with a blend of past and present, and it's full of subtle humour and passages like this:Grudgingly, his father came to a decision. He dipped into his inside jacket pocket and unfolded a sheet obviously torn from a medical book. "I've been to the library on your behalf," he said, shoving the page at him. "That's what it looks like close up.""What?""Her thing, that's what! The snatch."Joshua groaned; it looked so uninviting."You must understand," his father said with some tenderness, "that this is merely a scientific diagram. A map, like.""Uh huh.""Look, if I showed you a relief map of the Rockies, in black and white, you think you'd be impressed?"
—Vanessa
