Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Came to this book as penitence for shame: was talking to a friend who’d either seen the movie or listened to the book on tape, and I made some dismissive, derisive comment about it, to the tune of “Oh, I don’t much care for characters like that.” I had based that summation entirely on a clip of the movie I’d seen, I think on The Daily Show. My fellow interlocutor pointed out that I was being hasty in my judgment, so I agreed I’d get over myself and read it.
And so I read it. It took a long time. I was coming back from a not-reading-anything-jag and while at first Barney’s Version was compelling and fun, It seemed to drag a bit. But that might just have been me. I did very much like the character, after all—-not that I respect him, or feel that initial judgment of him (from the film clip) was off-base. I’m saying I enjoyed his confessions.
For that is what Barney’s Version amounts to: an aging man gives you his side to the various stories that make up the biography of his life: as an expatriate, as a repatriated TV producer, as a Canadian, as a Jew, as a husband, widower, husband, two-timer, husband, divorcee, accused murderer, smoker of montecristos and drinker of congnacs. Barney’s Version is a modern picaresque, a rich Canadian Jewish Confederacy of Dunces.
Mordecai Richler’s story-telling style is subtle without being obscure, entertaining without being (too) silly. Barney manages to tell not only his own version but his enemies’ version as well, and couches it all in the poor old man’s encroaching dementia and his son’s compilation footnotes. The reader is left to wonder what’s fact and what’s fiction, what’s real and what’s fantasy. Barney doesn’t just make things up to cover his guilt, he gets things confused because that’s how memory works.
And in the end, the life you led is not what you did or even what you remember of it but how you remember it all. A terrible life can be lensed by a happy regard, and those torturous years on earth where maybe not so bad. Barney seems keen to find the right balance between “I got better than I deserved” and “but I made the most of it.”
Your interpretation may vary: sign of a deep, complex, good read. For myself, I’m looking forward to trying out some other Richler novels.