Product Description

"More than forty years of scribble, scribble, scribble, and I have been sued only once..." But this collection of essays is no less a pleasure to read for all that. Mordecai Richler is an exuberant essayist, with a combative wit and sharp eye, regularly offending some, endearing himself mightily to others, and always hugely entertaining. Like all great satirists, he is passionate about the world in which we live; it's that appetite for life and friendship, his love of sanity and common sense as much as his hatred for sacred cows, that lies at the heart of this irresistible book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #155271 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-05
• Released on: 1999-10-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 340 pages

Amazon.ca
Mordecai Richler was, especially in Canada, an increasingly rare breed: a professional writer. Except for the few brief stints as a writer-in-residence chronicled as part of this collection, Richler avoided what Paul Theroux calls the "straight jacket of the college professor's tie and sports coat." He didn't teach. He rarely edited. He really did live by his pen, and he did so from the tender age of 23.

Like his four previous volumes of non-fiction, Belling the Cat collects reviews, essays, and articles, most of them written for GQ or The New York Times Book Review. In these scattered essays divided into "Books and Things," "Going Places," "Sports," and "Politics," we see the patient Richler sharpening the observations, research, and interests that will pepper his hilarious, biting novels. "Writing for the Mags," for example, includes autobiographical and anecdotal confessions about the writing life in London that resurface in Joshua Then and Now, while the biographical sketch of Sam Seagram ("Mr. Sam") resembles a hand-drawn map to Richler's Solomon Gursky Was Here. A miscellany of this sort does, however, invite a skim-and-delve kind of reading. Some may find the term "sports writing" oxymoronic, and, sadly, political essays, even Richler's, never outlive the weekly magazines in which they appear. What we're left with is a good collection that begs the great one that could be made by selecting the irreplaceable and the lasting from the five books of essays that Richler completed before his death. --Darryl Whetter  

Review
"Ought to be shoved into a time capsule so future generations can laugh their heads off.... This is prime Richler, clear-eyed, intolerant of lies and deception, disrespectful of sacred cows."   - The Ottawa Citizen    

"If Richler had had the good fortune to share chronological space with the great Southern humourist [Mark Twain], I have no doubt the two men (smoking stogies, popping corks, swapping yarns) would have gotten along just fine."     - The Vancouver Sun

"A fabulous collection--as politically incorrect as firing up an Export 'A' in the health food store. But you can't keep a good satirist down."             - Chatelaine

"Everything in this book is worth reading.          Richler manages to irritate some of the people all of the time."   - The Halifax Daily News

From the Back Cover

"Ought to be shoved into a time capsule so future generations can laugh their heads off.... This is prime Richler, clear-eyed, intolerant of lies and deception, disrespectful of sacred cows." - The Ottawa Citizen

"If Richler had had the good fortune to share chronological space with the great Southern humourist [Mark Twain], I have no doubt the two men (smoking stogies, popping corks, swapping yarns) would have gotten along just fine."

- The Vancouver Sun

"A fabulous collection--as politically incorrect as firing up an Export 'A' in the health food store. But you can't keep a good satirist down."

        - Chatelaine

"Everything in this book is worth reading.

Richler manages to irritate some of the people all of the time." - The Halifax Daily News