Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Richler, Mordecai (Vol. 185) - Francis King (review date 4 October 1997)

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Francis King (review date 4 October 1997)

SOURCE: King, Francis. “A Highly Amusing Shambles.” Spectator 279, no. 8827 (4 October 1997): 47-8.

[In the following review, King offers a mixed assessment of Barney's Version, arguing that “for all its defects, this unruly book about a thoroughly unruly life contains not a page without its laugh and not a paragraph without its smile.”]

The Canadian, Jewish narrator of this fictional memoir [Barney's Version], Barney Carnofsky, writing when he is beginning to show the first insidious symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, is, as he himself puts it, ‘a shrinking man with a cock that trickles’. A cynic, philanderer, boozer, adulterer, and possibly a murderer, he would be a totally odious character were it not for the sharpness of his intelligence, the breadth of his culture, and the cathartic ferocity of his hatred of pretension and humbug.

As a young man, in 1950, Barney...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Rachel Feldhay Brenner (essay date 1989)
   2. Robert Fulford (review date 21 June 1992)
   3. Rick Marin (review date 6 July 1992)
   4. Harold M. Waller (review date 13 July 1992)
   5. Paul Delany (review date 20 August 1992)
   6. Andro Linklater (review date 26 September 1992)
   7. Barry Cooper (review date December 1992)
   8. Ada Craniford (essay date 1992)
   9. David Rieff (review date 30 October 1994)
   10. J. B. Kelly (review date 19 December 1994)
   11. Edward Alexander (review date January 1995)
   12. Geoffrey Wheatcroft (review date 22 January 1995)
   13. Norman Ravvin (review date winter 1996)
   14. D. J. Enright (review date 5 September 1997)
   15. Francis King (review date 4 October 1997)
   16. John Bemrose (review date 13 October 1997)
   17. Mark Schechner (review date 29 December 1997)
   18. Kerry McSweeney (review date winter 1998)
   19. Gene Lichtenstein (review date 25 January 1998)
   20. Mark Steyn (review date February 1998)
   21. Thomas R. Edwards (review date 5 March 1998)
   22. Meredith Dellandrea (review date fall 1998)
   23. Mordecai Richler and Robyn Gillam (interview date 1998)
   24. Steve Brzezinski (review date winter 1999)
   25. Branko Gorjup (review date winter 1999)
   26. Angela Robbeson (essay date winter 2001)
   27. Anthony Wilson-Smith (essay date 16 July 2001)
   28. Benoit Aubin (essay date 16 July 2001)
   29. Mark Steyn (essay date September 2001)
   30. Brian Bethune (review date 24 June 2002)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright