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THE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday Februarys 19M Page Book review New Mordecai novel is welcome but lengthy DATE BOOK By ALLAN GOULD To say that a new novel by s is a ma event is like saying the same about the crumbling of the Berlin Wall Both are welcome long awaited but not without some misgivings For just as the fall of the Wall fills much of Europe with dread of German power along with rejoicing in the freeing of a people Solomon Was Here Viking pages is equal problematic with its pleasures greatly diluted with distress This is not the Great Work that many of appreciative fans had hoped for And we have hoped for a long time When the impressive but still inferior to St Urbain Horseman this reviewer s Joshua Then and Now was published in it followed a drought of nearly a decade Now after a similar drought what do we have A huge sprawling hilarious offensive beautifully written crudely written study of several generations of the Gursky family a depiction of a certain Montreal Jewish family making big bucks in bootlegging and en ding up with a worldwide liquor and real estate empire All fair love and satire yes Well yes and no But first the book Solomon Was Here is nothing if not imposing has never written a longer book or one which is funnier To have the great Distillery family be traced back to a crooked con niving vicious vengeful brilliant man named Ephraim who had come to Canada with the ed tragically doomed Franklin Expedition is a comic tour de force As are the Jewish Eskimos dropping as they drop dead from trying to keep kosher as well as keep the Kippur fast through months of Arctic night GEMS And some of the lines that tosses off through this endlessly fascinating and often just plainendless novel are gems A description of Montreal Jewish intellectuals Artists the lot Washed on to the shores of a cold country that was as indifferent to them as they were to it And there has rarely been a more devastating depiction of Canadian morality placed in the mouth of Callaghan a Christian friend of Moses Berger the failed writer who becomes an obsessed Gurskyologist determined to track down the history of this ex family Let me put it this way Canada is not so much a country as a holding tank filled with disgruntled progeny of defeated peoples French Canadians consumed by self pity the descendants of Scots who fled the Duke of Cumberland Irish the famine and Jews the Black Hun dreds Then there are the peasants from Ukraine Poland Italy and Greece convenient to grow wheat and dig out the ore and swing the hammers and run the restaurants but otherwise to be kept in their place Most of us are still huddled tight to the border looking into the candy store window scared by the Americans on one side and the bush on the other And now that we are here prospering we do our damn best to exclude more ill bred newcomers because they remind us of our own mean origins in the draper shop in Inverness or the I quoted the above at length because I think it shows Mordecai at his very best angry pained brutally honest scathingly tine Bravo And there are some two dozen other lines that can be Clothing Wens ladies Childrens ALTERATIONS REPAIRS 8771598 rattled off showing him to be the Mark TwamDoonesburyPhihp SahlJules Feiffer of Canada DISGUSTING Then why such a disappoint ment Why such a profound sense of letdown after all the laughs all the insights all the profundities Because there s no moral centre to this novel every major character almost without exception is cor rupt venal devious brutal lecherous vulgar monstrous And as any first year philosophy student will tell you if everyone is guilty then no one is And if everyone is disgusting then who really cares Gatsby hod Nick to play against and give Fitzgerald masterpiece a a framework of humanity Faulkner s crumbl whites always had a or some decent if powerless black as a moral touchstone for the reader In this novel we have no such thing His parody of the decent gentle and hugely gifted Montreal poet A M Klein is so petty and repulsive that anyone who knows of the man life and work will wonder why Richler has dug in the knife so deep so cruelly And the protagonists who break the wind the wildly vulgar nouveau the Jew hating gentiles the gentilehating Jews after a while the mind recoils in sadness because they are all all so hopelessly unpleasant so worthy of our interest Don get me wrong I love at his most hard hitting and continue to think that Cocksure obscene raging is his greatest novel But that was a car toon albeit a brilliant one Solomon Gursky Was Here longs to be taken seriously and in its com plex raven symbolism its glorious parodies and satires its devastating depictions of Canada s pettiness it deserves to be But what a great letdown it is in the end Read it for Richler deserves to be read But this is not the novel that we lovers of his writing have been longing to see alas alas Allan Gould a Torontobased writer and reviewer Is the author of 13 books the latest two being The Great Wiped Out North a work of political satire and the co- authored about Canada leading tracker of miss ing children HEART AND STROKE FOUNDATION OF ONTARIO TAKE A BREAK WITH the HERALD Your copy is available at many of our conveniently located dealers as GEORGETOWN GENERAL STORE Downtown Georgetown PICK UP YOUR FREE COPY OF THE HERALD TODAY BRAND ps By Glenda Hughes Sales Rep 8730300 Fortunately it is a joy lo report to his month on market lions in the Georgetown area Sales are coming in there s lots of activity on the market with ample purchasers scouting market and the listings are just enough to give a chp within your price range Now don get me wrong it is by no means a hot market but it is more realistic market and a comfortable market for everyone to bu and sell in After working through the past eight months of a very soft market this is a treat to work in I even have some interesting vations to make just for the record Upon comparing notes with quite a few sales reps in town I am hearing much the same story that I had already concluded Although the inventory of listings is ter than average for this time of year it is still difficult to find realh good homes in most price brackets By good I mean well priced well maintained nicely decorated in a good area of town and with a few perks thrown in for good measure It is always sad to see home that would sell well if the owners had taken the time to do a lit lie work on the house before puthng it on the market for then would have the edge as always So in reality this market is no different than any other Good homes sell fast and you will get the value from them if you have been careful to price accordingly This is still not the market to overprice home to see what happens for I can assure you that nothing will happen People are still looking for good value as always and thev are in no hurry to make their decisions Please listen to your sates rep regarding pricing Ask for a market analysis come to a price that is reasonable to ask together You will save yourself a lot of grief and if you will listen Current sales tell the story don get yourself caught up in the emotional value of your home If you are not sure that your sales rep of choice has given you a price that can live with ill another person in to give you a market evaluation and see what they say Do try to be up front with both representatives and tell them what you are going do so that is working with full deck of cards You should be lo see for yourself quite clearly your home is worth bv the recent sales It looks like IWO is starting off well and is the best news that I to you except that spring is just around the comer Homes Sold Creatively Feb 3 1990 Today Is the r S 45th day of winter TODAYS HISTORY On this day In 1962 President John Kennedy or a ban on nearly all U S trade with Cuba TODAYS BWTHDAYS Horace Gree ley 16111672 newspaper editor Gertrude Stefn 1046 writer Norman Rockwell Illus trator painter James A 1907 author Joey Bishop actor Bibl Oflterwald 1920- actress Shelley Berman comedian Fran Tarkenton football ptay er football player Morgan actres3 TODAY QUOTE Money is always there but the pockets change it is not in the same pockets after a change and that Is all there Is to say about money Gertrude Stein TODAY S MOON Day after first quarter Feb 2 ON AN AVERAGE DAY 502 fifth graders fall In Jove Source- On An Day by Tom Cohjmbinu TODAYS BARBS BY PHIL Learn to read the ads For quail fled buyers means anyone with enough cash can walk away with whatever It Is they re selling The February thaw is thai time of this month when the power falls and the freezer load of food becomes a total loss RECYCLING li If ve oil do our pari Please Remember to Recycle This Newspaper Roa Ent once Georgetown Please compare our prices We are the lowest Georgetown Greatestl 8736002 345 Guelph Street Unit 25 Georgetown In Knolcreat Centre Bah On effects MAID SERVICE WHOS BEST The Watch ROBERT BATEMAN 348 Street NEXT TO BELL GLASS IN THE KNOLCREST CENTRE Georgetown THEAWARD WINNER m TV SHOW COAST TO For FREE Estimates call 87321 65 MID POUNDS IN WEEKS Get Serious Call Today OFFER ABLE AT PARTICIPATING DIET CENTERS Center I I 1 DM Centrr Inc Mill St GEORGETOWN DAYS 8772900 EVENINGS 8530780