his lesser known 1959 novel is a tight-rope walk of precarious
character empathy. Its hero is a young rapscallion named
Duddy Kravitz who is a combustible nucleus of charm, humour
and ingenuity. When he’s terrorising his school teacher, whose wife
has just died, we remain on his side because he is funny. When his
paramour becomes annoyed with his underhand ploys, we remain on
his side because he is exciting. When he does a bit of dodgy wheeler-
dealing with some unsavoury customers, we still remain on side
because he is daring. But Canadian author Mordecai Richler, in his
compulsive and darkly comic fourth novel, just keeps nudging Duddy
further and further towards the abyss of reason, daring the reader
to reconsider their own sense of morality as this reckless scamp
embraces desperate measures to fulfil his surreal destiny. This
rollicking tale is set just after World War Two in and around the dirt-TITLE
AUTHOR
YEAR
TEXT
£H$SSUHQWLFHVKLS
of Duddy Kravitz
Richler, Mordecai
1959
Asst Janitor
David JenkinsT
poor environs of Montreal’s Jewish district. It sees a directionless
Duddy suddenly discovering the meaning to his life when his vaguely
decrepit grandfather tells him that, “a man without land is nobody”.
Instead of reading this as a quaint metaphorical life lesson, Duddy
decides that he was put on this earth for one reason, and that is
to purchase a giant tract of unspoiled rural greenbelt at the base
of the Laurentian Mountains and then build holiday rentals on it.
And for that to occur, he has to make a lot of money, and fast, lest
competitors uncover this goldmine-in-the-making. The entire novel
exists under the shadow of a shady figure referred to as The Boy
Wonder – a local hood who, as legend has it, managed to parlay
three lousy cents into a fortune through an extended lucky streak.
The anecdote of his success is retold as an aspirational mantra, and
the person who reels it off with the most relish is Duddy’s own father.
Almost as a rite of passage, the Jewish menfolk are numbed
to the dangers of risk-taking, and it’s considered a sign of good
character that you’re willing to reach for a prize before your mental
synapses have alerted you of any potential hazards. It paints a
vivid, alternative picture of a thriving Jewish community, one where
conservative religiosity and petty crime often manage to co-exist in
the same room, and sometimes the same body. After teaming up
with The Boy Wonder and taking a small part in his drug-peddling
enterprise, Duddy ends up facing off against him – and that's when
things start to get really unseemly. A very decent film version of
the book was made in 1974 by director Ted Kotcheff, powered by
an immense, manic performance from Richard Dreyfus. Unlike his
starring role in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind
three years later, he channels the obsessive nature of his character
more realistically, more subtly and perhaps more intensely. Duddy’s
mania exists across a slowly-building arc, and the novel suggests in
the end that the energy to be infatuated with possessing material
goods is drained out of our character, and it's always the positive
traits that are sapped away first048 The Uncut Gems Issue