Introducing Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz: A Reader's Guide

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia in Prince
George.

This book is one in ECW’s series of short studies intended to
introduce new readers to some of the better novels written by Canadians.
While the project represents a good idea, this particular part of it is
a serious disappointment. It begins with a useful chronology of
Richler’s life and works, and ends with a good works-cited list, but
the criticism between is purely bottom-drawer stuff. Much of it is off
topic, and there are pages of blatant padding. We are, for example,
given a pointless list of great British poet-critics from Dryden to
Eliot, followed by two useless paragraphs pointing out that Smith,
Jones, Atwood, Davies, and Laurence also write about creativity. None of
this illuminates The Apprenticeship. Neither do most of the references
to Richler’s other novels (and there are too many of them for a book
of this scope).

Woodcock simply does not seem to have a sharp enough focus on The
Apprenticeship, or much of substance to say about it. This study reads
like a bad paper by an undergraduate who has been assigned an
uncongenial topic. Richler’s fine novel deserves better.