Belling the Cat: Essays, Reports, and Opinions

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

Even the most keen readers of Mordecai Richler are unlikely to have read
all of the 27 magazine pieces published in this splendid and
entertaining collection: they appeared originally in a wide variety of
periodicals, from the defunct New York Times Sports Magazine and Weekend
to New Criterion and Playboy. For the 12 magazines represented, Richler
reported or commented on a wide variety of subjects. The articles are
arranged in four categories—travel, sports, politics, and the rather
broad “Books and Things”; they cover the period from 1960 (a
Maclean’s piece on pro wrestling) to 1998 (a hilarious look at
authors’ book promotion tours); and they range from essays on Woody
Allen and Gordie Howe to reports on the 1989 Winnipeg leadership
convention of the federal New Democrats and on a fantastic resort in
South Africa.

Given such high-quality writing, there is no single standout, but the
concluding piece—an essay on the 1990 Quebec referendum that appeared
in The New Yorker—is by turns depressing, frightening, and hilarious,
and one wishes every Canadian in every province could read it. The
collection is prefaced by an entertaining essay in which Richler relates
how his experiences as a reporter and an essayist have often helped him
craft his fiction. Sadly, he observes that he belongs to the last
generation of novelists who could support themselves “by scribbling
for the mags,” and he cites an impressive list of periodicals for
which he once wrote but which are now only memories. We readers are
poorer for their demise.