Rabbit Hutchfree Blueprints

VERSION Mordecai Richler-Barney

He arrived in a late, bigmouth, quarrelsome age, Barney Panofsky picks up the pen to defend themselves from the charge of murder , and other calumnies equally unfortunate, released by his arch-nemesis Terry McIver. Thus, among four fingers of whiskey and a breath of Monte Cristo, Barney recounts the life happily dissipated and deeply unfair that the Jewish Quarter of Montreal took him in Paris of early fifties and then again in Canada, to turn ideas in youth raked in "sitcom" very popular and so profitable.


If I had to explain why it took me so long to read this novel (almost two weeks, something that happens very rarely), I do not know what to say. The book is not written badly, in fact. When you start to read a chapter, then rushes in to the eyes and you realize the skill and ingenuity of the author. But boh, I read a chapter and then leaves him there, I was willing to continue. E 'was difficult to get past the first 150 pages, where you do not understand almost anything. Barney Panofsky, sdi third-rate soap opera television producer, decided to write his autobiography, his "version", in response to what is narrated by his enemy and rival, with whom he shared a past as a young man a bit 'bohemian.
Yet even when we enter the narrative logic of Barney, or put together many anecdotes, sometimes separated from each other, to tell his life, divided on the basis of his three marriages, the desire to abandon it several times it becomes very strong.

stems mainly from the feelings that I think Barney arouses in the reader. Either you hate or love. And to me, basically, is obnoxious. To the point that even his most entertaining anecdotes (ie those related to his marriage with his second wife, or those of his father) left me almost indifferent.
But I repeat, the book is well written and flows well read, so I did not feel in the least discouraged. Also because the last five lines of the novel, but those not written by Barney's son who worked to collect and treat the autobiography, are among the most ingenious and disturbing I have ever read. And the book is worth just for them.

Note to the translation: I do not know, I do not like the translations Adelphi. I do not like the glossary at the end, I do not like the lyrics of the songs left in their original language (or perhaps simply because the French do not understand it) and I do not like certain translation choices. In short, the rivedrei.