SOURCE: Lichtenstein, Gene. “Memory Loss.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (25 January 1998): 6.

In the following review, Lichtenstein discusses Richler's body of work and asserts that only the final section of Barney's Version lives up to the legacy of the author's oeuvre.

When Mordecai Richler burst on the literary scene in 1960 with his novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, there were cheers and hosannas from critics who had “discovered” him. No less a figure than Alfred Kazin pronounced: “It comes off brilliantly.”

Actually Duddy Kravitz was Richler's fourth novel, but the unknown Jewish writer from Montreal was still under 30. His occasional excesses—character spinning into caricature, farcical set pieces turning into digression—tended to be forgiven or ignored. The point was that he was funny in the biting, subversive manner of Joseph Heller and Philip Roth.

His outrageous comedic talent was directed primarily at middle-class and establishment Jews, perhaps not...