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Barney's Version
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Barney's Version (1997) (edit title/settings)

by Mordecai Richler (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

When a sixty-seven-year-old Canadian rascal named Bernard Panofsky decides to write "the true story of my wasted life." the result is Barney's Version, Mordecai Richler's wickedly funny blend of satire, social commentary and brilliant introspection on the state of contemporary life. Hoping to... read more

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Summary edit see section history

Barney Panofsky smokes too many cigars, drinks too much whiskey, and is obsessed with two things: the Montreal Canadiens hockey team and his ex-wife Miriam. An acquaintance from his youthful years in Paris, Terry McIver, is about to publish his autobiography. In its pages he accuses Barney of... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Barney Panofsky smokes too many cigars, drinks too much whiskey, and is obsessed with two things: the Montreal Canadiens hockey team and his ex-wife Miriam. An acquaintance from his youthful years in Paris, Terry McIver, is about to publish his autobiography. In its pages he accuses Barney of an assortment of sins, including murder. It's time, Barney decides, to present the world with his own version of events. Barney's Version is his memoir, a rambling, digressive rant, full of revisions and factual errors (corrected in footnotes written by his son) and enough insults for everyone, particularly vegetarians and Quebec separatists.

But Barney does get around to telling his life story, a desperately funny but sad series of bungled relationships. His first wife, an artist and poet, commits suicide and becomes--à la Sylvia Plath--a feminist icon, and Barney is widely reviled for goading her toward death, if not actually murdering her. He marries the second Mrs. Panofsky, whom he calls a "Jewish-Canadian Princess," as an antidote to the first; it turns out to be a horrible mistake. The third, "Miriam, my heart's desire," is quite possibly his soul mate, but Barney botches this one, too. It's painful to watch him ruin everything, and even more painful to bear witness to his deteriorating memory. The mystery at the heart of Barney's story--did he or did he not kill his friend Boogie?--provides enough forward momentum to propel the reader through endless digressions, all three wives, and every one of Barney's nearly heartbreaking episodes of forgetfulness.

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “Terry's the spur. The splinter under my fingernail. To come clean, I'm starting on this shambles that is the true story of my wasted life(violating a solemn pledge, scribbling a first book at my advanced age)...”
    Barney Panofsky
  • “Hell for Hymie wasn't other people, as Camus had it, but being without them.”
    Incorrectly quoted from Jean-Paul Sartre, by Barney
  • “Asked if she would take me as her lawfully wedded husband, a stoned Clara winked at the official, and said, "I've got a bun in the oven. What would you do?"”
    Clara, Barney's first wife.
  • “I once dared to hope that Miriam and I, into our nineties, would expire simultaneously, like Philemon and Baucis. Then a beneficent Zeus, with a gentle stroke of caduceus, would transmorgrify us into two trees, whose branches would fondle each other in winter, our leaves intermingling in the spring.”
    Barney about his third wife, Mariam.
  • “I rose early, as I am wont to do no matter what time I fall asleep, suffering from the previous night's sins: head throbbing, eyes scratchy, sinuses blocked, throat raw, lungs hot, limbs underwater heavy.”
    Barney Panofsky
  • “It's a story about a bunch of affluent New York lawyers, Harold Seligman among them, who have taken to relieving the tedium of their lives by playing practical jokes on one another, constantly upping the ante. But there is a rule to the game. In oder for a jest to pass muster, it has to pinpoint and attack a flaw in the dupe's character - in Seligman's case, say his uxorious relationship with libidinous wife.”

First Sentence edit see section history

Terry's the spur.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 4 of 19 in Giller Winner. (authoritative list)

Preceded by Alias Grace, and followed by The Love of a Good Woman.

This book is in Random Synapses: 100 Book Reading Challenge (2011). (community list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Mordecai Richler (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Country: USA
Publication Date: 1997
ISBN: 067940418X
Page Count: 355

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PR9199.3.R5 B37 1997
  • Dewey: 813.54

Movie Connections edit see section history

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