the apprenticeship of duddy kravitz by mordecai richler

Working-class Jewish background based novels, which include The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and Saint Urbain's Horseman (1971), of Canadian writer Mordecai Richler. Sadly, or perhaps thankfully, Duddy is all too human. Like so many of the anti-heroes of Richler's contemporaries John Updike and Philip Roth, Duddy is neither likeable nor forgettable. He murders the others.'ĭuddy Kravitz is the novel that moved Mordecai Richler into the stable of major 20th-century novelists, and it did so at a time (1959) when 'world famous' and 'Canadian novelist' were mutually exclusive terms. Breaking Simcha's heart with his unscrupulous victory, Duddy loses the respect, and-at least emotionally-the life he wanted: 'a boy can be two, three, four potential people, but a man is only one. An embodiment of old-world values, Simcha impresses upon Duddy the maxim, 'A man without land is nobody,' never anticipating the depths (lying, forgery, theft, manipulation) to which Duddy will stoop to acquire the resort land to launch his empire. How much will Duddy sacrifice to get what he wants? 'Born with a rusty spoon in his mouth,' Duddy is a hustler and a schemer, scrambling to acquire the idyllic lakefront property he thinks will raise him out of the Jewish ghetto of post-war Montreal, where 'the boys grew up dirty and sad, spiky also, like grass beside the railroad tracks.' In the hilarious and tragic progress of his career, Duddy-along with everyone around him-discovers how much he will pay for material success.ĭuddy's Uncle Benjy sums him up as 'two people': 'The scheming little bastard I saw so easily and the fine intelligent boy underneath that your grandfather, bless him, saw.' Simcha, the stern but adoring immigrant grandfather, becomes the locus for Duddy's battle with ends and means.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is a novel about costs.

The apprenticeship of duddy kravitz by mordecai richler