Mordecai Richler

"Yikes," said a terrified Jacob Two-Two. "He's heading our way. What should I say? What should I say?"

Mr. I.M. Greedyguts stopped immediately before their table. "I beg your pardon," he said to Jacob Two-Two, "but would you happen to be related to the World's Best Midget Photographer?"

Jacob Two-Two has delighted and entertained children around the world. Many of us have grown up reading Jacob's adventures and mishaps, and still more have been delighted by the television show and movies that have spawned from the stories. Mordecai Richler, author of Jacob Two Two Meets the Hooded Fang, Jacob Two Two and the Dinosaur, and Jacob Two Two's First Spy Case, was born on St. Urbain Street in Montreal on January 27, 1931 to a scrapyard dealer and a rabbi's daughter. He moved to Europe when he was 19, after dropping out of Concordia University, then called Sir George Willams University. He moved back to Montreal in 1972, after spending nearly twenty years abroad. By the time he came back to Canada, he had published two essays and eight novels, including The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Cocksure, and St. Urbain's Horseman. Mr. Richler once said that he felt "forever rooted in Montreal's St. Urbain Street. That was my time, my place, and I have elected myself to get it right."

(her is a small photo of St. Urbain, which is the street depicted in The Apprenticship of Duddy Kravitz, and The St.Urbain Horseman, among other novels by Richler)

Richler was perhaps best known for his so-called 'acerbic commentary'. He often critiqued Quebec's language laws, as well as anti-semitism and the separatist

movement in Quebec. An anonymous writer describes Richler's style:

He was more than willing to say the unsayable--though often in a weary mumble, with head bowed, hair askew and drink in hand. Admirers praised Richler for daring to tell uncomfortable truths.

A 2004 oral biography by Michael Posner was entitled The Last Honest Man.

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Mordecai Richler was known to be a cranky curmudgeon, but he had passion. He devoted his life to getting it right, and getting it true.

In all, Richler wrote eleven novels, two screenplays,

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