Morley Torgov

I had a hard time understanding what I was reading at first, but this appears to be fact-based or factual episodes from Torgov's years growing up in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario in the 1930s and 1940s. It starts in 1949 but soon it dives back to his childhood during the Depression years. Torgov describes what it was like to be raised by middle-class Jewish parents, part of a small Jewish community in the centre of downtown. Episodes describe his family's interactions with the city's other cultures, a smorgasbord of immigrants attracted to the burgeoning steel industry, predominantly Italian, but also Ukrainian, Chinese and various others. There's several insights into his own culture, with careful descriptions of how it was atypical compared to the Jewish experience in other communities. The writing is fantastic, he's a great stylist, and the humour is gentle but really on point.

My sole criticism during was that he played it safe by consistently steering away from anything serious. We don't hear the speech about fundraising for Israel, only about the speaker's amusing discomfort. Torgov doesn't share the pain of his mother's passing, it's only mentioned casually. With everything so lighthearted and fun-poking in its characterizations, something was missing. The exception to this is his relationship with his father. With that one element more closely examined the story becomes a whole, because a good place to come from is not just a place.… (mais)

To start with the positive, this is a clever conception for a comic novel – Richard Wagner is preparing the premier of his opera, Der Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and someone is killing off his star performers. Torgov nicely shows both the megalomania of Wagner and the glorious style of his music. (And he describes the pleasures of other musical performances in a sensitive language, as well.) The over-the-top personality of Wagner deserves an over-the-top storyline that punctures the balloon of self-importance he lives on.
Sadly, the execution of this conception is pretty awful. I was well into the story before I asked myself, Is this supposed to be comical? And I decided that it couldn’t be. The story seemed so ridiculous that it couldn’t be serious, but it seemed too earnest and clumsy to be humour. Later, reading on the book cover that Torgov won the Leacock award for humour for another book, I concluded that I was wrong: it is supposed to be comical, although it’s still not funny.
Humour is a personal thing, so perhaps it’s humorous for other readers. But the characters are also stereotyped and unbelievable, the sex scenes are gratuitous, the conclusion is contrived. Torgov tells us the facts to move the plot along, but doesn’t show them in his writing. He sticks bits of background into the narrative as if he needed to pad the scenes, but doesn’t create the atmosphere to make them fit in. The characters are illogical puppets who act to suit the plot, but have nothing interesting about them.
It would be fun if someone were to write a comic novel about Wagner with realistic characters who weren’t just silly. Unfortunately, this isn’t that.… (mais)