A Choice of Enemies

by Mordecai Richler

A colony of Canadian and American writers and filmmakers, exiled by McCarthyist witch-hunts at home, find themselves in London, England, where they evolve a society every bit as merciless, destructive, and close-minded as that from which they have fled. The bonds of the group are strained when Norman Price, an academic turned hack writer, befriends an enigmatic German refugee. Ostracized by his colleagues, Norman soon perceives how easily conviction devolves into tyranny. Believing that “all alliances are discredited,” he enters a moral nightmare in which his choice of enemies is no longer clear. With relentless irony and biting accuracy, Mordecai Richler maps out a surreal territory of doubt, describing not only one man’s personal dilemma but the moral condition of modern society.

Genres: Fiction, Canada

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

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.

People best know Barney's Version (1997) among works of this author, screenwriter, and essayist; people shortlisted his novel Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) for the Man Booker Prize in 1990. He was also well known for the Jacob Two-two stories of children.

A scrap yard dealer reared this son on street in the mile end area of Montréal. He learned Yiddish and English and graduated from Baron Byng High School. Richler enrolled in Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) to study English but dropped before completing his degree.

Years later, Leah Rosenberg, mother of Richler, published an autobiography, The Errand Runner: Memoirs of a Rabbi's Daughter (1981), which discusses birth and upbringing of Mordecai and the sometime difficult relationship.

Richler, intent on following in the footsteps of many of a previous "lost generation" of literary exiles of the 1920s from the United States, moved to Paris at age of 19 years in 1950.

Richler returned to Montréal in 1952, worked briefly at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and then moved to London in 1954. He, living in London meanwhile, published seven of his ten novels as well as considerable journalism.

Worrying "about being so long away from the roots of my discontent", Richler returned to Montréal in 1972. He wrote repeatedly about the Jewish community of Montréal and especially portraying his former neighborhood in multiple novels.

In England in 1954, Richler married Catherine Boudreau, a French-Canadian divorcée nine years his senior. On the eve of their wedding, he met Florence Wood Mann, a young married woman, who smited him.

Some years later, Richler and Mann divorced and married each other. He adopted Daniel Mann, her son. The couple had five children together: Daniel, Jacob, Noah, Martha and Emma. These events inspired his novel Barney's Version.

Richler died of cancer.

Reviews

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

All the while I read this novel by Mordecai Richler, I kept imagining the book was covered in a thick layer of dust. Figurative dust, of course, because I take better care of my books than that... but it's got this cover that's grey and a little purple, it's been sitting on my shelf for decades, a Christmas gift from my beloved grandparents (who didn't read, my grandmother had a grade 6 education and my grandfather was blind), a title that I requested specifically, probably because I'd seen it in a list of great Canadian novels in the back of a book I'd just finished reading. Remember how you used to find out about books, back in the Stone Ages before Goodreads?

Anyway, it struck me as dusty because I hadn't read this book since I was a teenager, and it doesn't look like it's gotten much love elsewhere, and it seems like it takes place in a completely different world.

Set in London after WW2, the story revolves around a bunch of expat film-makers who have escaped the McCarthy witch hunt in North America. Many of them are Jewish and used to live in Montreal. They're big talkers, these characters, they're cracking deals and they're doing kindnesses and they're lying and they're drinking and they're sleeping around. There are a lot of characters, and the scenes flutter back and forth quickly, and I felt like I was watching one of those 1940s movies where everyone is dressed really sharp, and talks really fast, barely catching their breath.

Norman Price's much loved younger brother Nicky is killed by a German guy, who had once been part of Hitler's Youth. Not because he was a Nazi, though. German guy then runs off and falls in love with Norman's girl. As the truth comes out about what he did to Nicky, life for everyone involved becomes very complicated.

I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. I wanted my older self who knows a few more things than my younger self to make a discovery based on my hard-won wisdom and insight, but alas. I found this book rather melodramatic and hard to take seriously. People fall in and out of love instantly and propose marriage easily, people have amnesia and fall in love while in a psychotic fugue, and while I think there are more serious themes at hand about the complexity of living by one's values (which the title suggests), I think I'll give it a dusty, generous 3 stars.

Despite these 3 stars, I know Mordecai Richler is a great writer. When I was a child, I was completely enamoured by his Jacob Two-Two books. He's a big part of the Canadian canon. He was an important voice from the Jewish community in Montreal during his time, and I know I will read more of his work in the days to come. Barney's Version and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz are on my horizon, as I continue to celebrate my country and our great authors.

[Terry · Rating 2 out of 5]

The three leads are set in a love triangle which also opposes two sets of morality and the dichotomy of the individual versus the group. Set in 1957, a group of Canadian and American writers and film makers live in exile in London, England. Persecuted and driven from the U.S. by McCarthyism, they form a rigid insular society, separate even from the London society around them. As the title suggests, enemies are a choice and they as a group have chosen their enemies: anyone outside of their group.
Norman Price is a former Professor turned novelist and screen writer. He also represents a moral stand considered out dated by some. He believes in "justice, dignity, love, and honor." The novel suggests Norman's ethical stand, whether or not sympathetic, is outdated, a "fossil of an earlier age" in Norman's own words. To elucidate, Norman's military courage is mocked by a party guest as "a form of ignorance", he is called "erratic ... selfish, thoughtless, and irresponsible" by a friend, he is unable, in a key scene, to have sex with Sally, climaxing prematurely then running away. Such ineffectuality suggests the ineffectuality of his moral point of view.
When Norman is exiled from the ex-patriots, the leader, Winkleman tries to help him. "Look Norm," Winkleman says, "in this world you've got to make a choice of enemies or you just can't live." Norman has chosen to defend Ernst, an ex-Nazi Youth, and so has angered his group. The choice given Norm is to accept the group values (including its choice of enemies) or becoming an outcast. I.c conformity or non-conformity. In rejecting the group's dictates Norm becomes their enemy and is exiled and blacklisted by them as they were blacklisted and exiled from the U.S. As Norman says in a moment of revelation, "the argument was not one of principle but of power."
Norman defends Ernst partly from his own principles -ironic since Ernst rejects any principle- and partly from a desire to impress Sally, the woman both he and Ernst love. The latter is an example of motive through self-interest that Ernst would understand and approve. Tellingly, the members of the exile community sneer at the concept of self, of the individual, rhetorically equating it with Nazism.
Ernst, the second character in the triangle, rejects principle. Ernst saw the same people working as oppressors for the Communists in East Germany as had done the same job for the Nazis during the war. Ernst claims to not hate Jews but refuses to acknowledge the German Karp as a fellow German because Karp is Jewish. Ernst has no regrets about joining the Hitler Youth and even recalls the group fondly. Ernst sleeps with an American soldier for cigarettes, steals and kills when he feels he must. His sole motivation is survival. "There is no right and wrong." he says, "There are conditions, rewards, punishments, and sides, but that is all."
Ernst is bitter, and frequently self-pitying. When his dark secret is discovered, he wavers between running and staying. Only is affection for Sally makes him waver. He declares angrily to Norman that "Hitler burned the Jews ... and Stalin murdered the Kulaks, so that there should be a better world for me." This absurd statement is certainly NOT true, but Ernst equates it with Norman's generation killing for ideals and principles. Ernst believes only in the individual acting in self interest.
Sally is the third in this love triangle. In a few brilliant brief scenes when she ventures out alone "to fish for sexual experiences" she is developed nicely as a character. Otherwise she is under-visualized, existing solely as the fulcrum between Norman and Ernst and their opposing ethical views. She is largely portrayed only so far as she affects the male character's lives, with little existence of her own, but for those brief few scenes.
Eventually Norman, influenced by Ernst and by events, reaches a third ethical system, placed part way between the previous two. Not entirely rejecting the group, he allows for more of the individual in one's moral system. As he puts it, "If there was a time to man the barricades, then there is also a time to weed one's private garden."

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember picking this up years ago, thinking that an older, more obscure Richler title wouldn't be of the same quality as more recent fare from the 70s and 80s. I was completely wrong: this a novel that uses its concise page count to deliver a rather powerful and pointed human drama, blessedly free of maudlin elements. A great recommendation to anyone who thinks he or she "knows" all they need to about Mordecai Richler's writing.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not always a big fan of Richler's novels that take place in Europe, and often much prefer his Canadian based ones. However, A Choice of Enemies is definitely the exception. It took a little bit to get into the novel, but as soon as all of the characters were together, the story really took off. This is more than just a romance novel, and instead a critique of those who allow themselves to be blinded by their principles.

I would definitely not recommend this for anyone who is looking for something that ends with a "Happily Ever After" ending. Richler refuses to give his readers that, and instead leaves you wondering if anyone will ever find happiness.

[Gerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very early Richler. I was amazed now much he grew as a writer in such a short time between Son of a Smaller Hero and this one. The story got a little bogged down in the middle, but the ending more than makes up for it. I highly recommend it.

[Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An early Richler effort and not as strong as some of his later novels, but still a worthwhile read, especially if you are interested in the post-WWII messiness of leftists coming to grips with the spectre of Stalinism, of former Nazis seeking to hide, of Jews who survived concentration camps only to be suspected of having survived by collaborating with their persecutors, and of the political machinations and gossip and backstabbing that occurred in London among would-be writers and filmmakers. It's a heady brew and a morally messy business, and while Richler does a good job of mucking up the moral landscape, he is less convincing at bringing matters to closure, and even the most sympathetic character (Norman) is hardly heroic, both in fact and by his own admission. What is most lacking here that is so present in Richler's later works is his wicked and wickedly funny sense of humor. At best, it peeks through here and there in this work.

[Martha · Rating 2 out of 5]

1957 book; author's writing & editing improved so much over time

[Andy Pandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not his best but it is Richler.