St. Urbain's Horseman by Mordecai Richler

First published: 1971

Type of work: Impressionistic realism

Time of work: The late 1960s, with flashbacks to several years earlier

Locale: London and Montreal

Principal Characters:

• Jacob “Jake” Hersh, the protagonist, a film and stage director who is on trial for a sexual offense
• Harry Stein, a bookkeeper who is economically and sexually frustrated
• Ruthy Stein, his wife, an Englishwoman whom Joseph “Joey” Hersh used and discarded some years earlier
• Joseph “Joey” Hersh, the Horseman of St. Urbain Street, an adventurer who appears only in the tales of others
• Nancy Hersh, Jacob’s wife

The Novel

In St. Urbain’s Horseman, Mordecai Richler uses cinematic techniques as he weaves together a number of different plot strands and cuts from one character to another. The most important elements of this complex plot are the fate and struggle for success of the main character, Jacob “Jake” Hersh; Harry Stein’s past and his role as a contrast and antagonist to the main character; a brief and spotty life of Joseph “Joey” Hersh, the Horseman of the title; and Jake’s fascination with him. Many of the chapters juxtapose one character to another. This device is especially prominent in the contrasts between the well-to-do Jake Hersh and the poor Harry Stein. The Horseman, Joey, is used as a symbol or theme, and his presence is scattered throughout the book. The most important plot strand deals with Jake Hersh.

When the novel opens, Jake Hersh is awaiting trial in London on some unexplained sexual offense. The resolution of the trial is suspended until the end, while Jake’s earlier life and anxieties are traced. Jake is, for example, anxious about his career as a director, about the success of his friend Luke, about his wife, Nancy, and about Nazi war criminals and the Jews. He spends most of his time cutting out newspaper clippings of disasters. In flashbacks, there is a contrast between the younger, more confident Jake and the worried and idle Jake now apparent. He is worried that he will lose everything he has achieved and that the world will sink back into the barbarism of the 1940’s.

In contrast to Jake, Harry Stein is always active and in pursuit of any one of the many things denied him, such as sex, position, or money, or finding some way to take revenge on those who possess those things. He attempts to force Jake to pay the seven hundred pounds that Joey has bilked his wife, Ruthy, out of, which leads to the curious relationship between the two. Jake sees Harry as a victim, and so he is concerned about his problems, even after Harry involves him in a messy sex trial. He even gets Harry a barrister and pays the seven hundred pounds, though it is not his debt. Jake’s wife, Nancy, and his mother are afraid that Harry will drag Jake down with him, and they believe that Jake’s sympathy for the underdog or the rebel will undo him.

In contrast to Harry’s very real and complaining presence, Joey Hersh exists only in Jake’s mind and in the tales and reports he collects from others. Joey represents not the victim but the defiance of the rebel. Joey refuses to accept his lot or his place. Jake sees Joey wherever there is oppression: Spain, Germany, Israel, or Montreal. He is always asking the question, “What are you going to do about it?” Jake supports Joey against those who see him merely as a gangster or an opportunist, even if it means that he must go against some of the people in his own family.

The climax of the novel is the trial in the Old Bailey, in which Jake is given only a reprimand while Harry is sentenced to seven years in prison. Yet this narrow escape does not relieve Jake of his inertia, and soon afterward he finds out that Joey has died in Paraguay. The victim and the hero have both been taken from him, and he falls into a deeper depression. He attempts to replace Joey as “St. Urbain’s avenging Horseman,” but he realizes that that is not his role, that is not who he is. With that role clearer in his mind, he begins to recover. He is reconciled with his wife and with Luke, and the book ends with Jake symbolically erasing Joey’s death date and replacing it with “presumed dead.” Jake is, thereby, restored to a simpler and more ordinary life with his wife and children, and Joey regains his mythic stature while escaping from his real fate.

The Characters

Jake Hersh is the main character in the novel, and there is hardly a scene in which he does not appear. His memories and flashbacks to his younger self show a lively, confident, and irreverent person who seems capable of achieving anything he desires. He is seen as he wins his wife and begins to achieve success as a director. He has left provincial Montreal behind for sophisticated London to make a name for himself. In contrast, the Jake of the present seems to have lost his energy and appears to be aimless. He is living in an enforced suspension of time while awaiting the result of his trial. He is also estranged from his wife and his friend Luke, and as a result he must reevaluate his values and aims.

Harry Stein has no pretensions to success; he is doing his best to survive and to get some of his own back from those who are better off than he is. Harry is a grudge collector; he believes that everyone is exploiting him while he is doing the same. Nothing that Jake does for him, for example, satisfies him. The judge who sentences Harry calls him “a persistent public menace,” but Jake’s description of Harry as “a street accident” seems closer to the truth; Harry is a product of his environment more than a “menace” to it. His poverty and insignificance are mocked by the riches and freedom of an indulgent society.

Joey Hersh is not a product of society but a continual challenge to whatever limitations are set up against him and others. His style is bold, dashing, and provocative, while Harry’s is furtive and servile. The reader is never sure whether Joey is a criminal or a savior; Richler mixes in hints of illegal activities with suggestions of higher motives. There can be no doubt, however, that he represents the principle of freedom in the novel. In addition, he is a touchstone that enables the reader to judge characters by their support or denial of Joey. It is no accident that the most positive characters in the novel, Jake and Hanna, are Joey’s staunchest defenders.

Critical Context

St. Urbain’s Horseman is a more complex novel than Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and as a result has been more of a critical than a popular success. Bruce W. Powe has praised that complexity very highly: “For the first time, after Duddy Kravitz, Richler’s writing achieves ambiguity, and on occasion a mad super real quality.” Yet while there was praise for Richler’s refusal to repeat his earlier success, some believed that he had not completely integrated all the elements of his novel. For example, Roger Sale in The New York Review of Books criticized its loose structure: “[Richler] is simply too attracted by his own gaudy attractiveness, and the only limits he allows for are those he defines for himself, not those discovered in a fiction.” Later critics, however, have found a complex design in the novel; Warren Tallman is, perhaps, the best of these critics, and his description of the “symphonic structure” of St. Urbain’s Horseman is particularly enlightening.

Bibliography

Powe, Bruce W. A Climate Charged: Essays on Canadian Writers, 1984.

Sheps, G. David. “Waiting for Joey: The Theme of the Vicarious in St. Urbain’s Horseman,” in Journal of Canadian Fiction. III (Winter, 1974), pp.83-92.

Tallman, Warren. “Need for Laughter,” in Canadian Literature. LVI (Spring, 1973), pp. 71-83.

Yardley, Jonathan. Review in The New York Times Book Review. LXIV (June 27, 1971), p. 7.