The Incomparable Atuk by Mordecai Richler

'Old One.' Atuk loathed addressing him like that, but ever since his father had figured in that prize-winning National Film Board short he had insisted on it. 'Old One,' Atuk continued, 'I have found the girl I want to marry.'

'Is she a nice Eskimo girl?'

Atuk scratched the back of his neck.

'Speak no more. Atuk, my son, I remember when your eyes were deep and true as the blue spring sea. I recall when your soul was pure and white as the noon iceberg. This is no more. Today--'

'For Christ's sake, will you cut out that crazy talk. You sound like you were auditioning for Disney again or something.'

Atuk, an Inuit from Baffin Bay, hits it big with a collection of poetry. He's brought down to Toronto for an award, and he decides to stay. A lot of people are invested in Atuk's success: the big businessmen who bankroll his publications, the professors who pontificate on his cultural significance, the journalists who write about his dalliance with Bette Dolan, a pin-up and Canadian icon who recently swam the length of Lake Ontario. To these people, Atuk plays the naive Native, speaking in simple language and writing about polar bears and icebergs, but deep down, he's a shrewd operator who knows how to manipulate those who think they're manipulating him.

Richler's Canadian satire is most famous today for its ill-fated movie adaptations, which supposedly killed several leading men who were attached to it: John Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley. I don't think that movie's ever going to be made--it's hard to imagine the broad racial comedy of The Incomparable Atuk translating in our day and age. And there's plenty in the depiction of the Inuit--the book, of course, uses the outdated-to-offensive "Eskimo"--that seems cringeworthy today. But ultimately, it works, because the satire is pointed back at Canadian society. Atuk's "Nativeness" is all a sham, a kind of performance meant to satisfy white Canadian expectations. Atuk's exploitation of these expectations is intense and complete: he keeps his family, including several brothers and a father known only as "Old One," locked up in a Toronto apartment building mass-producing cheap Inuit sculptures. At first, Atuk's family seems like they might be as pure and uncorrupted as he pretends to be--he convinces them that the television is a charmed box, where Humphrey Bogart appears by way of incantation--but soon they wise up to his schemes and start agitating for their own share of the cash.

Richler has his sights set on Canadian identity. People believe in Atuk because he's a symbol of Canada, like the Maple Leafs. Much of this identity, Richler observes, is founded on being different from the United States, that foul country to the south that wants to punish Atuk for eating a wayward Army pilot (come on now), even while it has adopted American attitudes toward money and self-interest wholesale. Richler saves a special sharpness for Canadian Jews, who adopt Protestant affectations and attitudes to get ahead. One conversation between Atuk and his benefactor Rory Peel (ne Panofsky) even takes aim at Zionism, underlining the comparison toward the end with a thick black line:

'How amusing. You come back after thousands of years and would like me and my family to move out. Your people sound very aggressive to me.'

'With reason, but. Conditions--'

'One persecution does not excuse another. Just because your people have suffered--'

'It's more than that. The land was promised to us by our gods.'

'Pardon me while I laugh.'

'We have a book. It's all written out there.'

'Look, everybody has a book. This is our country. You can't drive us out like--like Arabs. We're Canadians.'

'To us, you're all Arabs.'

Imagine putting that in a movie in the year 2024.

Richler's best books, I think, manage to combine his particular brand of satire with a deep pathos. Atuk is an amoral schemer; there's nothing in him that resembles the striver resentment of Duddy Kravitz or the aging guilt of Barney Panofsky. He's a cartoon, and perhaps there's no room in this little book to make him real. The satire wheels from black to bright colors, often funny but always superficial, marked by silly gags, like the dalliance between an FBI agent and an undercover journalist who fall in love with each other while crossdressing--like a rejected plotline from Shakespeare. But the sheer brazenness of Atuk--and the novel--are well worth their brief span.