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November 30, 2001
Daniel Richler's version
New TV head talks of books and his famous father.
PAT JOHNSON REPORTER
Creating a television station about books is the most marginalized,
non-commercial enterprise Daniel Richler could think of. But he
did it anyway.
The literary journalist has hosted programs about books and the
arts in the past, including the CBC series Big Life, but
he took his vision for a 24-hour book station to Moses Znaimer and
the Toronto media magnate bought the idea. Richler is now the editor-in-chief
and supervising producer of Book Television, one of the new national
stations available on digital cable or via satellite dish.
He brought the story of his latest undertaking to Vancouver recently,
where he gave the closing lecture of this year's Cherie Smith JCC
Jewish Book Fair Nov. 22. The sometimes bawdy Richler was well received
by the crowd in the Norman Rothstein Theatre, the site five days
earlier of a less successful presentation with author Chaim Potok.
Richler's visit was presented jointly by the JCC book fair and the
Hadassah-WIZO Council of Vancouver.
Richler told the audience that he wants to turn his station into
a CNN of books, though he acknowledged that the limited budget is
cramping the style of what the station could eventually become.
Rather than putting two authors and a potted plant in front of a
camera, Richler wants to send cameras and journalists around the
world to depict visually what the books they feature are describing.
For instance, a book about Afghanistan could be the impetus for
a foray to the troubled country.
In the meantime, Richler joked, grandiose plans for programming
are so out of reach that they considered reading War and Peace
from cover to cover on air to fill the first few months of air time.
The CRTC gave approval for the station to start Sept. 7 and there
was little time to prepare original programming.
"When we got the licence, we freaked out," he said.
But if Richler professes to be daunted, he also expressed enthusiasm
at the challenge before him. His past experience on the book program
Imprint is an example of his lack of orthodoxy. As host of
that show, he permitted guests to smoke - in contravention of union
rules - and the coffee mugs were filled with single malt scotch,
he said.
Richler read from his 10-year-old novel Kicking Tomorrow.
His lecture was peppered with words that are not considered appropriate
for television and the excerpt from his book - discussing a haphazard
seder in which an assimilated Jewish family discusses God and tries
to understand the Passover traditions - was hilarious and profane.
Richler prefaced the reading by noting that a Canadian reviewer
had said that he felt like taking a bath every 10 pages. Noting
that Richler had dedicated the book to his mother, another reviewer
quipped that he (the reviewer) wouldn't even let his mother read
it.
Kicking Tomorrow was released almost a decade ago and was
never followed by another novel, due to what Richler described as
a monumental sophomore slump. However, the novel is expected to
be re-released next year, probably related, Richler acknowledged,
to a renewed interest in all of his late father Mordecai's books,
which will also be re-released soon.
Daniel Richler also read from Mordecai Richler's last book, On
Snooker, a funny section about getting drunk in an Irish pub
while on assignment for the New Yorker.
He spoke fondly of his father, noting that the esteemed author
wrote almost to the day he died and held no truck with the writers
who sweat over every word.
He wondered aloud what his father would think of a television
station devoted to books. The one reservation his father might have
held, he said, is the single-minded energy needed to run a television
station and the resulting neglect of other interests.
"In a strange way, this book channel is really getting in the way
of my reading," said Richler. "Let alone my writing."
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