Barney's Version

In his novel Barney’s Version (1997), Mordecai Richler uses layers of narrative to create an unreliable reality cloaked in a self-serving autobiography as an old man recounts his life while battling mental lapses and old age; his work is explicitly edited by his son, who may be introducing even more ambiguity into the narrative.

Barney Panofsky states, “Terry’s the spur. The splinter under my fingernail.” He then explains that the memoir he is writing is in response to one being penned by Terry McIver which Barney is certain will contain many charges against him. Thus, the memoir is a preemptive defense.

Barney recounts his youth as a writer with potential in Paris in the 1950s, where he, Terry McIver, and his best friend, Boogie, are part of a group of expatriate Canadian writers. Barney feels his whole life is full of with potential, and he will go on to do great things. He meets Clara Charnofsky, a brilliant, but mentally unstable, poet. Barney marries her, but her illness drives her to suicide. Barney notes that decades later, her poetry and tragic life have made her into a celebrity, an icon of the feminist movement.



Devastated, Barney moves back to Montreal where he begins to work in the television industry, becoming a very successful producer of TV shows and films of low quality. Barney is not proud of this work, but he likes the money. Attempting to live a better life, he meets his second wife, referred to only as “The Second Mrs. Panofsky,” who is extremely talkative but shallow and uninteresting. At their wedding, Barney meets Miriam and falls in love with her on the spot.

Barney and the Second Mrs. Panofsky are not happily married. On a day when Barney has had a dream about a plane crash, he comes home to their cottage to find Boogie and the Second Mrs. Panofsky in bed together. The Second Mrs. Panofsky flees in a rage, and Barney threatens Boogie with a gun; Boogie doesn’t take him very seriously. Recognizing he must divorce the Second Mrs. Panofsky, Barney asks Boogie if he will be a co-respondent in the proceedings.

Boogie mysteriously disappears, leaving no body. Barney is detained as a suspect in Boogie’s disappearance and later his presumed death. He is charged, and the prosecution puts forth the theory that he came home to find Boogie in bed with the Second Mrs. Panofsky and killed him in a drunken rage, however, Barney is found not guilty at the trial and released. Barney specifically tells the reader that he remembers Boogie telling him he wanted to go for a swim after being caught with the Second Mrs. Panofsky, he recalls drinking with Boogie, and then telling him that he was too drunk to go for a swim, advice which Boogie ignores. Barney fires a warning shot as a joke as Boogie heads into the water. He then says that while he doesn’t remember anything else, he knows he could not have killed his friend and, in fact, still expects Boogie to walk through the door at any moment.



Barney pursues Miriam and marries her. They have three children together, but his paranoia concerning how attractive she is—leading him to worry constantly that she will realize how unattractive he is and leave him—drives her away a few years before he sits down to write his memoirs. She takes up with another wealthy man. He expresses a desire to someday win her back, despite the fact that he is clearly suffering from some form of dementia. His children have also become estranged from him, partly because they, like everyone else, believe he did, in fact, murder Boogie.

Terry McIver becomes a successful writer, producing what Barney regards as deeply cynical imitations of the great literature of the original Lost Generation, playing off their time together in Paris as if it were parallel to Hemingway and Fitzgerald’s in terms of literary significance. He is aware that his jealousy of McIver colors his perceptions.

The novel ends with Barney being formally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease and facing a short slide into complete dementia and then death. His son Michael, who has been editing the memoir and responding to many of Barney’s mistakes and comments with his own footnotes, goes to their family cottage and stands on the porch looking out over the lake. He witnesses a “water bomber” plane descending to scoop up hundreds of gallons of water from the lake to dump elsewhere, implying that Boogie might have been swimming when one of these planes came, scooping him up along with the water and depositing him in the mountains far away.