Joel Yanofsky

Several years ago a young man asked me what it takes to write a memoir. “Wait for something bad to happen,” I told him. Then, by way of encouragement, I added, “Don’t worry. It will.” This was more curse, I see now, than helpful writerly advice. In my defence, I had so-called misery memoirs on the…

A few years ago, after writing a memoir about my family, specifically my son’s autism diagnosis, I was grateful to receive the occasional email or Facebook message commending me on being a good father. Grateful but also surprised. I secretly wondered: what book were they reading? After all, my portrait of myself was of a man overwhelmed by self-pity—more frustrating than…

Last December, after the film version of Barney’s Version came out, I noticed that the chatter on my Facebook page about the movie and the Mordecai Richler novel it was based on had taken a familiar turn. One FB “friend” wondered, without going into detail, whether anyone else was disturbed by the anti-Semitism in the…