Our Favourite Martian

Is George Jonas an out-of-body extra-terrestrial sent to earth to chastise our fractured ideology, sloppy logic and effortless self-importance? Quite possibly. Indeed, the suggestion of extra-terrestriality comes from Jonas himself in this trenchant, compelling and often charming memoir. The fourth of seven sections is entitled “On Being A Martian.” That’s pretty explicit, if you ask me, especially as this is the section that deals with his early days in the Toronto media circus after fleeing his native Hungary in 1956, the most sensible year for post-war Hungarians to go travelling.

To appreciate George Jonas and the originality he represents in Canadian letters, it is worth knowing that when this particular Hungarian, or Martian, made it past the invading Russian soldiers to safety in a refugee camp in Vienna in that fateful year, it was the dense crowd of desperate Hungarians in front of the United States embassy that led him to Canada. There wasn’t anyone...