Seymour Blicker z"l (1940-2025)

One of the great blessings I have had in my life in the last 20 years or so has been getting to know the great Montreal novelist and playwright Seymour Blicker, who passed away at his home this past Friday. 

Seymour made a name for himself in the late 1960s and 70s with the publication of three novels, Blues Chased a Rabbit (1969), Shmucks (1972) and The Last Collection (1976). I wrote about Shmucks in an earlier blog post. In the 1980s and 90s, Seymour went on to write screenplays, television scripts and plays. He is perhaps best known for the play "Never Judge A Book By Its Cover" (1987) which I know was still being performed internationally a few years ago, and the film script of The Kid (1997). 

It was Shmucks that brought Seymour and I together. The novella was mentioned to me by my friend  and co-author Seymour Mayne. He said that he had recently re-read it for consideration to be put on a syllabus for a Jewish Canadian literature class he was teaching at University of Ottawa, and found that it had stood up surprisingly well. I immediately tried to find a copy, locating a used hardcover edition on Abe Books. I loved it. It was funny, poignant and clever. I wondered whatever happened to Blicker. A bit of online searching revealed that he had continued to write plays, taught in the creative writing department at Concordia University, and had moved up north in the Laurentians. I was intrigued by his apparent reclusiveness. And there was something else that caught my interest, his work in television, particularly an episode he had written for the police comedy Barney Miller. When I was growing up I was a fan of that show, and one episode in particular had stuck with me. It's possibly the most famous Barney Miller, when a man comes to the station claiming that he's a werewolf and asks to be incarcerated before midnight when he transforms and wreaks violent havoc. It's a masterfully written story. I remember the anticipation of waiting until the very end of the episode to find out if he actually becomes a werewolf. Unbeknownst to me Blicker had written that memorable episode.

Mayne put us in touch, and the two Seymours and me (they called me an honorary Seymour) met for coffee in Cote-Saint-Luc. By that time Blicker had moved back to the city. I felt giddy (and honored) to meet him. That was the first of many coffees with Seymour. We stayed in touch, regularly exchanging emails and meeting every so often at the local McDonalds. The last time was about a year ago I think. We had planned to get together for coffee last spring and at various points over the summer but something always got in the way. He'd had health difficulties for many years but somehow always mustered the energy to meet. It was apparent now that his health was declining more quickly. By the end of the summer he was messaging that he wasn't feeling well enough for a visit but would let me know when he was up for one. I had a feeling I wasn't going to be seeing him again. 

It's a terrible shame that Seymour has not received the acknowledgement that he deserves. In around 2019 when Seymour was approaching his 80th birthday I contacted some people I knew at the Concordia creative writing department to see if they would be interested in organizing a public literary event to celebrate his birthday. I also brought the idea to the Jewish Public Library where I know there is an archive of clippings on his career. I received polite but unenthusiastic responses. Busy in my own life, I didn't press harder, which I now regret.

Seymour had undoubtedly been a talented and ambitious writer in his prime. In the mid-70s he packed up his family and moved to Los Angeles in the hope of establishing himself as a writer for film and television. It didn't last very long. I asked him what happened. He said, LA was no place to raise a family. I got the impression it was culture shock for him.

By the time I got to know him he had mellowed, maybe even become disillusioned. Like so many writers who felt they deserved more recognition, he now seemed to have become ambivalent about it. In truth, I think Seymour had acknowledged that the culture had moved on. You might say that he was a casualty of the times: Novelists, playwrights and even filmmakers were no longer held in the same esteem as they had been. 

Every time we met I asked if he'd been writing, working on a new play or short story. He'd say he had ideas, but was finding it harder and harder to focus enough bring his ideas to fruition. At one point he travelled to Vienna to see the opening of one of his plays, which he found gratifying. And he was excited when his novels were re-issued by his publisher as e-books. At one point, I suggested to my publisher Vehicule Press, who specializes in publishing classic forgotten Montreal novels, to consider buying the rights to publish a new edition of Shmucks. The literary industry being what it is, it's doubtful that this satirical novel, which has comic elements that are decidedly 'unwoke', will have a new print edition too soon unfortunately. Even the novels of Mordecai Richler have been taught less and less in the years since his death. 

I look forward to the day that Blicker is back on the syllabus alongside other great Montreal literati Richler and Cohen, where he deserves to be. Sad that he won't be here to enjoy the accolades.  

Bonus: My brief online review of The Last Collection, a novel which didn't get close to enough attention when it was released.

Absolutely hysterical and thoroughly enjoyable. Canada is not known for its satirical novels, but in Shmucks and The Last Collection Seymour Blicker proves himself to be equal to the masters of the genre, especially the Jewish sub genre, which has it's own style and flavour. This novel is especially reminiscent of Woody Allen's wackiest. Memorable characters include a particularly neurotic psychiatrist whose office features tropical decor and a remote controlled recliner chair that spins and rises to the ceiling, and a Jewish thug with a soft spot. Blicker does what all the best authors do, he turns the tables on the characters and at the same time on the reader. The cons get conned, and we can't ever really be sure who is the genuine article. And therein lies the deeper resonance of this novel, as in all superior satire, the layers of truth and deceit are revealed. The last collection referred to in the title is not only collection on a debt, or the mental illness of hoarding and greed which afflicts the protagonist and which gets him into debt in the first place. But it also cleverly refers to the collection of moral sins that one party wants to atone for and the collection of guilt that the other party wants to liberate themselves from.