On Snooker

Richler has given us a great read on snooker. It will be a long time before we see the likes of another as good on this from the viewpoint of a Canadian fan.Snooker has suffered at the hands of the establishment the same fate as Country Music,Comics,Reading and virtually all entertainment media. Being about the same age as Richler;a lot of my youth was "mis-spent" ,but not regrettably,in the local Snooker Academy.That was where one learned early that "you paid for the lesson but the experience was for free".Richler brought back many menories to me of watching and talking with the greats during the Competitions at the CNE in Toronto in the early 80"s.At that time Alex Higgins was the character that created the fan interest and support.The establishment would just as soon he didn't exist.Perfection and dullness crept in. Now in an effort to get the fans and money back;we are being fed 9-Ball.What the establishment never learns is that entertainment belongs to the fans;and they will make the choice of what they want and will support.

In On Snooker, Mordecai Richler here considers his love of the snooker game and his observations of the men and women who share his enthusiasm. Enjoy a blend of autobiography and game insights which examines snooker tables from Canada to Dublin, in a lively first person expose of memorable characters and games.

This book will be of intense interest to snooker enthusiasts and should hold some appeal for most billiards players and all Richler fans. A lifelong snooker fanatic, Richler begins with rich anecdotes from his childhood in Montreal, reviews the early history of cue sports, then devotes several chapters to coverage of the British snooker tournament scene, with special attention paid to Stephen Hendry, Alex Higgins, Cliff Thorburn and Kirk Stevens. He concludes with a discussion of sports themes in recent fiction. Some of the quotes and anecdotes will be overly familiar to the devoted snooker follower but entertaining for the more casual reader. Richler's final work is a welcome addition to the recently sparse snooker literature.