The Dialectical Dancer

The raconteur of national renown dances with the ghosts of his father and mother, whose madcap ambitions for their son became the canvas for this tragi-comic tale. In his memoir, Larry Zolf – the most personal of journalists, the most astute ofastuteobservers– writeslikehetalks: an amazing combination of amiable anecdotes, one-liners, sharp-eyed his- torical reporting, open confession, and caustic puns.

So, who is this man Zolf, the phenom sometimes known as the Schnozz, whose father fought in Kerensky’s army in the Russian Revolution; who is this man whose beautiful but superstitious mother, once the family had settled in Winnipeg, believed women disappeared into nowhere atop escalators; who is this engagé reporter, this dialectical dancer, who played backroom crony to Robert Kennedy, who taught Pierre Elliott Trudeau to be a stand-up comedian, who befriended a KKK sheriff in Mississippi, so that he, Zolf, might attend a backwoods schoolroom class in algebra; who is this man who was beaten about the head with a cane by a one-legged cabinet minister who was a war hero; who is this man who sometimes wore a false nose and false glasses to press conferences so he could take them off and declare, HERE IS THE NOSE WHO KNOWS! All this and more is revealed in this remarkably lucid and poignant memoir.