The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel

published	2007 by HarperCollins
binding	Hardcover
isbn	0007149824 (isbn13: 9780007149827)
pages	400
description	For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. For sixty years they have been left alone, neglected and half-forgotten in a backwater of history. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry them off into the unknown. ...more [close] For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. For sixty years they have been left alone, neglected and half-forgotten in a backwater of history. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry them off into the unknown. But homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. He and his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Shemets, can't catch a break in any of their outstanding cases. Landsman's new supervisor is the love of his life—and also his worst nightmare. And in the cheap hotel where he has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under Landsman's nose. Out of habit, obligation, and a mysterious sense that it somehow offers him a shot at redeeming himself, Landsman begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy. But when word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, Landsman soon finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, hopefulness, evil, and salvation that are his heritage—and with the unfinished business of his marriage to Bina Gelbfish, the one person who understands his darkest fears. At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, an homage to 1940s noir, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.
date added	12-21-06 edit book

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Joe rated it:

08/27/07

Read in May, 2007

Perhaps only Michael Chabon could describe a plateful of trembling, gelatinous kugel with a dollop of herring — unidentified grease and pinhead-sized eggs whiter than a grapefruit rind spilling out of its punctured guts — and make it sound artful.

Perhaps only Michael Chabon would try.

Unlike writers like Jonathan Franzen, who writes with the fluid grace of Roberto Clemente patrolling right field, Chabon’s prose feels methodical. It reads as if Chabon has spent a good, long time thin...more

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Emma rated it:

10/28/07

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: fans of speculative fiction and/or Michael Chabon

Jews, Alaska, chess, and murder: usually these subjects don’t have much in common. That's until you read Michael Chabon’s new novel “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” where these elements come together to create the core of this quirky noir story.

Chabon’s novel is based on an interesting conceit: What if Jews had not been able to settle in Israel after World War II and, instead, were granted temporary residency on the Alaskan panhandle?

The original plan was set into motion arou...more Jews, Alaska, chess, and murder: usually these subjects don’t have much in common. That's until you read Michael Chabon’s new novel “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” where these elements come together to create the core of this quirky noir story.

Chabon’s novel is based on an interesting conceit: What if Jews had not been able to settle in Israel after World War II and, instead, were granted temporary residency on the Alaskan panhandle?

The original plan was set into motion around 1939 by Harold Ickes (Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior), in response to a plea from a Jewish community in the town of Neustadt. The settlement was proposed in the Alaska Territory as a way to work around the United States’ existing immigration quotas, but fell through due to a lack of political support and backlash from Alaskans who feared the prospect of foreign settlers for reasons ranging from racism to increased competition for jobs.

In the novel, Ickes was successful in bringing his plan to fruition and Jewish refugees were given the Federal District of Sitka as a temporary settlement. That was sixty years before the start of Chabon’s novel when Sitka is getting ready to revert to the United States leaving the fate of the Alaskan Jews largely unknown.

Amazingly, all of these events are just a backdrop for Chabon’s actual story: an edgy murder mystery.

When Meyer Landsman moved into a local flophouse nine months ago he wasn’t looking to do much more than spend some quality time with his bottle of slivovitz and “the shot glass that he is currently dating” until Sitka finally reverts. Landsman’s plans change abruptly when the body of a local chess prodigy turns up in the hotel.

For reasons that elude even him, Landsman feels obligated to investigate the murder despite pressure from his new boss/ex-wife and other higher ups to drop the case. As the investigation continues, Landsman and Berko Shemets, his half-Tlingit partner, find themselves sucked into the underworld of the black hat community of the Verbover Jews and their nefarious undertakings.

Chabon also throws in several conspiracies, a cover-up scheme, a pseudo-terrorist plot, and lots of Yiddish phrases just to keep things interesting. This last touch is because the novel has the unique characteristic of being a novel written in English about characters who do not speak English: they all speak Yiddish instead.

So “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” does require a bit of energy to read. At first, nothing is going to make sense. But Chabon eventually pulls it all together. The Yiddish phrases slowly start to become comprehensible, as do the various subplots Chabon incorporates into this very unique story.

Chabon’s prose has a strange charm, which might be expected from an author who won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,” a novel whose plot largely centers around a comic book hero. The narration is hard-edged, often gritty, but always with a smile threatening to form. (Jews from south of Sitka are referred to as “Mexicans.”)
From the first line, this story will grab a reader’s attention. Written in the present tense, it has an immediacy fitting for a book that tries to recreate the style of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled detective stories in a Jewish community.

Chabon starts off strong with a vision that he vividly crafts on the page. This vision begins to falter in the second half of the novel as Chabon becomes wrapped up in the complicated conventions common to noir stories. The explanations for several conspiracies come off as convoluted, if not entirely out of nowhere. The novel’s ending, too, is not as strong as its opening.

Shortcomings aside, Chabon has done a great service to the genre of speculative (or “what if?”) fiction by showing that it is possible to write a serious S. F. novel....less

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Nick rated it:

09/12/07

(Not really a review. Nor something I wrote. But funny!)

"Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it."— Ruth Franklin (Slate, 8 May 2007)

Something woke her in the night. Was it steps she heard, coming up the stairs — somebody in wet training shoes, climbing the stairs very slowly... but who? And why wet shoes? It hadn't rained. There, again, the hea...more (Not really a review. Nor something I wrote. But funny!)

"Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it."— Ruth Franklin (Slate, 8 May 2007)

Something woke her in the night. Was it steps she heard, coming up the stairs — somebody in wet training shoes, climbing the stairs very slowly... but who? And why wet shoes? It hadn't rained. There, again, the heavy, soggy sound. But it hadn't rained for weeks, it was only sultry, the air close, with a cloying hint of mildew or rot, sweet rot, like very old finiocchiona, or perhaps liverwurst gone green. There, again — the slow, squelching, sucking steps, and the foul smell was stronger. Something was climbing her stairs, coming closer to her door. As she heard the click of heel bones that had broken through rotting flesh, she knew what it was. But it was dead, dead! God damn that Chabon, dragging it out of the grave where she and the other serious writers had buried it to save serious literature from its polluting touch, the horror of its blank, pustular face, the lifeless, meaningless glare of its decaying eyes! What did the fool think he was doing? Had he paid no attention at all to the endless rituals of the serious writers and their serious critics — the formal expulsion ceremonies, the repeated anathemata, the stakes driven over and over through the heart, the vitriolic sneers, the endless, solemn dances on the grave? Did he not want to preserve the virginity of Yaddo? Had he not even understand the importance of the distinction between sci fi and counterfactual fiction? Could he not see that Cormac McCarthy — although everything in his book (except the wonderfully blatant use of an egregiously obscure vocabulary) was remarkably similar to a great many earlier works of science fiction about men crossing the country after a holocaust — could never under any circumstances be said to be a sci fi writer, because Cormac McCarthy was a serious writer and so by definition incapable of lowering himself to commit genre? Could it be that that Chabon, just because some mad fools gave him a Pulitzer, had forgotten the sacred value of the word mainstream? No, she would not look at the thing that had squelched its way into her bedroom and stood over her, reeking of rocket fuel and kryptonite, creaking like an old mansion on the moors in a wuthering wind, its brain rotting like a pear from within, dripping little grey cells through its ears. But its call on her attention was, somehow, imperative, and as it stretched out its hand to her she saw on one of the half-putrefied fingers a fiery golden ring. She moaned. How could they have buried it in such a shallow grave and then just walked away, abandoning it? "Dig it deeper, dig it deeper!" she had screamed, but they hadn't listened to her, and now where were they, all the other serious writers and critics, when she needed them? Where was her copy of Ulysses? All she had on her bedside table was a Philip Roth novel she had been using to prop up the reading lamp. She pulled the slender volume free and raised it up between her and the ghastly golem — but it was not enough. Not even Roth could save her. The monster laid its squamous hand on her, and the ring branded her like a burning coal. Genre breathed its corpse-breath in her face, and she was lost. She was defiled. She might as well be dead. She would never, ever get invited to write for Granta now.

— Ursula K. LeGuin...less

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Alex rated it:

03/06/08

bookshelves: books-read-in-2007

Read in April, 2007

THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION BY MICHAEL CHABON: Michael Chabon is a writer that many other writers are envious of: he’s young, he’s brilliant, and his books will undoubtedly survive long after his is gone. Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay aside, Chabon’s writing seems almost effortless, but is pure craft and magic. Unlike John Irving, who plots out the complete story beforehand, and then meticulously crafts each sentence and paragraph to be perfect (whic...more THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION BY MICHAEL CHABON: Michael Chabon is a writer that many other writers are envious of: he’s young, he’s brilliant, and his books will undoubtedly survive long after his is gone. Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay aside, Chabon’s writing seems almost effortless, but is pure craft and magic. Unlike John Irving, who plots out the complete story beforehand, and then meticulously crafts each sentence and paragraph to be perfect (which is why he can take up to five years to finish a book), Chabon has both the story and ability from the start in creating his piece of art.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, like his other books, takes you to a place you never could’ve imagined. In this alternate reality, during the time of the Second World War, two million Jews are transported from Germany to Alaska, where they invented their own small civilization meshed in the bitterness of their treatment in Germany and their treatment in Alaska, a cold and distant place from the contiguous United States. The main city is known as Sitka, but there is little independence, and any whisperings of nationalization are immediately quashed. Yiddish is the primary language, with very little American spoken. Little happens in this people’s history from World War II to the present, other than a pathetic World’s Fair that now only retains the constant reminder of the reaching stone structure known as the Safety Pin. Sitka is not a happy place for anyone, as they dream of Zion and their return to their true home.

Landsman is our main character, a policeman who’s been in the service for many years but has little to show for it, apart from a trashed hotel room, a failed marriage, a dead sister, and his own depression over the state of his life. And it is then that he finds out about the dead body in the room nearby. A man has been murdered and the case begins. With his partner, Landsman travels around the area, picking up clues, and trying to piece the every-growingly complex case together. At the same time, his ex-wife returns to the precinct now as his boss, with the news that big changes are happening and all outstanding cases must be dealt with post haste. But as Landsmen digs deeper, he finds a larger plot taking place, involving more bodies, and more importantly the death of his sister. The pressure increases from important people in high places, as Landsman with the help of his partner and ex-wife, who he is growing close to again, gets closer and closer to the truth.

While my hope is that Chabon will return to this incredibly developed world in future stories, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is nevertheless a thrilling mystery; a Sherlock Holmes case with a Jewish twist, that keeps the reader hanging on until the end when the case is solved, and everyone seems happy. However, the state of Sitka and these many homeless Jews remains in jeopardy, to be resolved perhaps at a later date.

For more reviews, and writings, or to buy yourself a copy, please visit www.alexctelander.com....less

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Anne rated it:

06/03/07

Read in June, 2007

recommends it for: those who "weary of ganefs and prophets, guns and sacrifies, the infinite gangster weight of God"

"I don't care what is written," Meyer Landsman says. "I don't care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son's throat for the sake of a hare-brained idea. I don't care about red heifers and patriarchs and locusts. A bunch of old bones in the sand. My homeland is in my hat. It's in my ex-wife's tote bag."

The Yiddish Policeman's Union is one of those rare, rare novels of ideas t...more "I don't care what is written," Meyer Landsman says. "I don't care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son's throat for the sake of a hare-brained idea. I don't care about red heifers and patriarchs and locusts. A bunch of old bones in the sand. My homeland is in my hat. It's in my ex-wife's tote bag."

The Yiddish Policeman's Union is one of those rare, rare novels of ideas that is also character-driven, and the people of this book are warm-blooded and quirky; they do not stand for ideologies, and this is no morality play. Chabon manages to write a top-notch piece of mystery-detective-novel-noir that simulatenously parodies and celebrates the genre. The plot is a page-turning thrill, and his prose throughout is gorgeous -- suitably hard-boiled to give his nozzes clout, ripe with metaphors (pastiche or fresh), always delicious enough to taste Literary. This is speculative fiction that makes you feel, not just think: Will Meyer and Bina reunite? Will Meyer ever be OK? What did it feel like to be blessed by Mendel Shpliman, to play chess with him?

And of course Chabon's book makes you think. It's full of Big Questions... What would have happened if countries had -- however reluctantly -- opened their doors to European Jews during WWII, sparing 4 of the 6 million killed? If Zionists had botched things in Israel and instead found themselves in Alaska, disputing land with Native Americans, dreaming up terrorist plots to win back the holy land? Characters and readers alike must wonder, can a people who have been driven from place to place, who have been massacred and betrayed, who are desperate...can they make good moral choices? Can they choose to live by the book, "the book," or any book at all?

The Yiddish Policeman's Union is about horrible things done to and by Jews, to and by people all over the world. It's about entitlement and destitution. In ways both obvious and subtle, it examines the Problem of Israel, the real one we face, and America's role in it -- the dangers of fundamentalism, of a "Jewish" state, of the lack of one, of the pain of believing in nothing and the stain of believing in anything. It cracks open the possibility that we do not and cannot understand everything around us. While the story is painful and the outlook for the characters often grim, Chabon helps us believe in miracles, blessings...even the crumbs of salvation. They taste, I think he'd tell us, like a shtekeleh.*

*an Alaskan-Jewish Filipino-style Chinese doughnut...less

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Damian rated it:

02/24/08

Read in February, 2008

I usually bias my ratings to a 2 or a 4. A 3 just says "average" which isn't much help to folks looking for a good book to read. In the case of the Yiddish Policemen's Union I was so torn that I ended up sitting on the fence. I loved the concept: After the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel, the Jewish people are given a "temporary" safe haven in Alaska. I was annoyed by the lack of an understandable plot. I mean there's a plot of...more I usually bias my ratings to a 2 or a 4. A 3 just says "average" which isn't much help to folks looking for a good book to read. In the case of the Yiddish Policemen's Union I was so torn that I ended up sitting on the fence. I loved the concept: After the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel, the Jewish people are given a "temporary" safe haven in Alaska. I was annoyed by the lack of an understandable plot. I mean there's a plot of course but it just seems like an afterthought. Maybe 1940's noir doesn't require a plot and it's more about the development of the characters. The characters are delightful and I found myself laughing aloud every 8-10 pages when a particular passage tickled my fancy. My favorite bit out of the whole novel involves sharing a bed with a toddler. Those of you who've never had this experience probably won't understand but trust me, you're not really missing anything.

"Sometime in the middle of the night, Goldy (a 4 year old) careers into the room. His tread is heavy and lumbering, a baby monster's. He doesn't just climb into the bed, he roils the blankets the way a wire whisk roils a batter. Its like he's fleeing something, panicked, but when Landsman (the main character) speaks, asks him what's wrong, the boy doesn't answer. His eyes are closed, and his heart beats steadily and low. What ever he was running from, he found shelter from it in his parents' bed. The kid is sound asleep. He smells like a piece of cut apple that's starting to turn. He digs his toes into the small of Landsman's back with care and without mercy. He grinds his teeth. The sound of it is like dull shears on a sheet of tin.
After an hour of this kind of treatment, around four-thirty, the baby starts to scream, way out on his balcony. Landsman can hear Ester-Malke trying to comfort him. Ordinarily, she would bring him into her bed, but that's not an option tonight, and it takes her a long time to settle the little grandfather down. By the time Ester-Malke wanders into the bedroom with the baby in her arms, he's snuffling and quieter and almost asleep. Ester-Malke dumps Pinky between his brother and Landsman and walks out.
Reunited in their parents' bed, the Shemets boys set up a whistling and rumbling and a blatting of inner valves that would shame the grand pipe organ of Temple Emanu-El. The boys execute a series of maneuvers, a kung fu of slumber, that drives Landsman to the very limit of the bed. They chop at Landsman, stab him with their toes, grunt and mutter. They masticate the fiber of their dreams. Around dawn, something very bad happens in the baby's diaper. It's the worst night that Landsman has ever spent on a mattress, and that is saying a good deal."

I guess I'd only recommend this book to folks who like the idea of Jews in 1940's America Noir or people who love the author. Otherwise I'd say you're pretty safe missing it....less

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Sam rated it:

05/15/07

Read in May, 2007

recommends it for: Hebrew detectives; Alaskans

Michael Chabon's latest novel manages to be both painfully specific (add www.yiddishdictionaryonline.co... to your bookmarks list if you're going to read it) and generously engaging. Even with the chill of both murder and the Alaskan setting weighing down the proceedings, Chabon's hero Meyer Landsman gives off an unaccountable, wonderful warmth.

It doesn't hurt, either, that the writer's prose gets better and better with eac...more Michael Chabon's latest novel manages to be both painfully specific (add www.yiddishdictionaryonline.co... to your bookmarks list if you're going to read it) and generously engaging. Even with the chill of both murder and the Alaskan setting weighing down the proceedings, Chabon's hero Meyer Landsman gives off an unaccountable, wonderful warmth.

It doesn't hurt, either, that the writer's prose gets better and better with each successive novel. Chabon has championed genre fiction in interviews and with a couple of recent anthologies, but he has never made a more convincing argument than The Yiddish Policemen's Union, a grab-bag of alternate-history sci-fi ideas mixed into a classically structured detective novel. It's nearly impossible to be modest about high-concept writing this extreme, but Chabon manages just that: he'd rather you were busy with an extended metaphor or a bit of slapstick than oohing and aahing over his historical gymnastics.

And those gymnastics are considerable. The Jewish refugees from Hitler's Western Europe, it seems, are holed up in Alaska, having failed in their attempt to take back the Holy Land by the Arabs some 60 years ago. Sitka, a little town near the coast, is the seat of Jewish authority, a place where Yiddish is spoken almost exclusively (the residents do take time to swear in English) and Hebrew is a foriegn language.

This is the backdrop for a good, old-fashioned homicide - a guy in a hotel room is killed, leaving a clue-free scene and a corpse who had been living there under onion-skin aliases, each of which peels away to reveal a little more of his character.

As happens occasionally in the higher class of detective novels, "Emmanuel Lasker" (the dead guy) becomes one of the book's most interesting characters. Who was he? Why was he killed? Does his life parallel Landsman's life? Why?

Chabon makes a point of answering all the logistical questions by the end of the book, which comes out of a strange place, frankly. The final supervillain team-up between fanatical evangelical Christians and fanatical Zionist Jews is a distant connection at which Chabon works perhaps a little too hard. There's also a series of eerie and frankly horrible 9-11 parallels in the final chapters about which I still don't know what to think. Still, his solution to the whodunit is deeply satisfying, and rooted thoroughly in both the rich characters and in the clues we've already seen Meyer uncover. It's a satisfying book, though it's less like the Pulitzer-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay than his Sherlock Holmes pastiche The Final Solution. He may name-check Nabokov with the best of the current crop, but Chabon's heart lies in old-fashioned narrative, and that marriage between the highbrow and the lowbrow is what ultimately makes his work worth reading....less

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Marie rated it:

10/04/07

Read in September, 2007

I read this for an upcoming book club meeting - it's not the kind of story I'd usually go for. I found the writing style difficult and cumbersome. Chabon's constant similes are tedious and clumsy, and although I understand that the Jewish/Yiddish vocabulary was necessary to the themes of the book, I was stumbling over them, trying to pronounce them in my head or ask people what they meant. I got tired of the characters unmercifully belittling and insulting each other. Characters truly so bit...more I read this for an upcoming book club meeting - it's not the kind of story I'd usually go for. I found the writing style difficult and cumbersome. Chabon's constant similes are tedious and clumsy, and although I understand that the Jewish/Yiddish vocabulary was necessary to the themes of the book, I was stumbling over them, trying to pronounce them in my head or ask people what they meant. I got tired of the characters unmercifully belittling and insulting each other. Characters truly so bitter, jaded, angry and resentful, well, I'm not that interested in reading about it. That said, I give it three stars because it held my attention and I found some of the characters and history fascinating.

Edited to Add:

This week's book club book was The Yiddish Policemen's Union. I am embarrassed to say that I missed most of the irony of the book, did not get the sense of humor (although the red cow with painted white spots was rather silly), and didn't realize that some of the historical facts were fiction. I mean, I obviously know that Israel really does exist, whereas in the book it's still Palestine, and I know that we haven't gone to war with Cuba. And I know, or strongly suspected, that there was no Jewish State in Sitka, Alaska. But I didn't know that there isn't really a Verbover sect of Jews. I just don't know that much about the "black hats," as Chabon calls them. And the Yiddish was mostly completely beyond me.

I'm glad I went to the book club, because we explored the themes of the father-son relationship, identity, and redemption, all of which was fascinating. The most interesting, though, was the discussion about the promised land and the question Chabon raises about it - can a promised land created in violence and bloodshed truly be a promised land?

"Fuck what is written," Landsman says. "You know what?" All at once he feels weary of ganefs and prophets, guns and sacrifices and the infinite gangster weight of God. He's tired of hearing about the promised land and the inevitable bloodshed required for its redemption. "I don't care what is written. I don't care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son's throat for the sake of a hare-brained idea. I don't care about red heifers and patriarchs and locusts. A bunch of old bones in the sand. My homeland is in my hat. It's in my ex-wife's tote bag."

Another thing I did not know - the Orthodox Jews do not believe that Israel is the promised land, because they believe that the Messiah must return first, and that only his return makes the promised land viable. Or something like that. And I learned a lot about Diaspora, which I didn't know about before. Is the promised land where you are? Like Meyer, is it in your hat?...less

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Ryan rated it:

05/29/07

Read in May, 2007

Michael Chabon is always very technically proficient (just about anyone would probably like to have as much talent as he does), yet most of his books--including this one--seem to replace the human element with something that very closely imitates it. I read that Chabon sees this book as different from his previous ones because the sentences are shorter than his usual sentences, and the paragraphs are shorter than his usual paragraphs--in keeping with his update of/tribute to laconic noir writer...more Michael Chabon is always very technically proficient (just about anyone would probably like to have as much talent as he does), yet most of his books--including this one--seem to replace the human element with something that very closely imitates it. I read that Chabon sees this book as different from his previous ones because the sentences are shorter than his usual sentences, and the paragraphs are shorter than his usual paragraphs--in keeping with his update of/tribute to laconic noir writers like Raymond Chandler. Still, the book would have been better if the sentences and paragraphs had been shorter yet. For example, here is a passage from page 198:

"The need for a drink is like a missing tooth. He can't keep his mind off it, and yet there's something pleasurable in probing the gap."

That's a great line, and one can imagine a writer like Chandler using it. But Chabon seemingly can't resist gilding the lily. The paragraph continues:

"Or maybe the ache of something missing is just the hole left behind when Bina lifted his badge."

Ugh. Chabon is so proficient with words, with ways of articulating what it is he wants to get at, that he seemingly can't leave any of them unsaid. He needs to allow his readers to fill in any conceptual gaps with their own associations, but he just comes across as a control freak who needs to nail things down so precisely--leaving nothing open to the imagination--that he sacrifices real human energy.

The plot is appropriately convoluted for a noir novel. Still, it could have been equally convoluted (a good thing, in this genre) in many fewer words. I read most of this book on an airplane, and I kept zoning out--but it didn't really matter, because sooner or later there would be some narrative or dialogue that caught me up. You can't skim all of this novel and make sense of it, but you can skim large chunks at a time, as long as your attention eventually returns for a few pages, allowing you to catch up.

One more comment: Back when he first started out, Chabon was identified as one of the new, up-and-coming gay novelists, and objected that he is not, in fact, gay. I've now read all five of his novels, and interesting four of them involve a closeted gay man as a central part of the plot. Hmm.
...less

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Deidra rated it:

10/18/07

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: noir fans who aren't expecting much

Had a pretty lengthy review, which was deleted when I made the mistake of changing the shelf. Yeah, I don't get it either.

Long story short: I still don't get why Michael Chabon is supposed to be one of the great writers of the 21st century. "Wonder Boys" was an enjoyable read. Nothing life-changing, but smart, fast, and chock full of quirky characters.

"Kavalier & Clay"....not so good. I am a fan of the comics industry, and I have to say the beginning describing ...more Had a pretty lengthy review, which was deleted when I made the mistake of changing the shelf. Yeah, I don't get it either.

Long story short: I still don't get why Michael Chabon is supposed to be one of the great writers of the 21st century. "Wonder Boys" was an enjoyable read. Nothing life-changing, but smart, fast, and chock full of quirky characters.

"Kavalier & Clay"....not so good. I am a fan of the comics industry, and I have to say the beginning describing it's birth had me riveted. And then the characters' hardships begin. And then they continue. And keep going. The depressing acts were so unrelenting that it started to border on the melodramatic, one long dirge on the suffering and pain humanity inflicts on itself.

Now "The Yiddish Policemen's Union". I have to admit that I only made it through about 3/4 of this book. See, Chabon seems to have done the same thing all over again: taken an interesting, original concept and then populated it with contrived, formulaic plot lines and tired characters. Example: A mystery set in an alternate reality where the Jewish population has been relocated to Alaska after the atrocities of WWII. Sounds good, right? Well, it would be if he didn't just drag out the tired old noir cliches: the alcoholic, loner detective on a destructive downward spiral who won't give up the case; his family-man, responsible partner, there to pull him from the messes he makes; his estranged ex-wife who he still loves. Give me a break. I couldn't get enough of an investment in these characters to actually care where the plot was going.

There are some interesting scenes and it's obvious Chabon is well-educated in the areas of Jewish ritual and history. But even with a couple of unforseen twists, it wasn't enough to keep me reading.

Also, as a sidenote: I have to say the book jacket for this edition is one of the most obnoxious I've ever seen. Could his name get any bigger? The entire spine of the book is taken up with "PULITZER PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR" which completely overshadows the actual TITLE of the book. I know Chabon had nothing to do with this design, but it's pretty bad.

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Colinski rated it:

04/03/08

Read in March, 2008

recommended to Colinski by: The Week Magazine
recommends it for: Chess playing fans of detective fiction who are somewhat familiar with Jewish culture

OK, so it's certainly not the first hard-boiled detective novel set in an alternate reality. But what an inventive reality! Chabon created a parallel Earth that almost could have been. In the book's universe, a couple key events went very differently then they had in our own.

In 1940, there was a brief proposal from the Roosevelt administration to allow European Jews to emigrate to Alaska to escape the Nazis. In Chabon...more OK, so it's certainly not the first hard-boiled detective novel set in an alternate reality. But what an inventive reality! Chabon created a parallel Earth that almost could have been. In the book's universe, a couple key events went very differently then they had in our own.

In 1940, there was a brief proposal from the Roosevelt administration to allow European Jews to emigrate to Alaska to escape the Nazis. In Chabon's universe, that proposal went through, in part thanks for an accident of fate that killed the Alaskan territory's congressional delegate. The second key event in this universe was the collapse of the fledgling state of Israel in 1948, when the Palestinians drove the Jews out seemingly for good. So, Sitka, Alaska, on Baronof Island in the Alaskan Panhandle became the new Israel, and the Tlingit Indians the new Palestinians. Having been settled by European Jews, Yiddish is the official language, and over the latter half of the 20th Century the area briefly boomed before falling on hard times and high poverty and crime rates. 60 years later, the Sitka settlement, which has been an autonomous region akin to an Indian Reservation, is about to revert back to the state of Alaska, and all residents will be subject to normal US immigration policy, signaling the imminent end of the new Jewish homeland.

This is the world Chabon brings us into as we follow Meyer Landsman, our alcoholic protagonist, as he seeks answers to a mysterious murder of a chess-playing junkie in the fleabag hotel Landsman calls home. What he finds is bigger than Sitka and involves an Hasidic crime syndicate, chess, a rehab center, the US government, and... well, you'll just need to read it.

For those that like to know the meaning of every word you don't understand, you may want a Yiddish dictionary (there are online ones out there), since the dialogue and narration is peppered with it throughout. I was OK just gleaning meaning from context. A little familiarity with Jewish culture may be helpful but I don't believe it's necessary....less

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Griffin rated it:

03/24/08

bookshelves: read---fiction

Read in October, 2007

Writing is a craft as well as an art and at times the craftsmen is tempted to create something just to see how it will turn out. These self indulgent trinkets are rarely masterpieces, but can often be windows into how the craftsman approaches his craft.

Reading 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union' one can see Mr. Chabon playing with the elements of his craft. He takes a standard plot (a murder mystery) a set of stock characters (a hard-boiled detective, the whacky partner, a black-clothed villian,...more Writing is a craft as well as an art and at times the craftsmen is tempted to create something just to see how it will turn out. These self indulgent trinkets are rarely masterpieces, but can often be windows into how the craftsman approaches his craft.

Reading 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union' one can see Mr. Chabon playing with the elements of his craft. He takes a standard plot (a murder mystery) a set of stock characters (a hard-boiled detective, the whacky partner, a black-clothed villian, etc.) and jumbles them up with far less expected elements (an alternate reality history, a political thriller-esque twist, a chess heavy plot and a heaping dose of Yiddish and Jewish Culture) to give us a book that creates a fascinating world that is very far from our reality but can also be instantly believed and inhabited by the reader.

As with all 'adventure' novels, the characters are secondary to the plot. Meyer Landsman, the protagonist, his ex-wife and boss, Bina, as well as his partner are not quite as 'round' as his characters from 'Kavalier & Clay.' Don't let that dissuade you. This is still a very good book.

If the characters aren't carrying this novel, the plot which Mr. Chabon has crafted is up to the task. While a bit slow to reveal itself during the exposition, the action intertwines wonderfully with little glimpses at the pseudo-history that Chabon has invented, deft commentary on many real-world issues, and Mr. Chabon's ever present ability to make the reader so present within his world that he or she can feel the Alaskan cold and smell the cigarette smoke. If you want a synopsis, there are plenty of other reviews that recap the plot. I've always thought books are better read 'cold' to keep the reader guessing.

In the end, 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union' suffers not from any failure of Mr. Chabon's prose but because of its nature as a sort of literary thought-experiment. While the book struggles at times under the weight of its own ambition and the bredth of its imaginativeness, those attributes are also best reasons to read 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union.'...less

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John rated it:

11/28/07

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: Crime & conspiracy fiction readers, religious readers, Jewish-interested readers, literary readers

It’s an alternative history novel about Jews in the 20th century that makes more references to Cuban politics than to the Holocaust. It’s a book with a rich use of language that references Looney Tunes more than it references William Shakespeare. It’s a hardboiled crime and conspiracy novel after the hearts of old detective stories, and one you read for the language. Chabon shamelessly abducts the world-weary, overindulgent prose of that genre from the 50’s and 60’s to explore the Engl...more It’s an alternative history novel about Jews in the 20th century that makes more references to Cuban politics than to the Holocaust. It’s a book with a rich use of language that references Looney Tunes more than it references William Shakespeare. It’s a hardboiled crime and conspiracy novel after the hearts of old detective stories, and one you read for the language. Chabon shamelessly abducts the world-weary, overindulgent prose of that genre from the 50’s and 60’s to explore the English language (with healthy doses of Yiddish), playing in kinetic and invigorating ways. The story could have filled ten pages; his wonderful words take four hundred. I barely even recognized characters, as I was so enchanted by the way he wrote, the way he weaved personality around characters and events. Now, sometimes he whiffs. Sometimes he’s just using twenty words to describe something two would do better. What kind of squeeze does a baby's foot have? Just exactly how does a dead messiah lie any different than anyone else? You can tell he's laid a stinker by rephrasing a questionable sentence, but you likely won't feel compelled to do so. That's because Chabon's language truly is beautiful. The frequent Yiddish isn't a problem to non-speakers -- if you read a sentence aloud, nine times out of ten you'll have a sense of the meaning. His narrative style is that meaty. He knows how to turn a great line, like, “If you have to waste the Sabbath, at least don't waste the sin,” or, “It doesn’t matter to the wind whether a flag is red or it’s blue,” or, “a sense of doom that is indistinguishable from peacefulness,” or, “Every messiah fails the moment he tries to redeem himself.” That ten pages of plot I mentioned is very interesting plot, stepping on religion, persecution, murder and conspiracies, so if you absolutely must have plot in your books, Chabon will deliver a satisfactory dose. But please, try this for the way he tells the story. I honestly think it’s easier to lose yourself in his storytelling than in his story....less

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Tim rated it:

03/10/08

Read in March, 2008

recommended to Tim by: The publisher of this book.

I really liked the start of this book. It was cruising along, likable characters, good depth, great backstories that were doled out just right. Up until the last hundred pages or so I was loving it. Then we get into this messianic world changing conspiracy thing. OK, the book is set in an alternate universe, so I guess changing the world id allowed and expected. Still, for some reason I was put off by the conspiracy. I'm conflicted about it. I still think the book is really well written and almo...more I really liked the start of this book. It was cruising along, likable characters, good depth, great backstories that were doled out just right. Up until the last hundred pages or so I was loving it. Then we get into this messianic world changing conspiracy thing. OK, the book is set in an alternate universe, so I guess changing the world id allowed and expected. Still, for some reason I was put off by the conspiracy. I'm conflicted about it. I still think the book is really well written and almost entirely enjoyable. What is most amazing is the setting itself, which doesn't feel like a made up place. Jewish Alaska comes off seeming very real and so does it's history with its ups and downs. The "warsaw tunnels" that the Jews fresh from Nazi Germany built, the abandoned developments at the edge of town where hope gave out, and the remnants of the Sitka World's Fair all make the world seem real and sad. This fog of sadness that hangs over Sitka is convincing and part of what makes the end of the novel so difficult. Throughout this book there is the question of 'reversion'. Sitka, a district in Alaska, is about to revert to the United States, and so the fate of the 2 million or so Jews who call it home is uncertain. I found myself wanting reversion to be reversed, for Sitka to be allowed to continue on. You get this sense of the hope that these people had for their new home. It is the hope that accompanies every diaspora, the hope for a normal life. There is also this conflict between that hope that is placed in the new life, and the feeling of loss for the old one. For a certain portion of the Sitka Jews, home is always going to be Israel. In that respect I like the conspiracy aspect of the story, which involves a return to Israel. Chabon makes the comparison between a salmon and the zionists, "forever dreaming of its fatal home". There is something to this aspect of the story, something meaningful. I just wish it had been done better. Even during this muddled final third of the novel, the characters and setting shine....less

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Tony rated it:

(review of isbn 0007149832)

05/11/08

bookshelves: awesome-books, the-best-of-the-best

Read in May, 2008

This book is a massive achievement of imagination and prose.

Michael Chabon's previous book, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY held it's place as my favorite book of all time for a while. It's was eventually dethroned by LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA (which remains there and will remain there), but I feel like THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION is Chabon's best book by far.

Being a huge fan of detective novels, I can say that he made a lasting impression on the genre with this book. ...more This book is a massive achievement of imagination and prose.

Michael Chabon's previous book, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY held it's place as my favorite book of all time for a while. It's was eventually dethroned by LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA (which remains there and will remain there), but I feel like THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION is Chabon's best book by far.

Being a huge fan of detective novels, I can say that he made a lasting impression on the genre with this book. It's a fantasy of sorts, but not a normal one (I couldn't get Philip K. Dick's THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE out of my head when I was reading this).

The novel focuses on Meyers Landsman, a detective in Sitka, Alaska, an island given to Jewish refugees during World War 2. The story takes place during modern time, the final days of the settlement just before "reversion" (the land gets turned back over to Alaska territory). Landsman is investigating the death of a heroin addict in the rundown hotel that he lives in with the help of his cousin Berko, also a detective, and his ex-wife Bina, the police chief.

Where THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION succeeds is in it's characterization. While Chabon stays true to the hardboiled style of writing, reminiscent of Chandler and Hammett, he also delves into the psyche of Landsman and the history of the Jews after they were settled in Sitka.

There's a certain wit that comes inherent with the Yiddish culture and it's spread liberally throughout the book, but it never feels too lighthearted. The story is deep and complex, but it avoids getting too full of itself or cloudy. In other words it's a perfect balance that I love to find in a well thought out story.

The paperback edition includes a "p.s." section that includes a New York Times article documenting a visit to Sitka with Michael Chabon, after the book had been published. It also has the essay Chabon wrote back in 1998 that sparked the idea for this novel.

I'm sure I'll be reading this one again and again. ...less

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Rebekah rated it:

01/18/08

Read in January, 2008

Only Chabon. As an American reader I never felt the force of Old-world Jewish Community until C's imagination put an exile community in Sitka, Alaska, the 1948 War having been lost and Jews living only in territory by suffrance. It's a police procedural, an old world "made new," C's usual amazing characterization, vintage Jewish humor, and somehow audible, as always with C, is the cadence and character of thought and speech. I'm only a few pages in and have no business reading for plea...more Only Chabon. As an American reader I never felt the force of Old-world Jewish Community until C's imagination put an exile community in Sitka, Alaska, the 1948 War having been lost and Jews living only in territory by suffrance. It's a police procedural, an old world "made new," C's usual amazing characterization, vintage Jewish humor, and somehow audible, as always with C, is the cadence and character of thought and speech. I'm only a few pages in and have no business reading for pleasure right at the moment, but.

Page 7, the detective protagonist, Landsman, coming away from a murder scene. The victim, shot in the head, had an ID "Emanuel Lasker" and a chessboard with an unifinished game on it. "In recent months Landsman has placed a number of calls to his partner at questionable hours of the night, ranting and rambling in an alcoholic dialect of grief. Landsman bailed out on his marriage two years ago, and last April his younger sister crashed her Piper Super Cub into the side of Mount Dunkelblum, up in the bush. But Landsman is not thinking of Naomi's death now, nor of the shame of his divorce. He has been sandbagged by a vision of sitting in the grimy lounge of the Hotel Zamenhof, on a couch that was once white, playing chess with Emanuel Lasker, or whatever his real name was. Shedding the last of their fading glow on each other and listening to the sweet chiming of broken glass inside. That Landsman loathes the game of chess does not make the picture any less touching."

Page 64, "Brennan studied German in college and learned his Yiddish from some pompous old German at the Institute, and he talks, somebody once remarked, "like a sausage recipe with footnotes." A heavy drinker, unsuited by temperament to long twilight and rain. Throws off a false scent of being stolid and slow on the uptake, in a way common among detectives and reporters. But a shlemiel all the same. No one ever seemed more astonished by the splash Dennis Brennan made in Sitka than Brennan himself."...less

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John rated it:

03/11/08

bookshelves: alternate-history

Read in March, 2008

recommended to John by: Ursula K. Le Guin
recommends it for: Anyone not afraid of history, genre fiction, or Ruth Franklin.

A perfect book that has everything. A noir detective, a possible messiah, the fate of the Jews and the Tlingits, holiness, heroin, love and self loathing.

In this alternate history, the United States did not close it's borders to European Jewry in the 1930s and 40s. Instead, the US accepted as many as could come. The only catch, was they all had to go to Sitka, Alaska, and stay there, as non-citizens. Some 60 years later, the lease was up, and the Jews are about to be tossed out. Detective Me...more

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Jeff rated it:

09/16/07

bookshelves: fiction

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: Anyone who likes hardboiled detective fiction

So I am the biggest booster of 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay' you are likely to know. I really believe in the significance of that book and in the enjoyment anyone would have in reading it. I have read other works by Chabon and liked them, but that one is the big money number. That said, this isn't a little riff on 'Kavalier and Clay', this is a little riff on Chabon's most recent novel, 'The Yiddish Policeman's Union' and it isn't quite so easy for me to step up to the plate for....more