Goodreads | The Yiddish Policemen's Union

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Kersplebedeb rated it:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

06/20/08

Read in June, 2008

recommends it for: people interested in Jewish culture and speculative fiction.

Imagine a crazy world in which, following the Holocaust, Jewish survivors languished in DP camps in Europe, were often still barred or discouraged from immigrating to the various "democracies", and found themselves pushed into emigrating to the Middle East where, through a variety of historical coincidences, they founded a new society based on dispossessing the indigenous Arabs and acting as imperialism's pit bulls in the region.

That's the crazy world we do live in.
...more

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Emma rated it:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

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:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

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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Michael rated it:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

07/05/08

Read in June, 2008

Ready. Set. Readers: Lower Your Expectations

While my memory may be faulty, I don’t recall Chabon’s previous novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, quite as steeped in the Jewish mythos as his latest novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. And I think it may be time for Chabon to break for secular cover.

I’d like to see what Chabon can pen, with a Pulitzer and mediocre (by comparison) follow-up under his belt, that moves beyond his take on the 20th-century Jewry. I th...more

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Alan rated it:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

06/05/08

Read in June, 2008

On one level, this book is a standard detective story, with nods to noir film and at least one name-check for Raymond Chandler. The protagonist is a hard-drinking policeman who cracks wise and has trouble with dames (well, at least one dame), and takes an enormous amount of physical abuse in the course of performing his duties... duties which he often defines more broadly than his supervisors really expect. Sound familiar?

On another level, it's a science fiction novel, taking for its set...more

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Alex rated it:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

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:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

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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Sam rated it:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

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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Meredith rated it:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

06/17/08

Read in June, 2008

I picked up the Yiddish Policemen's Union afer reading and obsessively enjoying Chabon's the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. While I would still recommend the latter over the former for new Chabon readers, I still thought this book was great and don't really understand the divisive reviews. After my friend (who urged me to read Kavalier and Clay) warned me that many considered this "too Jew-ey" and after reading Goodreads reviews denouncing the heavy use of Yiddish slang throu...more I picked up the Yiddish Policemen's Union afer reading and obsessively enjoying Chabon's the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. While I would still recommend the latter over the former for new Chabon readers, I still thought this book was great and don't really understand the divisive reviews. After my friend (who urged me to read Kavalier and Clay) warned me that many considered this "too Jew-ey" and after reading Goodreads reviews denouncing the heavy use of Yiddish slang throughout, I began the book nervous about how much I would comprehend, but figuring that if I could manage A Clockwork Orange, I could handle some Yiddish. And I must say, get a grip, people. While a lot of Yiddish is used, Chabon relies on a core of about 5-10 words repeatedly, and the back of the book comes with a glossary (which could have been helpful if I'd realized it was there before page 150 or so)! Definitely manageable.

Okay, so the good things. Just like K&C, Chabon cleary did his homework for the book. For K&C it was 1940s New York and the emergence of the comic book, and for YPU it was the noir writing style and Jewish history/lore. The great thing is how Chabon incorporates so much detail without letting it overshadow the plot (like a Chuck Palahniuk novel). His characters are also well-developed, flawed yet immensely likeable and sympathetic. And finally, Chabon is able to end a novel without patly tying all the pieces together, but without leaving you feeling hanging or abruptly caught up. He does not do the complexity of his plot lines a disservice by ending them simplistically.

Now onto the criticism. While historical detail does not overwhelm the plot, it seemed to me (and I feel crazy saying it) that the descriptive detail did. I never thought I would call a fiction novel too detailed, but there it is. I am not one to analyze the literary devices of an author. I like to just go with the flow of the book, so if I notice literary devices, it's usually because they're either ridiculously prolific or stilted. Chabon's similes and metaphors definitely fit the former category. I am all for imagining every detail of a scene, but do I really need to know that, while in the sauna, the rebbe's nipples were like red lentils? Hmmm. I also think that the level of description will make the upcoming Coen brothers movie adaptation difficult to live up to fans' expectations (especially the casting). Take a skinny kid, dye his hair black, and give him some broken round glasses, and you've got a convincing Harry Potter. But who will be Landsman? Bina? Berko?

My last criticism is something over which I'm not sure Chabon has control: the packaging. The news article about the book/Chabon included as part of the extra features seemed a little self-indulgent, and combined with the cover/spine of the book (to the effect of: "I don't know if you knew this, but MICHAEL CHABON wrote this book. Did you know he's a PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING author? Oh, andit'scalledtheyiddishpolicemen'sunion.) gave off a weird vibe.

I'm not good at tying up these book reviews, so I'm not going to try: THE END....less

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Damian rated it:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

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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Marie rated it:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

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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Deidra rated it:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

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:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

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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Ryan rated it:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

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.
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Tim rated it:

(review of isbn 0007149824)

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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Adele rated it:

(review of isbn 0007150393)

06/27/08

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

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