The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
“Man makes plans and God laughs” The Yiddish Policeman’s Union: A Novel (2007) by Michael Chabon is a compelling though at times over-written alternate history novel crossed with a hardboiled mystery story. In 1948, the new Jewish state of Israel collapsed, leaving the Jews of the world without a country. A while after that calamity, a US government act reserved Sitka, Alaska for Jewish settlement, but in the present of the novel, some sixty years later (“now” is 2008), the US is in the process of reverting Sitka to standard United States territory, forcing the majority of the Jewish citizens to relocate, and they sure aren’t wanted in the USA. With the Sitka police winding down operations preparatory to vacating, 44-year-old detective Meyer Landsman starts working on a last case, one that nobody wants him to pursue, least of all his new commanding officer, his ex-wife Bina Gelfbish. One of the guests staying in Landsman’s “home,” the seedy Hotel Zamenhof, has been found shot dead execution style. The victim is apparently a former Hasidic and current drug addict called Emmanuel Lasker. Who would have killed him so professionally and why? What is the meaning of the half-finished chess game on the board in his room. Who is the guy, really? In that vivid alternate history setting, Chabon’s book often reads like a Raymond Chandler novel. Landsman ticks off many hardboiled protagonist boxes: divorced, personal life a shambles, only romantic partner a shot glass, friends worried about his mental and physical health, his work the only thing he seems to live for; observant eye, vivid memory, keen instinct, stubborn independence, and strong moral code. But Landsman is Jewish, “the most decorated shammes in the District of Sitka,” though he (believes that) he lost his faith long ago. Most of the characters in the novel are Jewish, with a few notable exceptions. And they are usually speaking Yiddish to each other (translated by Chabon into English for us), which leads to a lot of spicy language, including plenty of Yiddish terms like papiros (cigarette) and noz (policeman). (In an interesting interview at the end of the audiobook, Chabon says that he was inspired to write the novel by his love for the work of Chandler and by his reading of a Yiddish phrasebook that made him wonder what country such a book would ever be useful for visiting and then to imaginarily create such a country himself.) There are thus many interesting things related to the Jewish experience, like the belief (hot or cold depending on the era, community, and person) that a Messiah will come, the fraught life in a hostile world, the constant irony and sarcasm, and, my favorite, the eruv, “a scam run on God… something to do with pretending that telephone poles are door posts, and that the wires are lintels. You can tie off an area using poles and strings and call it an eruv, then pretend on the Sabbath that this eruv you’ve drawn . . . is your house. That way you can get around the Sabbath ban on carrying in a public place.” The ways in which Landsman’s faith in unbelief is supported and subverted by the novel are also neat. Lines like, “A dealer in entropy… A disbeliever by trade and inclination… To Landsman Heaven is kitsch, God a word, and a soul at most the charge in your battery,” make us think that he might be protesting too much. On the other hand, “A Messiah who actually arrives is no good to anybody. A hope fulfilled is already half a disappointment.” There are interesting takes on detective work (“telling a story”) and police work (helping men “realize that all along just under their boots lay the abyss” by “jerk[ing] back the pretty carpet that covers over the deep jagged hole in the floor”). And the process of disentangling the mystery is well done: orderly, inevitable, and surprising, with thematic and social depth. There are plenty of great scenes, like Landsman trying to sleep in a bed with his partner’s little kids kicking him in their sleep, talking with the impressive wife of a crime lord, escaping from a cell while handcuffed to a bed, and visiting his partner Berko’s father. There are neat lines, like “Landsman’s congratulations are so ironic that they are heartfelt, and they are so heartfelt that they can only come off as insincere, and he and his partner sit there for a while without going anywhere listening to them congeal,” and “They all looked shocked, even Gold, who could happily read a comic book by the light of a burning man.” And the Chandleresque similes! At their best they’re original, vivid, perfect, and funny, like “She looks like she’s wetting her pants and enjoying the warmth.” Some of the best similes refer to Old Testament things, like “Her right arm is raised, index finger extended toward the trash bins, like a painting of the angel Michael casting Adam and Eve from the Garden.” However, I did start feeling that Chabon too often indulges in cool similes and descriptions, fatiguing me by making me appreciate too many similes, which began to numb me to their virtues, especially similes describing relatively unimportant things, like “Mrs. Kalushiner wanders into the back room, and the beaded curtain clatters behind her with the sound of loose teeth in a bucket.” Moreover, some of the similes try too hard, like “with haircuts that occupy the interval between astronaut and pedophile scoutmaster.” The audiobook reader Peter Riegert is excellent, and the interview with Chabon after the novel is interesting. The only downside of the audiobook is the odd music (electric guitar and bongos) that regularly fades in and out. View all my reviews
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Jefferson Peters
This blog is for book reviews. Please feel free to comment on any of the reviews! Categories
All
Archives
May 2024
Jefferson's books
by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
|
My Fukuoka University