The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Probably my favourite book of all the fiction I read that year.

I enjoy a good film noir detective story and this starts out just like so many of the best: our protagonist (Is he a hero? He's the best we'll get) wakes hung-over and miserable in his room at the fleapit hotel, to find his neighbour is dead and now that's his problem to solve. So much, so Sam Spade. But now we find this West Coast isn't LA, it's Alaska - or rather the Federal District of Sitka, in an alternate timeline where this became a Jewish homeland and refuge from Europe. This isn't the Promised Land, it's the Land Grudgingly Loaned and now Uncle Sam wants it back.

It's the observed details that make this. Hebrew is a oddity kept for shul and the language of the show more streets is Yiddish, His partner is one of the few gentiles in town, being from the First Nations. And when there's no food, at least there's chess. Chabon never makes do with one word when he can fit a dozen in there. As much a mensch as his bedraggled and trampled hero.

I loved this. Unusually for fiction I'll probably read it again. show less

In Chabon's alternate history, the Jewish country of Israel doesn't exist, and Jewish refugees escaping from the Holocaust are granted the safety and autonomy of a strip of Alaska. Now 60 years later, the Jewish land of Sitka is about to revert back to the United States. That's the background against which a Jewish policeman, living in a fleabag hotel, ends up investigating the murder of another tenant of the hotel.

Still reeling from his divorce a couple of years earlier the more recent death of his sister, and faced with an uncertain future after the reversion, Meyer Landsman is a mess, but he's a good detective, determined to find the killer, even if it means disobeying a direct order from his newly promoted ex-wife who is now his show more boss.

In prose full of metaphors and similies, Chabon takes Meyer and the reader into the part of Sitka where the Black Hats -- ultra Orthodox Jews -- live and oversee life in the district. The simple murder of a former chess prodigy/current drug addict is anything but simple. This is a fascinating look at what could have been, as well as a compelling story about a murder, grief, and a community determined to keep surviving all the obstacles put in their way. show less

My wife is a fan of Michael Chabon. I've known this since we first started dating, but somehow I hadn't gotten around to reading him until yesterday. She's told me what a fabulous writer he is, and I'm familiar with the general critical acclaim he's received over the years, but I wasn't really sure what to expect from him as a writer. The dustjacket synopsis was intriguing, though, and the opening gambit on the first page rang true enough to the pulp noir genre (of which this book is a loving homage) that I was pretty well hooked by the end of chapter one, read over a late breakfast.

I finished the novel that evening, about an hour and a half after my usual bedtime. I haven't spent a day just reading in a long time, and I haven't read an show more entire novel in a single day in even longer. The Yiddish Policeman's Union made me want to do both. I read fast, but I wanted to take my time with this book. I wanted to taste the language, to savor the crackling dialogue, to delight in a particular image or in the gleeful, madcap way Chabon invokes the ghosts of Chandler and Hammett as he dances from one understated cliffhanger to another.

One of the major strengths of the book is Chabon's characterization, which in this case extends to his world-building. Through the eyes of our not-quite-heroic protagonist, a homicide detective in a crumbling backwater settlement town whose expiration date is quickly approaching, we see not only the joys and tragedies of his own life, but of the lives of the people around him: the people who make up the community in which he was born and raised, the people whose choices created the history to which they are all the unwilling heirs. That history -- the tapestry of bad decisions, noble aspirations, and basic human needs which make up the soul of the setting itself -- is as much a charater as any of the people blundering or scheming their way through the book, and permeates every scene with a melancholy as pervasive as the smell of cigarette smoke, even while the story is careening toward its conclusion.

Where that story takes us leads to my only real criticism of the novel. In my limited experience, noir often ends on an ambivalent moral note, but the plot elements themselves are usually resolved. Chabon's story doesn't so much resolve as rise to an uncertain crescendo, then stop. Some questions are answered, but many others are quite intentionally left in mid-air. I finished the last sentence of the novel with a feeling of, "And then...?", poised on the edge of my seat waiting for the next installment of a pulp serial which is, sadly, not forthcoming.

That was clearly a storytelling choice on Chabon's part, however, rather than a failing as such. I prefer a little less ambiguity to my endings, but I certainly can't criticize the closure Chabon gives us, which has just the right mixture of timelessness and post-modern savvy. And the ride to get to that point is one of the most brilliantly entertaining (and occasionally thought-provoking) novels I've read in years.

[Caveat: Ready access to Wikipedia and the Search Engine Of Your Choice may be helpful to readers unfamiliar with Judaism, Jewish culture and history, the Yiddish language, Alaskan geography, the Pacific Northwest, and/or post-WWII history.] show less

The world and history around the Sitka District that Chabon creates is reminiscent of the book itself: slow to develop but intriguing and engaging when you take the time to really sift through it. While the main premise of "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" is a murder mystery, it feels more like an exercise in world building, with a plot thrown in to keep you engaged. Chabon's alternate history diverges at 1940, and leaves us with a world wildly different from our own, while still being familiar. My issues with the book can be boiled down to: Michael Chabon can't help but get in his own way.

The book is enjoyable, but the pacing feels all wrong. Instead of developing a gripping plot right off the bat, Chabon spends the first quarter of the show more book in endless metaphor and simile describing everything and every interaction. While the writing is good, it gets to be so excessive that at times you forget what is actually happening in the moment because its been too long since he actually told you. By the time the plot really starts to come together enough to finally feel like an actual mystery book, you're about half way down. I found myself caring a lot more about the history of the Sitka District and the changes to world history, because for most of the book the murder mystery feels anecdotal.

But by the end, the plot does come together and the mystery feels satisfactory as a central plot. It speaks to modern politics, and the hopes and dream of both Zionists and Evangelicals. It touches on greed, nationalism, piety vs. zealotry, and finding one's place in a world that feels entirely hostile to your mere existence. show less

Before getting this book, I think I had heard of or seen Chabon's name, but I have no idea why. Then I was in a sci-fi/fantasy bookstore, with a paychecks worth of books, and saw The Yiddish Policemen's Union and wanted it. I was hesitant because I didn't want to put any other books back, so a friend bought it for me. Still, a book by someone I had never read, with Policemen in the title didn't make me feel great.
I'm glad I pushed through that feeling and read this book though. It's a wild ass combination of a pulpy detective novel, a goofy comedy, a love story, and a Jewish as fuck book. A lot of people would struggle combining these ingredients, but Michael Chabon is a master chef and put them all together perfectly.
This book exists show more in a parallel universe, but one that is pretty believable. We know World War II ended differently because the US dropped an atomic bomb on Germany, but that's all we know about that. What the book is focused on is that the surviving Jews attempt to steal the land of Palestine was quickly unsuccessful and they were mostly forced to settle in the Alaska Peninsula. The book takes place just as their right to be there is expiring and they're facing yet another situation of exile. A seemingly random, drug related murder happens in the first pages, and the more investigation that's done, the more it appears neither random or related to drugs.
What follows is a fun adventure that made me not want to put down the book (so much of this was read at work while I should have been doing more “important” stuff). It didn't have to be a Jewish book, but it was, and I loved it. The more I read the more it paid off, with Chabon's comments on zionism winning the day!
I don't know if all his books have this kind of tilt, but I feel like no matter what he writes about, it's gonna come out good and I want to read it. show less

I've had a hardback copy of this book on my shelf for some time, but kept shying away from it. What a mistake.

Part detective story, part alternative history, part romance, part discussion of religious dogma, this enchanting book held my attention like the best suspenseful mystery, so that I read it almost in one sitting. What would have happened if Israel had never taken hold in 1948? What would happen if you gave a whole people a 20 year lease on which to lick their wounds? And what would happen when one kind of hope collides with another? Some of the Jews in the borrowed land of Alaska want to try to win back Palestine, some want to stay, some are fearful of eviction, again, as has happened for millenia. And in the midst of this, a show more chess wizard is found dead in a seedy hotel, in which a guilt-ridden police detective spends his non-working hours drinking his sorrows. The classic Chandler-esque noir plot melds perfectly with the deeper discussions to produce a book that is very hard to put down. show less

Chabon is one of those indisputable geniuses, who manages to garner praise from the literary elite, genre audiences, and the popular press. The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a stylish alternate history novel and noir thriller centered around Jewish Alaska and human destiny.

Yeah, Jewish Alaska. In 1940 the United States decided to settle Jewish Refugees around Sikta, a plan that in our timeline was blocked by Anthony Dimond. With the influx of refugees, the Holocaust only killed 2 million Jews, Israel lost its war for independence, and the timeline diverged in a thousand small ways. Though they live in Alaska, the Sitka Jews certainly aren't Americans, and in two months their Yiddish-speaking quasi-nation will cease to exist, as it show more reverts back to the United States at the end of the 60 year treaty.

Meyer Landsman is a homicide detective with the Sikta police force, who's slow-motion suicide via plum brandy is interrupted when one of the other residents in his fleabag motel is murdered. It's just another heroin junkie dead, but he's a neighbor, and Meyer makes it a mission to give the young man some peace, despite the warnings of his partner and cousin Johnny Berko (a massive half-Indian Jew) and his new boss and ex-wife Bima, who's trying to hand the transition authority a clean desk. Meyer stumbles into something much bigger than he is. The dead man is Mendel Shpilman, estranged son of the Orthodox Rabbi/Organized Crime Boss, and a plausible candidate for Tzadik ha-Dor, a potential Messiah born every generation. Hardboiled detective work mixes with international espionage, applied eschatology, and the blend of love and betrayal that means family.

The idea that is at heart of this book is "a twist in his soul", a beautiful phrase used to describe the dead Mendel, which refers to both his Messianic blessings, his easy genius, his homosexuality, and his eventual addiction and death. The twist is in Meyer, in his obsession with homicide work, the deep wounds that he believes he inflicted on his father and ex-wife, in the whole topsy-turney world of Jewish Sitka and the deals that threaten to make it and unmake. Chabon writes in a way that implies that we are all twists; little vortexes in the great flow of life.

And of course, he's a fantastic descriptive writer, a miracle worker of his own with metaphor and the senses. Jewish Sikta feels alive in a way that is rare in literature, in all of its rich contradictions. It's a modern city and an overgrown shtetl where everyone is related and tied into a rich web of gossip; the chief divine is also the chief gangster; and escape from the past is impossible even as it's being obliterated.

I could gripe (I always can), that perhaps the pastiche of noir is little more than pastiche, that the women in this world, Meyer's ex-wife Bina, dead sister Naomi, and the Rabbi's wife Batsheva, are more interesting than the men, and sadly under-served by the story. Perhaps even that the alternate history is a mere gloss that does little to expand the discussion of Jewishness. But this are minor complaints against the power of this masterpiece.

*****

August 2012 review

One part Philip Roth Jewish kvetching, one part Raymond Chandler hardboiled detective, and a dash of Philip K Dick alt-history, this book is a wonder. I won't ruin the plot, but all I can say is that Chabon is an undisputed grandmaster of sensual writing. Jewish Sitka is one of the realist fictional places I've read about, the predicament of its fundamentally lost characters all too familiar.

Who needs sleep when you have literature? show less