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  • MONDAY APRIL 30 2007 10:00 AM

Book Readers Eagerly Await the Latest From Chabon

Submitted by PointBlank

Edited by Rahodeb

Tags: Michael Chabon, New Fiction



Tomorrow, Michael Chabon’s latest novel, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union will hit bookshelves both real and virtual. Normally, a new book isn’t cause for a news story or much notice at all, but Chabon’s last book, SG favorite The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was so successful, both critically—it won the Pulitzer,—and popularly (really, I haven’t met anyone who didn’t love it) that this new work deserves a lot of attention. Turning from the real world of Jewish comic writers and artists, Chabon looks at another aspect of Jewish history, albeit a more fictional one.

Aside from geography, Sitka, a boomerang-shaped island in the southeastern panhandle of Alaska, has very little in common with the imaginary city named Sitka conjured up by Michael Chabon in his latest book, “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.”

In this fourth novel, which comes out Tuesday, Mr. Chabon takes a historical footnote, a pie-in-the-sky proposal to open up the Alaska Territory in 1940 to European Jews marked for extermination, and asks: What if? What if this proposal, which in real life was supported by the secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes, but killed in Congress, had actually passed? What if Jews had poured into a frigid island instead of the Middle Eastern desert, and the state of Israel had never been created? What if the small settlement of Sitka had grown into a teeming Jewish homeland, a land not of milk and honey but of salmon and lumber?



The first idea for the book came to Mr. Chabon after writing a (somewhat poorly received) essay on a Yiddish phrasebook. After a trip to Alaska the idea for a hardboiled detective novel set in the frozen tundra of an Alaskan-Jewish state. The novel opens with a murder, as most private eyes stories do; the lead character is a rogue cop and a drunk. Pretty commonplace for a Chandler-esque story, right? Of course, he also has to deal with the imminent dissolution of this Jewish state, a Hasidic crime syndicate, and drug-addicted chess masters. Sounds like my kind of book.

Unfortunately, those of us waiting for the Kavalier and Clay movie will have to wait a bit longer. According to Chabon’s blog the film, whose screenplay has been finished for almost four years, is nowhere close to being made.

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Comments
st_even

st_even

Milwaukee, WI
September 2006

APR 30, 2007 10:08 AM

I love revisionist historical fiction.

BellJar

BellJar

I'm lost
February 2005

APR 30, 2007 10:23 AM

I'm excited. Though, with all the other books I have to get through, I'll probably be waiting for paperback. This is definitely an interesting concept.

almostfamous

almostfamous

NEWSWIRE

United Kingdom

APR 30, 2007 10:49 AM

i'm trying not to get over-excited and believe he could ever write anything as perfect as Kavalier and Clay again, 'cause i don't want everything else of his i read to be an automatic let down. i do like the sound of this though smile

Margot_Dent

Margot_Dent

Los Angeles, CA
February 2004

APR 30, 2007 10:57 AM

can't wait to read it!

Jaylin

Jaylin

SUICIDEGIRL

California, USA

APR 30, 2007 12:10 PM

This novel AND Chuck Palahniuk's Rant on the SAME day?!?!?!
Oh man ... there IS a God.
wink

Short

Short

Sacramento, CA
September 2005

APR 30, 2007 05:42 PM

st_even said:
I love revisionist historical fiction.



you should read Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon

Emperor_Norton

Emperor_Norton

Phoenix, AZ
February 2006

MAY 02, 2007 12:06 AM

I got my copy of it today, and I'm already 150 pages into it. So far, it's just a phenomenal read. I've lost count of the number of sentences that have blind-sided me with their wit. Check out this paragraph:

"According to doctors, therapists, and his ex-wife, Landsman drinks to medicate himself, tuning the tubes and crystals of his moods with a crude hammer of hundred-proof plum brandy. But the truth is that Landsman has only two moods: working and dead. Meyer Landsman is the most decorated shammes in the District of Sitka, the man who solved the murder of the beautiful Froma Lefkowitz by her furrier husband, and caught Podolsky the Hospital Killer. His testimony sent Hyman Tsharny to federal prison for life, the first and last time that criminal charges against a Verbover wiseguy have ever been made to stick. He has the memory of a convict, the balls of a fireman, and the eyesight of a housebreaker. Where there is crime to fight, Landsman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket. It's like there's a film score playing behind him, heavy on the castanets. The problem comes in the hours when he isn't working, when his thoughts start blowing out the open window of his brain like pages from a blotter. Sometimes it takes a heavy paperweight to pin them down."

Envy isn't a strong enough word to describe the emotion I felt reading that paragraph for the first time.

Flux

Flux

SUICIDEGIRL

Georgia, USA

MAY 28, 2007 11:35 AM

It's really, really good.

Jennifer_

Jennifer_

Venezuela
November 2006

MAY 30, 2007 01:35 PM

This sounds good. Counter-factual history simultaneously intrigues and frustrates me.

I think this will still be the best counter-factual history book, though:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-If-Military-Historians-Imagine/dp/0330487248/ref=pd_bbs_1/026-1909344-5084404?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180557180&sr=8-1

Although Chabon's book does have the advantage of being fictional, books are always more exciting when you get to make stuff up.

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