If your debut novel is called The Mysteries of
Pittsburgh, you are already on the path towards
inclusion in the postmodern mystery rogues
gallery. I mean, other than
Barry Bonds' missed throw
to home plate in the bottom
of the ninth in game seven
of 1992 National League
championship series, what
in this city's past is suitably
mysterious for literary trans-
mogrification? Or is the
mystery how an unheralded
student writer, then working as an assistant in
his stepfather’s optometry office, could secure
a huge advance without even submitting his
novel to an agent or publisher? One of
Chabon’s college advisers, novelist
MacDonald Harris, did just that
surreptitiously, starting off a bidding war and
setting in motion Michael Chabon's charmed
literary career. The book was a solid seller,
and was followed by Wonder Boys—written in
seven months after Chabon abandoned the
unwieldy second novel that had bogged him
down—and then came the Pulitzer Prize
winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier &
Clay. But Chabon’s zeal for the mysterious
returned with The Yiddish Policemen's Union
(2007) which combined alternative history,
hard-boiled Chandler-esque crime
investigation, and Chabon’s characteristically
vivid prose. A movie version by the Coen
Brothers—a perfect match for this story—is
in the works. When not writing genre-busting
books, Chabon has turned out the chance to
star in an ad for The Gap, and get
photographed as one of People magazine’s "50
most beautiful people."
Pittsburgh, you are already on the path towards
inclusion in the postmodern mystery rogues
gallery. I mean, other than
Barry Bonds' missed throw
to home plate in the bottom
of the ninth in game seven
of 1992 National League
championship series, what
in this city's past is suitably
mysterious for literary trans-
mogrification? Or is the
mystery how an unheralded
student writer, then working as an assistant in
his stepfather’s optometry office, could secure
a huge advance without even submitting his
novel to an agent or publisher? One of
Chabon’s college advisers, novelist
MacDonald Harris, did just that
surreptitiously, starting off a bidding war and
setting in motion Michael Chabon's charmed
literary career. The book was a solid seller,
and was followed by Wonder Boys—written in
seven months after Chabon abandoned the
unwieldy second novel that had bogged him
down—and then came the Pulitzer Prize
winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier &
Clay. But Chabon’s zeal for the mysterious
returned with The Yiddish Policemen's Union
(2007) which combined alternative history,
hard-boiled Chandler-esque crime
investigation, and Chabon’s characteristically
vivid prose. A movie version by the Coen
Brothers—a perfect match for this story—is
in the works. When not writing genre-busting
books, Chabon has turned out the chance to
star in an ad for The Gap, and get
photographed as one of People magazine’s "50
most beautiful people."
| ROGUES GALLERY: MICHAEL CHABON |
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Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is a
strange, brilliant book that readers will find difficult to
classify. Is it a Zionist Da Vinci Code? A work of
alternative reality in the manner of Philip K. Dick? A
hard-boiled mystery novel? A grand literary effort in
the high style? It is, in fact, all these things, and more.
Back in 1995, The Washington Post
dubbed Michael Chabon as "the
young star of American letters."
Chabon has lived up to the early
hype. Since the dawn of the mil-
lennium, he has seen his Wonder
Boys made into a movie with Michael
Douglas, and won the 2001 Pulitzer
Prize for his novel The Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Along
the way, he turned down a chance
to appear in a Gap ad, and sent People
magazine packing when they wanted to place him on their
list of the "50 Most Beautiful People." (And who says that
serious novelists don’t lead glamorous lives?)
Now Chabon has treated his fans with a new novel that will
rank among his finest works. Imagine, for a moment, that
Franklin Roosevelt had responded to the plight of European
Jews by setting aside part of Alaska as a homeland for the
Diaspora. This intriguing premise is Chabon’s starting point
for The Yiddish Policemen’s Union – a mind-bending game of
what-if similar to Philip Roth’s recent literary effort to re-
imagine America if Lindbergh had been elected President in
1940, or Dick’s depiction of the United States in the
aftermath of a defeat in World War II.
Related Reviews
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Gentlemen of the Road
Chabon takes delight in his alternative Alaska, and lovingly
describes all the small details -- food, fashion, ritual, place
names and the like -- in a playful, ingenious manner.
Occasionally, he lets a few other snippets of alternative
history escape in a passing mention, referring to the first
lady Marilyn Monroe Kennedy or a Vietnam-like war in
Cuba.
But this imaginative reconstruction of a Jewish Alaska is
merely the backdrop for a intricately plotted mystery, which
is the second layer in Chabon’s multifaceted novel. Down-
and-out detective Meyer Landsman finds a dead body in his
skid-row hotel, and is determined to track down the
murderer, despite warnings from higher-ups that this is a
case that he should not investigate.
The clues he assembles are odd ones. Chess pieces are
arrayed in a peculiar endgame position near the body. The
deceased lived under different aliases, all drawn from
famous chess players in the past. And the victim’s life is as
puzzling as his death – some saw him as a pathetic junkie,
others as the potential leader of a messianic cult.
The third layer of the plot brings us into the realm of the
The Da Vinci Code, where conspiracies and secretive
organizations and two millennia of arcane history emerge as
provocative undercurrents in the story. Yet Chabon brings
all these elements together, seamlessly telling his tale on
several different levels. And, as always with Chabon, the
entire book is meticulously written. Chabon writes with great
intelligence and creativity, page by page, paragraph by
paragraph, even sentence by sentence. By any measure, The
Yiddish Policemen’s Union is a significant work by one of
America’s finest novelists, a whimsical whodunit with a
double dose of literary flare.
Ted Gioia's latest book is The Birth (and Death) of the
Cool.
| Click on image to purchase |
| The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon |
Further Clues:
Michael Chabon Q&A
The Coen Brothers Plan Film Version of The
Yiddish Policemen's Union
The Fourteen Skies of Michael Chabon
| Follow Ted Gioia on Twitter at www.twitter.com/tedgioia |
Recommended Sites:
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Ted Gioia's homepage
Ted Gioia (on Twitter)
American Fiction Notes
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Conceptual Fiction
Great Books Guide
The New Canon
Ted Gioia's homepage
Ted Gioia (on Twitter)
American Fiction Notes
The Art of Reading
The Big Read
Blographia Literaria
Books, Inq.
Bookslut
Booksquare
A Commonplace Blog
Conversational Reading
Crimespree Magazine
Critical Mass
Dana Gioia
The Elegant Variation
Fictionaut
In Search of the Classic Mystery
Joseph Peschel
Light Reading
The Literary Saloon
Los Angeles Review of Books
Maud Newton
The Millions
The Misread City
Mystery Fanfare
The Neglected Books Page
Nota Bene Books
Open Letters Monthly
Readerville
The Reading Experience
Reviews and Responses
Tipping My Fedora
Waggish