Michael Chabon is a brilliant writer, and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is a masterful, scintillating book. It’s lyrical as a poem, funny as a Shecky Greene monologue, and engaging as a crossword puzzle. It’s the kind of book that makes lesser authors (like me) want to throw their laptops through the window and take up careers in online marketing.
And yet I don’t recommend it.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is a hard-boiled police novel, set in an alternate universe in which the state of Israel failed in 1948. The homeless Jews were (grudgingly) offered a home in the Alaska panhandle, around Sitka. There they have lived for almost 60 years (the book is set in 2007), but next year the mandate runs out, and the land is scheduled to be returned to the Tlinkit Indians (that’s pronounced “Clinkit,” by the way. You probably didn’t know that. I know it because I spent a summer in the Shumagin Islands, long ago).
It’s in this climate of insecurity and futility that police detective Meyer Landsman is taken to view the body of a gunshot victim in the seedy hotel where he’s lived since his divorce. The body turns out to be that of a once-famous young man, a chess prodigy, rabbi’s son and miracle worker who many thought would be the Messiah. Depressed, self-destructive, alcoholic, Det. Landsman sets about solving the mystery, sometimes helped and sometimes hindered by his half-Tlinkit partner and his ex-wife, who is now his boss.
Be warned—the rest of this review includes spoilers. Not spoilers about the plot, but about the meaning of the book. Of course, I may have misunderstood the meaning altogether, as ordinary chess players in this novel are baffled by the moves of the great masters. But I’ll tell you what I got out of it, for whatever that’s worth.
The lesson of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is that the real danger in the world comes from the devout, whatever their religion. Chabon has cleverly, in his alternate universe, created a world without Islamic terrorism (because we all know there’d be no Islamic terrorism if there were no Israel). But there is terrorism nevertheless, coming out of those famously vicious groups, orthodox Jews and Christian evangelicals.
This book, it appears to me, is the heart-cry of the assimilated, secular, self-hating Jew. When the Muslim terrorist says it’s all the Jews’ fault, Chabon (it would appear) hangs his head and says, “It’s true. But it’s not my fault. It’s the fault of those black hats. They’re just crazy.”
So the book saddened me. I should also mention that I read it to the end, though—something which I rarely do with books that offend me deeply. This one was just too good to put down, even when I thought it morally perverse and dangerous.
Cautions for language apply—not only obscenity and cursing, but actual blasphemy. Also a lot of jokes about Jews that no Gentile could get away with.
Read at your own risk.
Thanks for the interesting review Lars. I recall seeing a number of comments and reviews on the book; some loving it and some hating it. (I think I’ll give it a pass.)
I couldn’t finish it. I felt like I was being influenced by the loser main character, and it made me too depressed.
I can well understand that. Not a cheery experience.
Great review,LW.
I would sum up my experience wit that book in one word.
Bothersome.
All I had (and have) heard about the book was how incredible it was. It is comforting to hear someone else say what I was thinking (and much clearer).
Way to go.
I have waffled about reading this book for, quite literally, years. I really would like to get into Chabon’s stuff, but someone revealed to me what an evangelical in the novel wants to do to a certain non-Muslim nation in the Middle East. And what a tired, offensive cliche it is. After reading this review, I guess my mind is made up — on to another title.
Strangely, your review makes me want to read Chabon’s book, The YIddish Policeman’s Union, to find out what offends you.
I myself am offended by most popular literature (and I considered Chabon to be a popular writer) in the same way I’m offended by Soap Operas. They give us spiritual and emotional candy instead of that ice cold, warm and sometimes white hot reality that is necessary to change our lives for the better. Who, after all, wants to quit drinking or cheating on his wife?
But, oddly, nothing in your review seemed to be the least bit depressing or off-putting.
For one thing, I would do more than quibble with your metaphoric characterization of great writers as “great (chess) masters.” I believe it takes tremendous courage and character to produce great literature, not long training or even far-above-average ability which all-too-often produces very elaborite evasions instead of revelations of genius.
In the second place, a novel is a novel and a writer is a writer. Dostoevsky is not the Underground Man and Herman Melville is not captain Ahab.
It’s probably your last sentence that makes me curious: “Read at your own risk.” That sentence should be on the coat of arms of all readers of great literature from Don Quixote to whoever turns out to be the genius of the early 21st century.
READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. Great literature is not for the weak at heart.
I don’t know anything about Michael Chabon but now I’m curious.
Thanks for the review!
I don’t think this was an original idea with Chabon, as I seem to remember some Libertarian writers mentioning a Jewish state in Alaska as a solution to the ‘mid-east problem’ a few years before his novel came out.
I loved The Final Solution, the only other book I have read by MC. Loved it.
But I love that character already.