| REVIEW: Michael Chabon, THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION |
In 1938, Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior under Roosevelt, proposed that the United States ignore normal immigration quotas and offer refuge to European Jews, whose fate hung in precarious balance. The planned refuge was Alaska, which had not yet become a state and was anxious for development. Congress vetoed Ickes’ proposal and the tragic events of that time unfolded.
In 2002, Michael Chabon began work on The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, a book that changes one of the above facts. In the history of this book, congress approved Ickes legislation, and a million Jews were spared and granted a safe sixty-year haven in Sitka, Alaska.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is brilliant. Its characters are so real, so alive, so memorable that it was difficult for this reader to see them reach the end of their story. The altered political world Chabon creates is fascinating. The plot is complex. The Yiddish is challenging, though a glossary is provided for those who don’t know a shtarker from a shkotz. And the romance, though broken, is more than satisfactory. The book begins with a murder and an angst-ridden Yiddish detective named Meyer Landsman. Where Landsman’s investigation leads is as unlikely as one could imagine. Like an infinite set of Russian nesting dolls, mysteries compound themselves, intersecting and expanding, reaching a kind of schizophrenic culmination that has to be admired for its audacity.
The Coen brothers are adapting The Yiddish Policemen’s Union for the screen, calling it a noir thriller. But read the book first. Michael Chabon has the gifts of craft, wit, intelligence, and, most importantly here, chutzpah. He’s taken a ‘what if’ and turned it into a fluid, smart, sly, and fascinating story. Surely, he’s one of our finest contemporary writers.
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