Some Words

Yesterday, shortly after getting up, I finished The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. I would probably have finished the night before, but my eyes were starting to hurt, it kept me going a little past that, but only just. Chabon at some point, I’m not sure when, vaulted into the position of “American writer who’s prodigious talents I most envy.”

Union is a fairly textbook noir, with a little flourish thrown in. It takes place in a fictional world, where instead of Jerusalem, the Jews got a part of Alaska after WWII. There used to be an essay on Chabon’s site, which I can’t find anymore, that detailed a book he had found called “Say it in Yiddish!” from the old Say It series of language manuals. In the essay he talks about the world in which Yiddish would actually be spoken as a still vibrant tongue. Now he has taken the time to create it.

The book feels like Chandler to me, with a slightly less convoluted plot. Of course the two authors have different ways of putting words together, but I like both of them, so I’m more than happy to be reading Chabon. In it, down and out detective Landsman must solve the murder he’s been told to give up on, before his life, and jurisdiction, come crashing down around him. The Jews are about to get kicked out of Alaska, and Landsman has no idea where he’s going to land.

Oddly enough, the thing that gave me the most pleasure reading this book was the way that Chabon introduced characters. There’s a way that the old pulps brought characters on, with just a little too much text. The characters are over the top, before they even open their mouths. Even the people who are wasting their lives are wasting them at an incredible clip. I love that feeling with pulp fiction.

And I would be lying to say I wasn’t biased. It’s not just that I love Chabon. There’s a part of me that feels a little better more calm about all the mitzvahs I’m failing to do. On some weird level I feel like reading Chabon is remedial Judaism. Like My Name is Asher Lev I feel better about not being a black hat, just by reading about the occasional black hat. I told a friend at work that he might not get the same thing out of the book that I do. Now he’s telling me that I might not get the same thing out of Mysteries of Pittsburgh, because I’m not bi-curious.

As the novel moves on, you get a little taste of the various Jewish communities that have moved to Alaska, and more than a little chess. Chabon thanks Nabakov for a chess problem in the author’s note. There’s another essay from his site… about Pale Fire, which someone borrowed from me and never returned, the bum. In this essay, Chabon talks about the need to use rare words. This ends up causing my one big complaint. There are a few times, say three, that Chabon seems to be trying to dig a word out of obscurity. Nabakov finds words that somehow seem essential, no matter how obscure. The words Chabon tries to do this to feel forced. But if That’s what I’m complaining about, that should say something.

At any rate, Jewish or not, Chabon takes you on a ride, builds a world with tantalizing hints, but not a complete picture of the whole, and leaves you at the end feeling like it’s a solid ending. That’s another thing I envy him for. His endings feel like endings. I’m always amazed by how few authors can do that.