The Yiddish Policemen's Union: First Impressions

My comments this week on The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon will be fairly brief as I've read only 53 pages. But please don't take my scant reading as a reflection on the book's quality. It's not. The book is, so far, a fast, enjoyable read.

Rather, my scant reading is a testament to how much busier English professors are when they have mid-term papers to grade. Sadly, my personal reading has been supplanted this week by a mountain of student essays.

Having said all that, here's what strikes me in the first 53 pages of The Yiddish Policemen's Union:

• Meyer Landsman. This is the book's main character, and I like him. He's a homicide detective, and on the surface he's got a real Mickey Spillane thing going on. He fits all the hard-boiled detective stereotypes. He's tough talking, doesn't sleep, drinks too much, and has a failed marriage. In spite of all of this, though, he's still interesting. Chabon gives him just enough insecurities to make me like him. For example, he's literally afraid of the dark, and he even avoids investigating a dark, cramped crime scene because of this phobia. I've long believed that its characters weaknesses that make them interesting and not their strengths. Meyer Landsman is yet more proof of this.
• The Alternate History. This book is set in Alaska in a fictional Jewish city that was established in the aftermath of WWII. The state of Israel doesn't exist, and Alaska is no longer a safe haven for Jews as they're being systematically deported. Usually, when I read books with alternate histories, I roll my eyes, but for some reason, I'm tolerating and even enjoying the alternate history in this book. I'm not sure why I like it, but I'll try to answer that question as I read.

That's all I've got time for now, as I still have a mountain of essays on my desk. Wish me luck.

June's Featured Book: The Yiddish Policeman's Union

I've long believed that one of the most delightful questions in the English language is this:

"What should I read next?"

What I love about this question is its vast openness. A graduate school professor once explained it to me this way:

Giving all of your attention to one good book is like sitting on a bench at a crowded street corner and gazing at a beautiful woman who walks by. For a few seconds, you study her every move. Maybe you're struck by the unusual shape of her eyes or the delicate line of her cheekbones, and so for a brief moment, even though the world is big and crowded, only those eyes or cheekbones exist and you sit there with no desire in the world but to study what it is that makes this woman beautiful. And then, before you're quite ready, she's obscured by the crowd and disappears.

But real beauty is in what happens next. Because at this point, you have a choice. At this point, with the beautiful eyes and cheekbones gone, you can choose to dwell on her, to re-live in your mind the moments of her appearance and disappearance again and again, or you can blink your eyes a few times, take a deep breath, clear your mind, and look once more into the crowd.

Choosing a new book is like this beautiful moment. It's choosing to look into the crowd.

Now, I'm fully aware that this analogy is more than a little voyeuristic and creepy, but I do understand my former professor's point. He was saying (I hope) that while beauty is often fleeting and temporary, our quest for it shouldn't be. Our quest for beauty should be ongoing and permanent. When one beautiful thing passes from us, we should blink, sigh, and look forward, because beauty exists neither in the past nor in the future, but in the eternal present.

So the question, "What should I read next?" is a good question. It's a mark of those who have chosen to permanently seek beauty. It's a question that's full of hope and anticipation. It's an optimistic question. It believes that beauty really exists and implies that we can find it if we will only seek.

And I like that.

So here's what I'll read next:

The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon. I'll forego telling you much about it since I've written about Chabon on this site before, but before you choose to read along with me, you should know this is a work of science fiction. Don't, however, let that put you off. I've read some of Chabon's other work, and I trust him entirely. Beyond that, The Yiddish Policemen's Union has won a slew of prestigious awards.

You can read a review of The Yiddish Policemen's Union here, and if you'd like to get a copy and read along with me, I'll start posting about this book on Friday.

Writer of the Day: Michael Chabon

Last week I took a group of students to the National Undergraduate Literature Conference in Ogden, Utah. This conference, held at Weber State University annually, gives students the chance to read their own works of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and literary analysis to a large audience, and it lets them hear from and meet successful authors.

This year's keynote author was the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Michael Chabon (pronounced SHAY-bon). I've been a fan of Chabon's since I read his book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay years ago.

I like Chabon for two reasons:

First, I like Chabon because he's hilarious. He has a dry, occasionally sarcastic wit, and he takes ordinary, mundane objects and uses them to point out the absurdity of life (which he did in his speech by observing that any Lego creation these days comes with an oppressive set of instructions that demands to be followed exactly. These instructions make putting together a Lego toy a non-creative, painful process that, when completed, renders the possibility of playing with a Lego creation and potentially dismantling it by accident unthinkable).

Second, and more importantly, I like Chabon because he's trying to reclaim literature for the common reader. He's doing so by arguing for the value of entertaining, plot-filled books. (Gasp!)He's even said, "I read for entertainment, and I write to entertain. Period."

Heavily influenced by comic books and popular culture (his keynote address included extended references not just to Legos, but also to Doctor Who, the anatomical impossibility of comic book women, and The Fantastic Four) Chabon's writing is easily accessible.

Also, unlike other successful writers who tend to pooh-pooh genre fiction, Chabon vehemently defends it. He even won a Hugo award and a Nebula award (science fiction prizes) for his book The Yiddish Policemen's Union. He criticizes today's literary fiction as "plotless" and attacks what he calls the "contemporary, quotidian . . . moment-of-truth revelatory story."

Chabon's on a mission, trying to "annihilate" the academic bias against genre fiction by blending the best elements of literary fiction (attention to language and character) with the best elements of genre fiction (entertaining plots).

If you struggle with overly literary books and had a tough time plowing through Unaccustomed Earth, maybe you should check out Chabon. He's blending two worlds. He's literary and artistic, but he's also a firm believer in entertaining plots.

Learn more about his books here.

NOTE: We start discussing The Book Thief in four days, so get your copy soon.