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The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.) Paperback – Deckle Edge, April 29, 2008
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For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.
Homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. And in the cheap hotel where Landsman has washed up, someone has just committed a murderright under his nose. When he begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy, word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, and Landsman finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, evil, and salvation that are his heritage.
At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.
- Print length464 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateApril 29, 2008
- Dimensions5.31 x 1.16 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100007149832
- ISBN-13978-0007149834
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A Jewish detective investigates a murder in a temporary safe haven, facing powerful forces of faith, obsession, evil, and salvation.Popular highlight
A Messiah who actually arrives is no good to anybody. A hope fulfilled is already half a disappointment.485 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
Just to spite himself, because spiting himself, spiting others, spiting the world is the pastime and only patrimony of Landsman and his people.297 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
Even the most casual study of the record, Landsman thinks, would show that strange times to be a Jew have almost always been, as well, strange times to be a chicken.275 Kindle readers highlighted this
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From the Inside Flap
For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a temporary safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.
Homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. And in the cheap hotel where Landsman has washed up, someone has just committed a murder--right under his nose. When he begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy, word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, and Landsman finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, evil, and salvation that are his heritage.
At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.
From the Back Cover
For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.
Homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. And in the cheap hotel where Landsman has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under his nose. When he begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy, word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, and Landsman finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, evil, and salvation that are his heritage.
At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.
About the Author
Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Moonglow and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, among many others. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife, the novelist Ayelet Waldman, and their children.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
A NovelBy Michael ChabonHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright ©2008 Michael ChabonAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780007149834
Chapter One
Nine months Landsman's been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered. Now somebody has put a bullet in the brain of the occupant of 208, a yid who was calling himself Emanuel Lasker.
"He didn't answer the phone, he wouldn't open his door," says Tenenboym the night manager when he comes to roust Landsman. Landsman lives in 505, with a view of the neon sign on the hotel across Max Nordau Street. That one is called the Blackpool, a word that figures in Landsman's nightmares. "I had to let myself into his room."
The night manager is a former U.S. Marine who kicked a heroin habit of his own back in the sixties, after coming home from the shambles of the Cuban war. He takes a motherly interest in the user population of the Zamenhof. He extends credit to them and sees that they are left alone when that is what they need.
"Did you touch anything in the room?" Landsman says.
Tenenboym says, "Only the cash and jewelry."
Landsman puts on his trousers and shoes and hitches up his suspenders. Then he and Tenenboym turn to look at the doorknob, where a necktie hangs, red with a fat maroon stripe, already knotted to save time. Landsman has eight hours to go until his next shift. Eight rat hours, sucking at his bottle, in his glass tank lined with wood shavings. Landsman sighs and goes for the tie. He slides it over his head and pushes up the knot to his collar. He puts on his jacket, feels for the wallet and shield in the breast pocket, pats the sholem he wears in a holster under his arm, a chopped Smith & Wesson Model 39.
"I hate to wake you, Detective," Tenenboym says. "Only I noticed that you don't really sleep."
"I sleep," Landsman says. He picks up the shot glass that he is currently dating, a souvenir of the World's Fair of 1977. "It's just I do it in my underpants and shirt." He lifts the glass and toasts the thirty years gone since the Sitka World's Fair. A pinnacle of Jewish civilization in the north, people say, and who is he to argue? Meyer Landsman was fourteen that summer, and just discovering the glories of Jewish women, for whom 1977 must have been some kind of a pinnacle. "Sitting up in a chair." He drains the glass. "Wearing a sholem."
According to doctors, therapists, and his ex-wife, Landsman drinks to medicate himself, tuning the tubes and crystals of his moods with a crude hammer of hundred-proof plum brandy. But the truth is that Landsman has only two moods: working and dead. Meyer Landsman is the most decorated shammes in the District of Sitka, the man who solved the murder of the beautiful Froma Lefkowitz by her furrier husband, and caught Podolsky the Hospital Killer. His testimony sent Hyman Tsharny to federal prison for life, the first and last time that criminal charges against a Verbover wiseguy have ever been made to stick. He has the memory of a convict, the balls of a fireman, and the eyesight of a housebreaker. When there is crime to fight, Landsman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket. It's like there's a film score playing behind him, heavy on the castanets. The problem comes in the hours when he isn't working, when his thoughts start blowing out the open window of his brain like pages from a blotter. Sometimes it takes a heavy paperweight to pin them down.
"I hate to make more work for you," Tenenboym says.
During his days working Narcotics, Landsman arrested Tenenboym five times. That is all the basis for what passes for friendship between them. It is almost enough.
"It's not work, Tenenboym," Landsman says. "I do it for love."
"It's the same for me," the night manager says. "With being a night manager of a crap-ass hotel."
Landsman puts his hand on Tenenboym's shoulder, and they go down to take stock of the deceased, squeezing into the Zamenhof's lone elevator, or elevatoro, as a small brass plate over the door would have it. When the hotel was built fifty years ago, all of its directional signs, labels, notices, and warnings were printed on brass plates in Esperanto. Most of them are long gone, victims of neglect, vandalism, or the fire code.
The door and door frame of 208 do not exhibit signs of forced entry. Landsman covers the knob with his handkerchief and nudges the door open with the toe of his loafer.
"I got this funny feeling," Tenenboym says as he follows Landsman into the room. "First time I ever saw the guy. You know the expression ‘a broken man'?"
Landsman allows that the phrase rings a bell.
"Most of the people it gets applied to don't really deserve it," Tenenboym says. "Most men, in my opinion, they have nothing there to break in the first place. But this Lasker. He was like one of those sticks you snap, it lights up. You know? For a few hours. And you can hear broken glass rattling inside of it. I don't know, forget it. It was just a funny feeling."
"Everybody has a funny feeling these days," Landsman says, making a few notes in his little black pad about the situation of the room, even though such notes are superfluous, because he rarely forgets a detail of physical description. Landsman has been told, by the same loose confederacy of physicians, psychologists, and his former spouse, that alcohol will kill his gift for recollection, but so far, to his regret, this claim has proved false. His vision of the past remains unimpaired. "We had to open a separate phone line just to handle the calls."
"These are strange times to be a Jew," Tenenboym agrees. "No doubt about it."
Continues...
Excerpted from The Yiddish Policemen's Unionby Michael Chabon Copyright ©2008 by Michael Chabon. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (April 29, 2008)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 464 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0007149832
- ISBN-13 : 978-0007149834
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 1.16 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #68,094 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #658 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- #793 in Historical Fantasy (Books)
- #5,561 in Literary Fiction (Books)
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About the author
Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of seven novels – including The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union – two collections of short stories, and one other work of non-fiction. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and children.
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Chabon creates an alternative historical reality on the basis of three plausible assumptions. The first is that, in the years before the War, America created a home for a limited number of Jewish refugees in Sitka, on the South-East coast of Alaska; (this plan was actually floated, but never brought to a vote). Second, that the new state of Israel was overrun by its enemies shortly after its founding, causing a massive exodus of people to be accommodated in this small area, giving rise to a large city built up over islands and a narrow strip of land. The third assumption is that these refugees were not accepted as American immigrants, but as temporary nationals of the new entity, leased for a period of sixty years. So while Jewish Sitka is a self-governing city-state, with Yiddish its official language, and with its own police force, this authority is precarious. For one thing, different sects have taken over different parts of the city, effectively maintaining their own law, even sometimes in opposition to the official law. For another, the sixty-year lease is about to expire, and the action of the book takes place in the last weeks before Reversion, when Jews who have not made other arrangements will be forced out again in yet another Exodus.
One such unprepared unfortunate is our protagonist, an alcoholic homicide detective named Meyer Landsman. One of the other residents in the fleabag hotel where he lives is found murdered, with a chess game set out on a board beside him. Even though his superiors tell him to drop the case, Landsman persists in his attempts to discover who the victim really was, and who killed him. This thread sews the plot together and leads to some surprising places. Ultimately, however, it is not the whodunnit element that is important; we discover the answer, but that is a minor detail in the almost apocalyptic drama of fear and destiny that is revealed in the shadow of the last days of the Jewish people in Sitka. But while specifically Jewish in context, I find the book also is full of insight into the fundamentalist mindset generally, and it is very much a reflection of forces in American politics of our own time.
Chabon is equally successful on the intimate level. We come to know a lot about Myer Landsman: the suicide of his chess grandmaster father, the death of his sister in a flying accident, and his separation from his wife Bina after the abortion of their unborn child. This last relationship is further complicated when Bina turns up as Meyer's new boss, but the unraveling of the case also has the effect of bringing the past and present together, in ways that are ultimately deeply satisfying, and give the book human warmth as a ballast to its flights of brilliance. If you come to the novel as a Gentile (and perhaps even as a Jew), you will be plunged into a world that seems hermetic, claustrophic, extremely strange. When you finish it, you will understand where the strangeness comes from. More, you will be left with a small group of human beings whom you have come to know as intimately as if they were your own family or neighbors.
However a few things threw me off about this book, namely, my own experiences with Yiddish. As a language and a culture that I have encountered through my family (predominantly secular) and through my associations with Hasidic Jews (obviously orthodox), Chabon's Yiddish seemed a bit off, and although it wasn't a deal-breaker for me, it took a little getting used to. This book's Yiddish just isn't exactly the Yiddish I know, however, I make no claims to speak the language or have lived a Yiddish life. I finally came around to accepting Chabon's setting in Sitka, Alaska as more of a, "If this were what we got instead of Israel," senerio, and since I've personally had a lot of exposure to Hebrew, Israel and modern Israeli culture, I felt Meyer and Berko fit in a little better as I found myself seeing them this way.
The plot also disappointed me on a certain level, as it starts off so seductively as we slip into a noir-of-sorts city that makes its way into a bigger world; I was fine with letting go slightly of that dark noir ambiance, but I was not pleased with how the book concludes; the wrap up betrays the theme of the book in some ways as it ends uneventfully (an explosion reported on the TV doesn't count for much with me), bad-guys sort of winning, nothing too learned to take away except that Meyer is getting old and contending with the idea that he needs to settle--his story to tell, at the end, was already told, better to have left it at that than to make it a tale he's now going to share with a journalist.
On a final positive note, the characters are robust and so very real, especially the Black Hats who are without exception brilliantly written.