The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Encyclopedia
The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a 2007
novel
by American
author Michael Chabon
. The novel is a detective story
set in an alternative history version of the present day, based on the premise that during World War II
, a temporary settlement for Jewish refugees was established in Sitka, Alaska
, in 1941, and that the fledgling State of Israel
was destroyed in 1948. The novel is set in Sitka, which it depicts as a large, Yiddish
-speaking metropolis
.
The Yiddish Policemen's Union won a number of science fiction
awards: the Nebula Award for Best Novel
, the Locus Award for Best SF Novel, the Hugo Award for Best Novel
, and the Sidewise Award for Alternate History
for Best Novel. It was shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Award
for Best Novel and the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. , a film adaptation is in pre-production
, to be written and directed by the Coen brothers
.
, that recommended the provision of land in Alaska for the temporary refugee
settlement of European Jews who were being persecuted by the Nazis during World War II
. The novel's divergence point from real history is revealed in the first dozen chapters to be the death of Anthony Dimond
, Alaska Territory
delegate to the U.S. Congress
, in a car accident; Dimond was one of the congressmen responsible for preventing a vote on the report. It imagines a temporary independent Jewish settlement being created on the Alaskan coast. As a result, two million Jews are killed in the Holocaust
, instead of the six million in reality.
The setting is Sitka, Alaska, which has become a sprawling metropolis at the center of the Jewish settlement in Alaska. One of the city's landmarks is the 'Safety Pin', a tall building erected for the 1977 World Fair
held in Sitka and a source of pride for its inhabitants. The lands across the border are populated primarily by Tlingit Alaska Natives
, and there has been a history of friction between the Jews and the Tlingit, but also of intermarriage and cross-cultural contact; one of the novel's characters, Berko Shemets, is half Jewish, half Tlingit. Sitka's independence has been granted for only sixty years, and the novel is set at the end of this period, as an evangelical Christian
United States President is promising to go through with the 'Reversion' of Sitka to the United States
.
In the novel, the State of Israel is founded in 1948, but is destroyed after only three months in an alternative version of the Arab-Israeli War
. Without Israel, Palestine
is described as a mosaic of contending religious and secular nationalist groups locked in internecine conflict; Jerusalem is described as "a city of blood and slogans painted on the wall, severed heads on telephone poles". The United States president believes in "divine sanction" for neo-Zionism
, a movement seeking for Jews to reclaim Israel once again.
Chabon describes the rest of world history only elliptically
, but hints at enormous changes. Germany crushes the Soviet Union
in 1942 and World War II continues until 1946, when Berlin is destroyed with nuclear weapons. Chabon refers to a 'Polish Free State' existing in 1950, and describes some characters as veterans of a lengthy 'Cuban War' in the 1960s. President John F. Kennedy
was not assassinated and married Marilyn Monroe
; Orson Welles
succeeded in making his film of Heart of Darkness
. And when describing the modern world, Chabon refers to a 'Third Russian Republic' and an independent Manchuria
that has its own space program.
detective with the Sitka police department, examining the murder of a man in the hotel where Landsman lives. Around the corpse lies an open cardboard chess
board in mid-game. Landsman calls his partner, half-Tlingit, half-Jew Berko Shemets, to help him investigate further. Upon filing a report on the murder at police headquarters, Landsman and Berko discover that Landsman's ex-wife Bina has been promoted to commanding officer
of their unit.
Landsman and Berko discover that the victim was Mendel Shpilman, the son of the Verbover rebbe
, Sitka’s most powerful organized crime boss
. Mendel was believed by many to be the Tzadik
ha-Dor, the potential messiah, born once in every generation.
As Meyer continues to investigate Mendel's murder, he discovers that the supposed "chosen one" had taken a flight with Naomi, Landsman's deceased sister. He follows Naomi's trail to a mysterious set of buildings with an unknown purpose, set up in Tlingit territory by Jews. Landsman flies there to investigate; he is knocked out and thrown in a cell, whose walls have graffiti in Naomi's handwriting.
The naked and injured Landsman, after a crazed escape attempt, is rescued by a local Tlingit police chief, Willie Dick, who reunites him with Berko. They discover that the mysterious complex is home to a paramilitary group who plan to build a new Temple in Jerusalem. This involves destroying the Dome of the Rock
. The American government, led by an evangelical Christian Zionist
, has provided support.
As Landsman and Berko follow up on this lead, a news report reveals that the Dome has been bombed. American agents apprehend the detectives and offer them permission to stay in Sitka after the reversion if they agree to keep quiet about the plot they have uncovered. Landsman says that he will and is released.
Landsman reunites with Bina, frustrated by his failure with the Shpilman case. He keeps going over the chess board in his head, and suddenly realizes its similarity to a chessboard that Hertz Shemetz, Berko's father, had set up in his house. Landsman and Bina track down Hertz, and he confesses to killing Mendel at Mendel's own request. Landsman contacts an American newsman with the story. The book ends with Bina and Landsman reunited and ready to face their future wherever they may land in the Diaspora.
Despite its traditional detective-novel structure, the book contains a great deal of comic relief. The creative and playful use of the Yiddish language (for example, cops call a gun a "sholem" – literally a "peace") is an ongoing feature. The juxtaposition of the culture of the shtetl
(the Jewish village of eastern Europe) on the Alaskan landscape is also playful and amusing.
in October 1997. Entitled "Guidebook to a Land of Ghosts", the essay discussed a travel book Chabon had found, Say It in Yiddish, and the dearth of Yiddish-speaking countries in which the book would be useful. While researching hypothetical Yiddish-speaking countries, Chabon learned of "this proposal once that Jewish refugees be allowed to settle in Alaska during World War II... I made a passing reference to it in the essay, but the idea stuck."
In late 2003, Chabon mentioned the novel on his web site, saying that it was titled Hotzeplotz in a reference to the "Yiddish expression 'from here to Hotzeplotz,' meaning more or less the back of nowhere, Podunk, Iowa
, the ends of the earth." In 2004, Chabon said the (retitled) book would be published in fall 2005, but then the writer decided to trash his
most recent draft and start over. His publisher HarperCollins
pushed the publication date back to April 11, 2006. Chabon's rejected 600-page draft featured the same characters as the novel he eventually published but "a completely different story," and was also written in the first person.
In December 2005, Chabon announced a second delay to the novel's release, claiming that the manuscript was complete but that he felt that HarperCollins was rushing the novel into publication. An excerpt from the book appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review, and the novel itself was released on May 1, 2007. Chabon has said that the novel was difficult to write, calling it "an exercise in restraint all around... The sentences are much shorter than my typical sentences; my paragraphs are shorter than my typical paragraphs." He also described the novel as an
homage to the writing of mystery writers Raymond Chandler
, Dashiell Hammett
, and Ross Macdonald
, along with Russian writer Isaac Babel
.
Arts & Leisure section featured a "big, splashy" profile of Chabon in which he flew to Sitka and discussed the book while walking around the city. The novel also received preemptive criticism, with The New York Post publishing an article headlined "Novelist's Ugly View of Jews." The Post alleged that Chabon's depiction of "Jews as constantly in conflict with one another [is] bound to set off a firestorm of controversy."
Reviews were generally positive. The review aggregator Metacritic
reported the book had an average score of 75 out of 100, based on 17 reviews. Library Journal
called it "bloody brilliant" and Michiko Kakutani
wrote in The New York Times that the novel "builds upon the achievement of Kavalier & Clay... a gripping murder mystery [with] one of the most appealing detective heroes to come along since Sam Spade
or Philip Marlowe
." The novel debuted at #2 on the New York Times Best Seller list
on May 20, 2007, remaining on the list for 6 weeks.
purchased the film rights to The Yiddish Policemen's Union in 2002, based on a one-and-a-half page proposal. In February 2008, Rudin told The Guardian
that a film adaptation of The Yiddish Policemen's Union was in pre-production, to be written and directed by the Coen brothers
. The Coen Brothers will begin working on the adaptation for Columbia Pictures
after they complete filming of A Serious Man
. Chabon stated that the Coens are "among [his] favorite living moviemakers[...] What's more, I think they are perfectly suited to this material in every way, from its genre(s) to its tone to its content."
and Haida tribes.
2007 in literature
The year 2007 in literature involves some significant new books.-Events:*November 19 - First Kindle e-book reader released.*December 11 - Terry Pratchett informs fans on-line that he has been diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer's disease.-Literature:...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon born May 24, 1963) is an American author and "one of the most celebrated writers of his generation", according to The Virginia Quarterly Review....
. The novel is a detective story
Detective Story
Detective Story is a film noir which tells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. It features Kirk Douglas, Eleanor Parker, William Bendix, Cathy O'Donnell, Lee Grant, among others. The movie was adapted by Robert Wyler and Philip Yordan...
set in an alternative history version of the present day, based on the premise that during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, a temporary settlement for Jewish refugees was established in Sitka, Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
, in 1941, and that the fledgling State of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
was destroyed in 1948. The novel is set in Sitka, which it depicts as a large, Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
-speaking metropolis
Metropolis
A metropolis is a very large city or urban area which is a significant economic, political and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections and communications...
.
The Yiddish Policemen's Union won a number of science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
awards: the Nebula Award for Best Novel
Nebula Award for Best Novel
Winners of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The stated year is that of publication; awards are given in the following year.- Winners and other nominees :...
, the Locus Award for Best SF Novel, the Hugo Award for Best Novel
Hugo Award for Best Novel
The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...
, and the Sidewise Award for Alternate History
Sidewise Award for Alternate History
The Sidewise Awards for Alternate History were established in 1995 to recognize the best alternate history stories and novels of the year.The awards take their name from the 1934 short story "Sidewise in Time" by Murray Leinster, in which a strange storm causes portions of Earth to swap places with...
for Best Novel. It was shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Award
BSFA award
The BSFA Awards are literary awards presented annually since 1970 by the British Science Fiction Association to honor works in the genre of science fiction. Nominees and winners are chosen based on a vote of BSFA members...
for Best Novel and the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. , a film adaptation is in pre-production
Pre-production
Pre-production or In Production is the process of preparing all the elements involved in a film, play, or other performance.- In film :...
, to be written and directed by the Coen brothers
Coen Brothers
Joel David Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers...
.
Setting
The Yiddish Policemen's Union is set in an alternative history version of the present day. The premise is that, contrary to real history, the United States voted to implement the 1940 Slattery ReportSlattery Report
The Slattery Report, officially titled "The Problem of Alaskan Development,” was produced by the United States Department of the Interior under Secretary Harold L. Ickes in 1939–40. It was named after Undersecretary of the Interior Harry A. Slattery...
, that recommended the provision of land in Alaska for the temporary refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
settlement of European Jews who were being persecuted by the Nazis during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The novel's divergence point from real history is revealed in the first dozen chapters to be the death of Anthony Dimond
Anthony Dimond
Anthony Joseph Dimond was an American Democratic Party politician who was the Alaska Territory Delegate in the United States House of Representatives for many years...
, Alaska Territory
Alaska Territory
The Territory of Alaska was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from August 24, 1912, until January 3, 1959, when it was admitted to the Union as the State of Alaska...
delegate to the U.S. Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
, in a car accident; Dimond was one of the congressmen responsible for preventing a vote on the report. It imagines a temporary independent Jewish settlement being created on the Alaskan coast. As a result, two million Jews are killed in the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
, instead of the six million in reality.
The setting is Sitka, Alaska, which has become a sprawling metropolis at the center of the Jewish settlement in Alaska. One of the city's landmarks is the 'Safety Pin', a tall building erected for the 1977 World Fair
World fair
World Fair can refer to:* Expo , a large public exhibition* This World Fair, an American rock band...
held in Sitka and a source of pride for its inhabitants. The lands across the border are populated primarily by Tlingit Alaska Natives
Alaska Natives
Alaska Natives are the indigenous peoples of Alaska. They include: Aleut, Inuit, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Eyak, and a number of Northern Athabaskan cultures.-History:In 1912 the Alaska Native Brotherhood was founded...
, and there has been a history of friction between the Jews and the Tlingit, but also of intermarriage and cross-cultural contact; one of the novel's characters, Berko Shemets, is half Jewish, half Tlingit. Sitka's independence has been granted for only sixty years, and the novel is set at the end of this period, as an evangelical Christian
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
United States President is promising to go through with the 'Reversion' of Sitka to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
In the novel, the State of Israel is founded in 1948, but is destroyed after only three months in an alternative version of the Arab-Israeli War
1948 Arab-Israeli War
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...
. Without Israel, Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
is described as a mosaic of contending religious and secular nationalist groups locked in internecine conflict; Jerusalem is described as "a city of blood and slogans painted on the wall, severed heads on telephone poles". The United States president believes in "divine sanction" for neo-Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
, a movement seeking for Jews to reclaim Israel once again.
Chabon describes the rest of world history only elliptically
Ellipsis
Ellipsis is a series of marks that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word, sentence or whole section from the original text being quoted. An ellipsis can also be used to indicate an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence...
, but hints at enormous changes. Germany crushes the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in 1942 and World War II continues until 1946, when Berlin is destroyed with nuclear weapons. Chabon refers to a 'Polish Free State' existing in 1950, and describes some characters as veterans of a lengthy 'Cuban War' in the 1960s. President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
was not assassinated and married Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
; Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
succeeded in making his film of Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon.The story centres on Charles...
. And when describing the modern world, Chabon refers to a 'Third Russian Republic' and an independent Manchuria
Manchuria
Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...
that has its own space program.
Plot summary
The book opens with Meyer Landsman, an alcoholic homicideHomicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...
detective with the Sitka police department, examining the murder of a man in the hotel where Landsman lives. Around the corpse lies an open cardboard chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
board in mid-game. Landsman calls his partner, half-Tlingit, half-Jew Berko Shemets, to help him investigate further. Upon filing a report on the murder at police headquarters, Landsman and Berko discover that Landsman's ex-wife Bina has been promoted to commanding officer
Commanding officer
The commanding officer is the officer in command of a military unit. Typically, the commanding officer has ultimate authority over the unit, and is usually given wide latitude to run the unit as he sees fit, within the bounds of military law...
of their unit.
Landsman and Berko discover that the victim was Mendel Shpilman, the son of the Verbover rebbe
Rebbe
Rebbe , which means master, teacher, or mentor, is a Yiddish word derived from the Hebrew word Rabbi. It often refers to the leader of a Hasidic Jewish movement...
, Sitka’s most powerful organized crime boss
Crime boss
A crime boss or boss is a person in charge of a criminal organization. A boss typically has absolute or near-absolute control over his subordinates, is greatly feared by his subordinates for his ruthlessness and willingness to take lives in order to exert his influence, and profits come from the...
. Mendel was believed by many to be the Tzadik
Tzadik
Tzadik/Zadik/Sadiq is a title given to personalities in Jewish tradition considered righteous, such as Biblical figures and later spiritual masters. The root of the word ṣadiq, is ṣ-d-q , which means "justice" or "righteousness", also the root of Tzedakah...
ha-Dor, the potential messiah, born once in every generation.
As Meyer continues to investigate Mendel's murder, he discovers that the supposed "chosen one" had taken a flight with Naomi, Landsman's deceased sister. He follows Naomi's trail to a mysterious set of buildings with an unknown purpose, set up in Tlingit territory by Jews. Landsman flies there to investigate; he is knocked out and thrown in a cell, whose walls have graffiti in Naomi's handwriting.
The naked and injured Landsman, after a crazed escape attempt, is rescued by a local Tlingit police chief, Willie Dick, who reunites him with Berko. They discover that the mysterious complex is home to a paramilitary group who plan to build a new Temple in Jerusalem. This involves destroying the Dome of the Rock
Dome of the Rock
The Dome of the Rock is a shrine located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. The structure has been refurbished many times since its initial completion in 691 CE at the order of Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik...
. The American government, led by an evangelical Christian Zionist
Christian Zionism
Christian Zionism is a belief among some Christians that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, is in accordance with Biblical prophecy. It overlaps with, but is distinct from, the nineteenth century movement for the Restoration of the Jews...
, has provided support.
As Landsman and Berko follow up on this lead, a news report reveals that the Dome has been bombed. American agents apprehend the detectives and offer them permission to stay in Sitka after the reversion if they agree to keep quiet about the plot they have uncovered. Landsman says that he will and is released.
Landsman reunites with Bina, frustrated by his failure with the Shpilman case. He keeps going over the chess board in his head, and suddenly realizes its similarity to a chessboard that Hertz Shemetz, Berko's father, had set up in his house. Landsman and Bina track down Hertz, and he confesses to killing Mendel at Mendel's own request. Landsman contacts an American newsman with the story. The book ends with Bina and Landsman reunited and ready to face their future wherever they may land in the Diaspora.
Despite its traditional detective-novel structure, the book contains a great deal of comic relief. The creative and playful use of the Yiddish language (for example, cops call a gun a "sholem" – literally a "peace") is an ongoing feature. The juxtaposition of the culture of the shtetl
Shtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
(the Jewish village of eastern Europe) on the Alaskan landscape is also playful and amusing.
Origins and writing
Chabon began working on the novel in February 2002, inspired by an essay he had published in Harper'sHarper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
in October 1997. Entitled "Guidebook to a Land of Ghosts", the essay discussed a travel book Chabon had found, Say It in Yiddish, and the dearth of Yiddish-speaking countries in which the book would be useful. While researching hypothetical Yiddish-speaking countries, Chabon learned of "this proposal once that Jewish refugees be allowed to settle in Alaska during World War II... I made a passing reference to it in the essay, but the idea stuck."
In late 2003, Chabon mentioned the novel on his web site, saying that it was titled Hotzeplotz in a reference to the "Yiddish expression 'from here to Hotzeplotz,' meaning more or less the back of nowhere, Podunk, Iowa
Podunk
In American English, Podunk, podunk, or Podunk Hollow denotes or describes a place of small size or "in the middle of nowhere", and is often used in the upper case as a placeholder name in a context of dismissing significance or importance....
, the ends of the earth." In 2004, Chabon said the (retitled) book would be published in fall 2005, but then the writer decided to trash his
most recent draft and start over. His publisher HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
pushed the publication date back to April 11, 2006. Chabon's rejected 600-page draft featured the same characters as the novel he eventually published but "a completely different story," and was also written in the first person.
In December 2005, Chabon announced a second delay to the novel's release, claiming that the manuscript was complete but that he felt that HarperCollins was rushing the novel into publication. An excerpt from the book appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review, and the novel itself was released on May 1, 2007. Chabon has said that the novel was difficult to write, calling it "an exercise in restraint all around... The sentences are much shorter than my typical sentences; my paragraphs are shorter than my typical paragraphs." He also described the novel as an
homage to the writing of mystery writers Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
, Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade , Nick and Nora Charles , and the Continental Op .In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on...
, and Ross Macdonald
Ross Macdonald
Not to be confused with John D. MacDonaldRoss Macdonald is the pseudonym of the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar...
, along with Russian writer Isaac Babel
Isaac Babel
Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel was a Russian language journalist, playwright, literary translator, and short story writer. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry, Story of My Dovecote, and Tales of Odessa, all of which are considered masterpieces of Russian literature...
.
Reception
In the weeks leading up to its publication, the novel received a good deal of attention from the press. The front page of The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
Arts & Leisure section featured a "big, splashy" profile of Chabon in which he flew to Sitka and discussed the book while walking around the city. The novel also received preemptive criticism, with The New York Post publishing an article headlined "Novelist's Ugly View of Jews." The Post alleged that Chabon's depiction of "Jews as constantly in conflict with one another [is] bound to set off a firestorm of controversy."
Reviews were generally positive. The review aggregator Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
reported the book had an average score of 75 out of 100, based on 17 reviews. Library Journal
Library Journal
Library Journal is a trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey . It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional practice...
called it "bloody brilliant" and Michiko Kakutani
Michiko Kakutani
is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times and is considered by many to be a leading literary critic in the United States.-Life and career:...
wrote in The New York Times that the novel "builds upon the achievement of Kavalier & Clay... a gripping murder mystery [with] one of the most appealing detective heroes to come along since Sam Spade
Sam Spade
Sam Spade is a fictional character who is the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon and the various films and adaptations based on it, as well as in three lesser known short stories by Hammett....
or Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...
." The novel debuted at #2 on the New York Times Best Seller list
New York Times Best Seller list
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication...
on May 20, 2007, remaining on the list for 6 weeks.
Film adaptation
Producer Scott RudinScott Rudin
Scott Rudin is an American film producer and a theatrical producer.-Early life and work:Scott Rudin was born in New York City, NY, on July 14, 1958, and raised in the town of Baldwin on Long Island. At the age of sixteen, he started working as an assistant to theatre producer Kermit Bloomgarden...
purchased the film rights to The Yiddish Policemen's Union in 2002, based on a one-and-a-half page proposal. In February 2008, Rudin told The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
that a film adaptation of The Yiddish Policemen's Union was in pre-production, to be written and directed by the Coen brothers
Coen Brothers
Joel David Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers...
. The Coen Brothers will begin working on the adaptation for Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
after they complete filming of A Serious Man
A Serious Man
A Serious Man is a 2009 dark comedy written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film stars Michael Stuhlbarg as a Minnesota Jewish man whose life crumbles both professionally and personally, leading to questions about his faith...
. Chabon stated that the Coens are "among [his] favorite living moviemakers[...] What's more, I think they are perfectly suited to this material in every way, from its genre(s) to its tone to its content."
Cover
The book's original cover art features an amalgam of styles (like the novel itself), drawing on classic pulp detective novel, Jewish imagery, and art from the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, especially that of the TlingitTlingit
The Tlingit are an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of America. Their name for themselves is Lingít, meaning "People of the Tides"...
and Haida tribes.
External links
- “Voices on Antisemitism” Interview with Michael Chabon from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- DissentDissent (magazine)Dissent is a quarterly magazine focusing on politics and culture edited by Michael Walzer and Michael Kazin. The magazine is published for the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc by the University of Pennsylvania Press....
magazine's interview with Chabon about The Yiddish Policemen's Union - An Open Letters review of Chabon's career
- Hard-Boiled, Yiddish Style a review by Marc Alan Coen http://myversion.wordpress.com/2007/07/08/hard-boiled-yiddish-style/
- Mechuga Alaska a review by John Leonard in New York Review of Books from 14 June 2007 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=20252
- 'Murder Most Yiddish', review of The Yiddish Policemen's Union in the Oxonian Review