The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon (2008), 464pp.
As the title suggests, The
Yiddish Policemen’s Union is a Jewish detective novel. It’s also a type of
speculative fiction that takes its premise from an interesting and obscure
footnote in American history: in 1938 Harold Ickes, FDR’s Secretary of the
Interior, proposed a plan that would open up Alaska—still a territory at the
time—to European Jews looking to escape Hitler’s path. This is actually true. It
goes without saying that Ickes’s plan was never enacted, but TYPU speculates on what might have
happened if it had been. Chabon’s story is set in the present day District of
Sitka, a Jewish province on the verge of returning under the authority of the
United States government in a process known as the “Great Reversion.” This prospect
of the Reversion has unsettled the lives of Sitka’s Jewish residents, but none
more than Meyer Landsman, a detective with the Sitka Police Department. And
then adding to Landsman’s troubles—of course—is the dead body discovered in the
hotel where he is living, with no clue to the victim’s or killer’s identities
other than a half-played chess board on the side table.
A friend commented to me that he struggled with this book,
his major complaint being that it was possibly “too Jewish.” While quickly
adding that he did not intend this to be, shall we say, Anglo-centric, my
friend hit on something important to understand about TYPU—this is a very Jewish book. The reader is given to understand
that he or she must assume that all conversations are carried out in Yiddish,
except in instances where characters are explicitly described as saying
something “in American,” which in most cases is employed for the utilization of
the a four letter word that rhymes with duck. Yiddish words are commonly used
in the text, and the book comes replete with its own mini Yiddish dictionary in
the back.
Even more than its vocabulary, the book is about the idea of
home or a homeland—what, who, or where it might be and how it impacts individual
and cultural identity. I heard a segment on NPR recently in which several
Europeans discussed their perceptions of Americans. One comment that seems
relevant here was the observation that Americans tend to be unaware of or
disconnected from history, especially the historicity of their landscape. In TYPU, on the other hand, Jewish history—and
geography as a way of documenting history—forms the backdrop for understanding
how the characters might feel as they face the impending Reversion. The displacement
of Chabon’s fictional Sitka Jews is just another movement in a diaspora that’s
been ongoing for nearly three millennia.
I had previously expressed a difficulty getting started with
TYPU (see here) that I now connect
with the book’s tendency to start in the middle of things and work its way
backward toward how they began. After a while I adjusted to and even enjoyed
this technique; it added to the sense of events unraveling that the experience
of reading detective fiction should be. While I did find the resolution of the
mystery smart and satisfying, the end left me with perhaps the vague feeling
that some minor details weren’t fully sorted out. On the whole, however, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union won me
over with its earnest, likeably flawed characters, multi-layered plot, and
skilled writing. I can say with candor it was all I could have hoped for from I book I bought for $2 because I thought it would look good in my bookcase. So while I might not recommend that anyone scratch off The Brothers Karamazov to put this book
at the top of your list, I do think it was a fun read and one worth
devoting the time to, if you have the inclination.
