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“The Frozen Chosen”

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon


Wallace Stevens described metaphor as an object slightly turned. Michael Chabon places objects on the tip of his finger and twirls them like a plate-spinner, all dazzling speed and dexterity. He revels in the English language like no author since Nabokov. 2001’s Pulitzer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay signaled his arrival as an author who had fulfilled his promise.

This year’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (HarperCollins, $26.95) explores potential unfulfilled. In an alternate reality, FDR creates a Jewish state in Alaska instead of Israel. However, the 60-year lease ends soon, and the void of Diaspora threatens. As the nation despairs, Detective Meyer Landsman investigates the murder of a local hero. Chabon trades comics for detective novels, deckled edges and all.

Like New York in Clay, the “Jewlaskan” capital Sitka astounds in the sheer immensity of its imagination. Yet more than just re-creation, Union invents and populates a dynamic city. Sitka sports tensions, alliances, communities and power structures written in detailed splendor. The smoky afterhours nightclubs, back-alley chess clubs and seedy temple-hideouts rest atop hidden tunnels for clandestine escapes.

Chabon could happily broaden Sitka’s horizons forever, but when he globalizes Union’s plot, the work suffers. The author requests “foolish coyote faith,” asking us not to look down while running off a cliff, but the absurdity of the final act is amateurish compared to Union’s intermittent virtuosity. The greatness of the Bogart noirs is in their claustrophobia; everyone’s angles weave a labyrinth of confusion.

Union ends up a book by a marvelous talent that lacks cohesion. Chabon sacrifices his lyrical gift too frequently, yet his gentle sensitivity makes the book too soft for the pulps, leaving it in literary limbo. Still, Union is worth reading - if just to hear the language crackling on the page.

-Alan Snider

Cowboys and Contraband

Some reviewers have complained of the action movie-like pacing in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. With the forthcoming release of the Coen brothers’ film version, now marks an appropriate time to reexamine the novel. The brutality flies fast and fierce in the book, punctuated with moments of meditation and humor. After writing so many Westerns, McCarthy finally allows himself to enjoy channeling Sergio Leone, as he does briefly when the good, bad and ugly trio of Moss, Chigurh and Wells share the same stage.

It’s not all funny, though. Like Phillip Roth and Salman Rushdie before him, McCarthy examines the havoc the Vietnam war wrought on American consciousness. Readers familiar with McCarthy will recognize the setting: the bloodstained ground of the Texas-Mexico borderlands. However, this time McCarthy trades cowboys and Indians for 1980s hit men and drug dealers. But these aren’t traditional outlaws; the hordes of killers in the novel are government-trained. McCarthy’s US Military makes these men murderers, but he is less ready to blame Vietnam for the shift in American consciousness and morality. He questions if the war was merely a symptom of violence born from history and blood.

A novel examining Vietnam in contemporary America unquestionably concerns itself with the current conflict in Iraq. Sheriff Bell, after confessing his decision to desert his unit of wounded troops in WWII to save his life, describes his choice to retire from police work as a resolution to “cut and run.” McCarthy’s stage is a quarter-century behind, but the author engages the current war with this highly charged political language, finding himself disenchanted with violence masquerading as patriotism.

A Response to Some Incredibly Cautious Reviews

Post-modernism aimed to destroy elitism, and while it incorporated quite a bit of pop culture, it is hard to say it achieved significant popular readership. Jonathan Safran Foer, on the other hand, incorporates non-traditional texts into his Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in a way now familiar with many readers, and to support a more traditionally narrated tale. Nine year old Oskar Schell has lost his father in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. A precocious boy, he spends the novel searching for the appropriate lock for a key he finds in his father’s closet. Book reviews of the time were tentative; this hesitation is unwarranted. Close is a fantastic addition to contemporary American fiction.

With an intelligent and young narrator, reviewers refer to Oskar as Salinger-esque, but the incredible, consistent humor with which this book is written makes these associations somewhat invalid. It is not only innocence that Oskar has lost; he’s lost a parent and his only friend. Ostracized at school for his lack of knowledge of television, and for his sometimes terribly unfortunate phrasing, the interplay with his father was Oskar’s sole source of personal interaction. He’s terribly lonely now.

Reviewer W.R. Greer dislikes the pictures pasted into the novel, arguing that they serve no purpose. But it is touches like this that Foer includes to continually highlight Oscar’s innocence, and prevent him from becoming a character from a Salinger novel who would wish a departing soldier the best with the diction of a 30 year old. The pictures are sometimes moving and poignant, but by and large, they are silly – a counterpoint to some of the seriousness Oskar goes through, and a reminder that the source material springs from the mind of a 9 year old, who may post a picture in a book because he likes it, or it reminds him of something. Or if it is two turtles humping. Fans of Foer will likely hear echoes of Everything is Illuminated (in the collection, not the turtles).

Walter Kirn of the New York Times really comes down on the book for its political agenda. He writes, “This accords with what appears to be the novel's quite difficult grand ambition: to take on the most explosive subject available while showing no passion, giving no offense, adopting no point of view and venturing no sentiment more hazardous than that history is sad and brutal and wouldn't it be nicer if it weren't?” The depiction of the agony caused by atrocity is not apolitical. If Oskar were to entertain the problems of Israel and Palestine, and how it has contributed to terrorism, the words would be out of place in any 9 year olds’ brain. Foer instead includes atrocities committed both by and against Americans to argue that these acts are inexcusable for any reason.

Hiroshima is not casually “thrown into” the text, as Kirn remarks, but consistent with Foer’s message. Oskar plays a tape to his class of a Japanese woman narrating her experiences after living through the detonation of a hydrogen bomb. She is in terrible pain, and has lost her daughter in a grotesque fashion – a reminder that people were not vaporized into painless dust by the weapon, and that sorrow pervaded the land then just as it did post-9/11. It should not be lost on the reader that a family born from the suffering of Dresden now suffers the trauma of 9/11. This may not be a nationalistic denunciation of violence, but it is a rejection nevertheless, since they have been victims of both American and foreign-born terror.

Kirn, and other reviewers, equivocate about the sometimes flat, stock characters in the novel. Still, for a 9 year old to see individuals peripheral to his understanding of the world would be to give super-sensitive Oskar an unrealistic perception, and would be a flaw of the work. The characters are not completely consistent, as Laura Miller argues, but they are not jarringly inconsistent, and do not smack of obtrusive manipulation, if such a thing exists. All of the reviewers admit the closing pages are supremely powerful, as they echo not only hope for a reunion of the broken world, but also ascension of the victims of such massive violence.

In the reviews for the novel, cuteness became the catch-all problem with it. I suppose levity when discussing the events of 9/11 can be seen as threatening, and as the first book to handle the tragedy in an even remotely lightly fashion, perhaps the reviewers were afraid of potential backlash. Nevertheless, to deride Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as trite is to do a disservice to some of the simplistic emotions re-empowered by the attacks. While the work avoids the flag waving nationalism a vegetarian, atheist family might ignore, it pays tribute to the genuine, and simplistic, outpouring of emotional sympathy from all over the planet. Nevertheless, Oskar’s family’s grief is also intricate – complex emotions from a complicated time. Don’t be hesitant to get to know Oskar. When your week with him is done, you’ll miss the company.
-Alan

A short blurb about what I think about the "Phantom Limb" video by The Shins

The recent proliferation of pint-sized extras featuring prominently in music videos is surprising. Nostalgia amongst these videos’ young targets seems oxymoronic; still, there’s middle school, and bands like Hellogoodbye and the Gym Class Heroes employ child actors to sell their music. In contrast, The Shins use this junior high nostalgia powerfully in “Phantom Limb.” The band pairs their haunting, Beach Boys-esque crooning with a children’s performance of the greatest hits of world history’s religious atrocities. This serves as a poignant indictment of the cultural commodification of violence. After all, there are fewer things more absurd than the viewing experience of the average 5th grade play; religious brutality may be one of them.
-Alan

1997 at SXSW

Little more than an hour past their opening slot in the Victory Records showcase at South by Southwest, Chicagoans 1997 already had their first and second hits. That these came to the cheekbone and jaw of Gossamer the oafish bouncer and his angry, balding coworker Skullcap was regrettable. Most of the people from Austin revel in its status as a Texan oasis apart from the concealed six-shooters of moral indignation the rest of the state carries. Not everyone is happy about this, though, and two of these malcontents worked the showcase. Apparently not fans of the set, the bouncers threw guitarist Caleb Pepp and Cody Jay out of the tent, ostensibly for committing the grievous crime of underage drinking; ironic, as this very offense serves as the foundation for the festival’s youth-centered goings-on. More likely the offense came from the sneering mixture of LA glam and Chicago punk of their clothing.

When Caleb and Cody returned with the van to retrieve their gear, Skullcap stalked to the rear, fixin’ t’ taych thayse Chicago punks a lehssin’. Gossamer, lacking the sweetness of his namesake, leered at the boys like an angry, anthropomorphic bear. The bouncers traded insults with the kids in the van, and much to the peaceable stage manager’s dismay, Skullcap charged, his partner rumbling behind. After some shoving, the big guy got two rights, one from lead singer Kevin Thomas, and one from Caleb’s already broken fist. Caleb's, a running jump punch worthy of My Cousin Vinny, was almost as funny as it was effective. Much to the bouncers’ credit, they threw no punches; generations of child abuse instilling a beneficial tolerance of punishment.
A scuffle at the first showcase invariably heralds a band meeting, especially with Victory Records’s growing unease at the possibility of having a Motley Crue on their hands. Still, even the higher ups seem tentative to come down too hard on the band. Arrests, separations, and onstage meltdowns - 1997 sublimates this swirling personal cacophony into painfully sweet melodies. Reviewers note, but cannot name, the elusive quality that makes their music work; it’s a brutal sincerity in the face of their individual maelstroms that allows these songs to stand out as genuine. This is not to say expect forthcoming cocaine binges and spousal abuse charges. Bassist Alan Goffinski keeps spirits high while providing the low end, keeping the group balanced. Kevin says Alan handles the business “because he’s the only one without an addiction.” His smile leaves it up in the air whether or not he’s serious.
The business at hand, after a successful showcase for the iTunes folks, is a US tour supporting their critically acclaimed album, A Better View of the Rising Moon. “We’re be on the road with The Audition until June 23rd,” says Thomas. “We shot a video for “Garden of Evil” at the end of May somewhere in California, and I had the luck to come down with pink eye the day of the shoot.” After that, 1997 is anxious to see Europe, having seen excellent UK bands like The Wombats at SXSW. But for all their love of California and desire to get overseas, the band still waves the Chicago flag. Nick Coleman’s drums hit as hard as the pavement of the Chicago streets, Pepp’s guitar sounds full of the spirit of the legendary Wake Up and Rage crew from Illinois, and Alida Marroni’s trip from Indiana to Chicago in quest of fame reads like Purple Rain set in Wicker Park.
But enough about 1997’s background. Onstage, the band is hard not to watch. The group’s inflamed exuberance stands out even amongst its hungry, youthful peers. The tambourines, harmonicas, plinky keys, and intricate vocal harmonies crash against a wave of guitar and a surging, impassioned voice; a counterpoint of beautiful creation and destruction that envelops their audience. It is this energy that allows them to transcend their ages and deliver as legitimate, passionate artists, proving that poetry can be other than esoteric collages of nearwords from San Francisco or a monologue slammed on HBO. Sometimes it can be howled collectively to thunderous drums.
-Alan