“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