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Noz, patzers and ganefs

August 20th, 2008 Katie H.

“These are strange times to be a Jew.” That’s a common refrain in the Federal Districk of Sitka, Alaska.   After losing the war to the Palestinians, European Jews settled on the frigid coast of Alaska, left to fend for themselves for 60 years.  But the district is about to revert to Alaskan jurisdiction, and three milion Jews have started the long, uncertain journey in search of a new homeland. 

Detective (noz) Meyer Landsman should be one of them, but a dead baby and a painful divorce has left him washed up and apathetic in the seediest of Sitka hotels.  When a dead man with a false name turns up murdered in his building, Landsman is intrigued, especially by the battered chess set he discovers near the body.  Something about the chess problem triggers memories long buried–and points to a distinct mob culture at the heart of Sitka.  With his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Semets, Landsman starts digging into a culture of rabbi gangsters, sketchy chess players (patzers) and a few slick Americans ready to pick over Sitka’s bones before Reversion is complete.  But in a city with no hope for the future, Landsman learns that the only people interested in the murder of an anonymous chess player are those willing to go to any lengths to keep the truth buried.

It’s tough to catagorize Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union as literary fiction, mystery or science fiction.  Defying the boundaries of all three genres, Chabon creates a rich work that recalls the noir Los Angeles of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.  But where Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler gave their disillusioned detectives a brittle slang, Chabon gives Landsman and Berko Yiddish slang that has its own particular rhythm.  When Chabon writes descriptions comparing laughter to the sound of someone jumping up and down on a leather valise, the image is unexpected, a little nonsensical and totally apt.  Landsman is a dogged character whose problems only make him more endearing as the book moves along.  My favorite character, however, was Bina Gelbfish, police commisioner, Landsman’s boss and ex-wife, whose unwillingness to suffer fools makes for delicious complications. 

With his rich descriptions, Chabon’s writing is slower reading than the Spade/Marlowe mysteries to which he pays homage, but I found that the evocative, inventive language made up for deficiencies in pacing.  Having won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Chabon received science fiction’s Nebula Award with Yiddish.  A movie, written and directed by the Coen brothers, is also in the works.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction