Michael Chabon just works. He just does it. He makes the impossible plot possible by some type of other worldly talent. It’s more than talent – it’s craftsmanship…
Let me set the stage for you: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union operates under an alternate history – a history that did almost happen. Prior to America entering WWII, FDR brought an idea, (I’m telling you about something actually true here now), forward about creating a Jewish state on Alaskan land. The idea was that many of the refugees from eastern Europe could build their own federal territory/district in Alaska and escape the persecution sweeping across their homelands. This was before the establishment of Israel. You can read about it here…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slattery_Report
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_a_Jewish_state
This almost actually happened – but there was a key historical figure, an Alaskan Rep named Anthony Dimond who was instrumental in shooting down the proposal. Chabon’s book asks the question – “What if somehow pesky Anthony Dimond disappeared?” and this Jewish State (The Federal District of Sitka) became a reality?”
It’s not enough that this alternate history is the setting – the background and environment of the novel and its characters – It has to be utterly believable. And that, to me, is where the true Chabon genius chimes in. Somehow, without bogging down plot with overdescriptions, Michael Chabon DOES this so beautifully. I had to remind myself sometimes that what I was reading was a fictional world – one that didn’t exist. Chabon thinks of everything – he creates a new kind of hybrid Jewish culture, a bit of the old, a bit of the new, a bit of the strange and secular…He gives the Federal District of Sitka structure, an export, an identity that is at times satirical but also at times deeply moving, wistful, and sad.
However, Sitka is no promiseland – and Chabon does a great job of building up the sense of decay, an endless loop of diaspora, because in his novel – this Jewish State is failing and after 60 years, is about to be returned to The United States of America. All the characters are living under a looming question mark of “Where will we go? Who will we be? Where is our homeland.” – and the questions here pervade a very real dichotomy that Jewish/American literature always addresses…But somehow, Chabon accomplishes this in a very authentic and fresh way. In my opinion, much, much more effectively than Philip Roth.
Chabon is known for his lovable, believable characters – and that’s a tradition here that continues. He has a Detective Landsman that I gradually fell in love with – though there is no comparison ever to the love I carry in my heart for his previous Joe Kavalier – but Landsman comes pretty close.
One very interesting thing about this novel is that it imagines the consequences…Alaska becomes like a little mini-Palestine – because wherever you place or establish one people, inevitably you gotta move another – and in this novel that is the Alaskan Tlingit People. These conflicting forces are personified in the character of Berko Shemets – half Jew/ half Indian – brought up amongst the tribal people, but converted to the Jewish majority in adolescence – Chabon paints a very very beautiful portrait of this character and his passages, lines, and role in this plot are in themselves reason enough to see true genius. He carries both cultures within him – representing the conflict of marginalism – of being an orphan of sorts with no real homeland, no real concrete identity – an identity always in flux…and the layers of this novel that represent this age old question today are so closely compacted that I am just astounded at Chabon’s craftsmanship. I haven’t even started to talk about really what this book is about – but already it is so deep so full, its a novel within a novel within a novel.
The grand message of this novel is that the characters (the figures of history, the author) does NOT write the story – the story writes them…and there is a whole rabbit hole full of a strange history that helps the reader arrive at this conclusion. It is at once a murder mystery, noire film, love story, history lesson, gender study, action thriller, and elegy all at once. Landsman is a detective tasked with finding the killer of a potential Tzaddik Ha Dor – Or Messiah – a heroin junkie murdered in a hotel room shortly before the Jewish State of Sitka is returned to Federal jurisdiction. But, what Landsman finds is something even more twisted – more strange – and when you do arrive to the resounding conclusion of this novel, you will have never seen the truth coming.
How does he do it? I don’t know. You know you’ve found something great when you are genuinely jealous of the author’s ability to truly stump you and bring you around full circle without you even noticing the red herrings that were all over the place from beginning, middle to end. This novel was like playing an awesome round of CLUE but you had no idea that there were characters in play – on a board of history that resembles our own past and asks the questions, “What if?”
Could we have saved 4 million lives by passing the Slattery Report back in 1939? Could there be such a thing as a Shtekeleh (a Filipino doughnut that becomes Sitka’s main culinary delicacy)? Could there really be such a thing as redemption for a lost Messiah addicted to Chess and Heroin?
All I know is that Michael Chabon is my own Tzaddik Ha Dor – my Messiah of my generation – who is teaching me through his craftsmanship that the way we redeem ourselves is through letting the story TELL us – of taking our history and recreating it. For a quick comparison – I recommend you go watch the grand finale of Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglorious Bastards…and then you may begin to understand exactly what this novel was trying to achieve by creating this world, this history, and this identity for a people who have been struggling with who they truly are and their heritage of diaspora for millennia.
There could be a whole college major dedicated to just this book by itself. ‘Nough Said. That’s true greatness.
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