A Comment on Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union

First I’ll start off by saying I have read the first hundred pages so far… so please, if you’ve read the book (which is a detective novel) do not post spoilers in the comments section!

As you frequent readers of this blog already know, if I’m going to read fiction it’s pretty likely to be a Pulitzer prize winning novel. (Sadly, this is really a comment on how infrequently I’m reading these days because I have not even gotten through the past 10 years worth of fiction winners yet.)

Also, you might imagine if I’m mentioning Michael Chabon and Pulitzer Prize… I’m mentioning the wrong title. His Pulitzer winning book was The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It also just so happens that when the airport bookstore is out of pulitzer prize winning novels, and you’re staring down a 6 hour flight from one coast to another, you might decide to purchase an alternate title by an author in that “P” group. Well, you might not do that, but I did.

And now for an aside from my aside… how come nobody ever challenges me on why I’m sticking to Pulitzer prize winning novels and instead singing the praises of an amazing author who should have been nominated for a National Book Award, Pulitzer, or is just a genius with words? Come on peoples, tell me at least one of you has read a totally amazing novel this year where you were blown away by the story, the writing, the characters… something? (For the record, I’m very far behind on my contemporary literature reading. Even I know that reading a prize winning novel from a decade ago isn’t the cutting edge… but I’ve got to dig in somewhere.)

Okay, enough. Back to the topic at hand, Mr. Chabon’s Yiddish Policeman’s Union.

I’m in love with Chabon’s writing. Some of you out there, the writerly writer types, might hate his flowery, adjective filled long strung out sentences… but I whistle and moan in admiration with some of his descriptions.

Try this paragraph:

Litvak makes an impatient or petitioning gesture with his hand. He takes from his breast pocket a marbled black notepad and a fat fountain pen. He wears his beard neatly trimmed, as ever. A houndstooth blazer, tassled boat shoes, a display handkerchief, a scarf strung through his lapels. The man has not lost his sporting air. In the pleats of his throat is a shining scar, a whitish comma tinged with pink. As he writes in the pad with his big Waterman, Litvak’s breath comes through his great fleshy nose in patient gusts. The scratch of the nib is all that remains to him for a voice. He passes the pad to Landsman. His script is steady and clear.

Do I know you

Now, I don’t know about you, but how can you not swoon at phrases like “a scarf strung through his lapels” or “in the pleats of his throat” or even “the scratch of the nib is all that remains to him for a voice”?

This is one random paragraph, mind you. The book is a cornucopia of such phrases (okay, sorry, I can’t help myself…).

What’s especially interesting to me about this book is an interview Chabon did with the New York Times which is reprinted in the back. In it he says that he remade his writing style in order to take on a Chandler-esque detective novel because he shortened his sentences considerably to write this novel. And, oh yeah kids, he had written a 600 page manuscript as a first draft of this book, decided he didn’t like it and chucked the whole thing and re-wrote it from scratch.

I admire that about the guy.

Whether or not you decide to read this book is not the point of this particular post. For me, this post is about craft. Meticulous craft. And I’ve gotta hand it to Chabon in this novel, his loving care about his subject and his characters just oozes out of every page.

Did I mention I’m only 100 pages into this 411 page novel? Well, I am. As for the remaining 300 some-odd pages? I’m going to savor them, nice and slow.

P.S. We will return to your previously scheduled Hurrican Sandy installments in future posts.

Buried Under My Books

One of these days I’m not going to be able to leave my house because it’s been filled to the top with books. I’m exaggerating, of course, but probably like many of you, I’ve got oodles of well worn tomes hanging about on shelves and tables, stacked up and tossed, margin noted or not.

I’ve got a decent poetry collection, and a whole shelf of books on Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy, I’ve got non-fiction biographies of physicists (Feynman and his books especially) as well as books on cryptography and the NSA. I’ve got art books. And cook books – don’t get me started. I’ve saved books I read when I was a kid (Harriet the Spy anyone?) and I’ve got picture books I love. I’ve got books about people who cook and their opinions about gastronomy (especially cooks and chefs from NYC).

And then there’s the short story collections. Oh boy, do I have a ton of those. Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart and invididual authors and more. And then there’s books about writing… writing plays, screen plays, writing short stories, and crafting characters and no plot no problem and the rest of it. (I still say Stephen King’s book On Writing is one of the best.) No book collection would be complete without a bunch of dictionaries, and I’ve got those too.

I haven’t even talked about novels, because it’s so obvious I’d have a gazillion of those, right? Everything from the classics to recent Pulitzer winners to dollar finds on the sale rack and everything in between.

Although I’m surrounded by all these books, I must admit most of these books I have not read twice. Why do I keep all these books I love, just because I read them? I don’t know, but I know it’s what I’ve always done. I read a book and think, oh that was wonderful, and put it on the shelf and enjoy looking at the title knowing I read it. Then I forget it’s there because I’ve moved on to my next book…and the next.

But I don’t know how to part with my James Joyce Reader, or Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (actually I read this from time to time.)

A friend of mine and I were recently discussing Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. I instantly knew I had a copy of it, although I have not picked the book up in two decades. I’m not kidding (about either fact…) And it got me to thinking, why do I need a copy of Winesburg, Ohio? I don’t think I do. And I don’t think I need every single book I have on my shelves either…but where to begin in parting with them?

How do you deal with this, dear reader? For some of you, if space is a severe constraint, have you boxed your books and put them in storage? Do you only use the public library? Do you read the books you buy and immediately give them to someone else, donate them, or discard them (perish the latter)?

Even if space is not a severe constraint, how are you handling the dozens, or hundreds, of books you’ve accumulated?

I think it’s time for me to seriously consider a partial divestiture…

The Chronology of Water – an Un-book Report

As a writer, a woman and a human being I’m finding it hard to know what to say about The Chronology of Water, a memoir written by Lidia Yuknavitch.

Maybe I’ll start with this: this woman has had an incredibly messed up life, some of which was completely out of her control, some of which was in her control (but she spends most of the book telling us she’s been out of control for most of her life, regardless.)

Here’s the litany: she was sexually abused by her father, had a severely alcoholic mother, dropped out of school, did drugs, drank, slept around (no really, really slept around) and did just about everything she could to self-destruct. (In one chapter of the book she describes how she was drunk, got in her car, and hit another car with a pregnant woman driving. She never tells us what happened to the pregnant woman or how the accident was resolved.)

I don’t read many memoirs, but whenever I’ve read memoirs or auto-biographical material, I usually get the impression the author is trying to convey events as they happened and that, to the best of their ability, they are telling us the truth. Throughout Chronology of Water, the author tells us she is not telling us the truth about certain details. She’ll say one thing, then she’ll add something like but it didn’t happen that way or similar verbage to let the reader know she’s blurring the lines between what happened and what she is telling us happened. She wants us to know she is untrustworthy, which is a strange trait to want to convey in a memoir.

Also unusual is the lack of linearity in the book. Like water, the chapters ebb and flow between different parts of her life. She’ll drop something very casually in one chapter somewhat out of the blue and then tell us later the background of her casually dropped previous comment.

As a reader and a writer, I think it’s brave to talk about yourself ‘honestly’ on the one hand and focus on how the messed up events in your life have shaped you, but on the other, the book (with few exceptions) is almost entirely about that. By the time I got to the end of the book, I wasn’t sure I liked the “character” (?) of the writer or person who was speaking in the book.

I didn’t find these anecdotes describing a “strong” woman, even though I wanted the book to be about that. It was more like someone who has been through hell in her family, something horrific I’d never wish on anyone, to someone who had those experiences and then spent 30 more years killing herself with marathon drinking, drugging (including heroin) and the most irresponsible sexual behavior.

I could say some of the writing is lovely, and some turns of phrases are interesting and clever. That would be true. My comments aren’t about the writer’s ability to write well, which she does.

What I’m struggling with, and still struggling with, is what to make of the book. Honestly, I still have no idea what to make of it. I take that as a sign I need to think about it more, and consider the ramifications for writing about such brutal content in such a straight forward way – albeit with a writer’s voice that we’re told many times throughout the book, is unreliable.

A Kindle, a Kindle, I have a Kindle…

I am SO excited – I just got my Kindle delivered today!  I opened it up and ooohed and aaaahed over the lovely glare-free screen, the sleek buttons and the cute little black leatherette carry case that came with it.

But after my initial rush of Kindle-adrenaline, I got to thinking. Hmmm – I could actually read BLOGS on my Kindle! Wow – what a thought!

I’m not exactly sure yet how to read blogs on my Kindle, but I know it can be done and I am going to investigate that, dear readers, and let you know what I find out.

For those who are already super-duper Kindle/blog saavy, please please feel free to leave helpful comments and suggestions – I can use them!