CANNONBALL READ: BOOK FOUR

"The Yiddish Policemen's Union," by Michael Chabon (Harper Perennial)

Michael Chabon has quickly moved to the position of my favorite author. The way he handles his stories, the reader has no choice but to follow along, enraptured and entranced in a fictional recount of quasi-non-fiction events. The town of Sitka, Alaska exists; but Chabon's interpretation would lead the reader to believe it were of an entirely different makeup. TYPU tells the tale of Detective Meyer Landsman; divorced from his wife, distanced from his partner (also his cousin), and living as a shell of a human in a shady motel room. He drinks almost constantly, always teetering on the brink of a hangover that would send him crashing into the pathetic reality his life has become. Going through the motions has become an absolute chore, one that Meyer doesn't see himself trudging through much longer. Then, the death of a random heroin junkie, who happens to live in the same motel as Meyer, starts to turn everything around. That is, until Meyer's ex-wife Bina, the new police chief, returns from her training seminars.

Sitka, a place where Jews have found a sort of safe haven from European prosecution and American profiling. Up until this point, the Jews of the region had divided themselves as they felt fit, and were governed as any province would be. Now, with the American government pushing for a redistricting of sorts, Sitka will now be included under the federal wing, making all of it's inhabitants illegal unless they can get approved for their visas, and disassembling all governing bodies, whether official or not, to the standards and approval of the US government. This redistricting is forcing Bina's boys to resolve all open cases efficiently and completely, thus forcing her to disregard the case of the mysterious heroin addict in Meyer's place of residence. The blatant disregard of rules plus, an intriguing underlying connection to his sister's death pushes Meyer to pursue the case on his own, forcing him into an array of disastrous situations.

Chabon's theme of Judaism throughout his works (that I've read) is incredibly interesting for me. While the religion is never the main point of the works, the radiation of customs, traditions, language, and laws are unmistakable. His handling of prose as well as the development of his characters (especially Landsman's cousin/partner Berko Schemets - the half Eskimo, half Jew, father of way too many children) takes his literature to a whole new level, and is always wrapped up in a favorable way at his conclusions. Not favorable as in happy, but favorable as in you feel complete, no questions are left unanswered or lost along the way. I can't speak from experience, but to me a good author can not only tell a good story, but end it as well, and far too often I'm left empty when I've finished reading as of late, but not with Chabon. Whether it is his intention or not, Chabon not only books your plane ticket, but calls you a cab to get you to the airport, picks you up when you land (you can find him because he's got one of those neat little paper signs with your name on it that you've always wanted), and drops you at the hotel when you've arrived; just to make sure that you're alright in this new state of mind to which he's brought you, and that you enjoyed your journey.