The Yiddish Policemen's Union - $2.99

[tch65721]

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon $2.99

(Amazon US)

[cromag]

Link:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/yidd...icemens+union&

[cromag]

Also $2.99 at Barnes & Noble:

http://productsearch.barnesandnoble....g=False&ugrp=2

[GlenBarrington]

Which surprised me, It sounds like something I WOULD like. I'd be interested in hearing other people's opinion on it.

[SteveEisenberg]

If asked what book, among those I actually finished, I hated the most, this might be it.

You might say, hey, doesn't this guy Eisenberg keep on needling me at mobileread.com? So it might be that if he hates it, I'll like it.

Perhaps that hypothesis makes sense. However, I'm thinking your apparent (to me, anyway) heroine, Ms. Ayn Rand, wouldn't have had much use for the book either. She might have been OK with Chabon's anti-religious themes, but surely not with his (no no phrase coming up) leftist politics.

[koland]

http://www.amazon.com/Yiddish-Police...dp/B006VE7JV2/

[cromag]

Originally Posted by koland

http://www.amazon.com/Yiddish-Police...dp/B006VE7JV2/

Thanks! My first link was supposed to be Amazon!

[DrNefario]

I thought it was an excellent book, myself.

[llcj]

I agree with DrNefario. It was one of my favourite reads this year (i.e. if can have more than one favourite.)

[haydnfan]

Awesome find! I checked that novel out of the library right before I moved last summer, and didn't have the opportunity and follow through and read it. Now I can at my leisure.

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

If asked what book, among those I actually finished, I hated the most, this might be it.

You might say, hey, doesn't this guy Eisenberg keep on needling me at mobileread.com? So it might be that if he hates it, I'll like it.

Perhaps that hypothesis makes sense. However, I'm thinking your apparent (to me, anyway) heroine, Ms. Ayn Rand, wouldn't have had much use for the book either. She might have been OK with Chabon's anti-religious themes, but surely not with his (no no phrase coming up) leftist politics.

Well, while this post is somewhat obnoxious, I don't recall you ever 'needling' me before. If you have something against me, on the whole, you will need to be a bit less subtle, I missed your previous efforts. And I gotta say your post was disjointed and so poorly written that I'm not sure of its intent. Were you angry at me, what you think my beliefs or religion are, or Ayn Rand?

Why are you so full of hate? Bad day? Or, is it IDEAS that differ from your own that fill you with rage? Stalin was like that, too. Pol Pot, Idi Amin. If that is what drives your anger, then I wouldn't say you are in good company, but you DO have company.

From your first paragraph, it sounds as if you didn't like the book. But then the post was so confused and poorly organized, I'm not sure. If so, then we agree on something. And it seems you suspect that you and Ayn Rand might agree on this book as well. Does that anger you? As far as what I think, I think you don't know me anywhere well enough to make any assumptions about me, my spirituality or my ideology.

Sorry, but sometimes an over hyped crappy book, is just an over hyped crappy book regardless of ideology.

[Prestidigitweeze]

What bothers me most about Eisenberg's post
Is the blatant inference that every occurrence
Of political bent in a book with endurance
Redeems it as roast or condemns it as toast
When in fact execution is lit's absolution,
As are narrative pull and hilarity's hull:
In ideas divorced from the views there endorsed.

I've read right leftist writers whose style proved them blighters
And left-out conservs whose MacGuffin-fests swerved
Into grace so apparent their worth is inherent.
One can't eschew merit like some tract-spewing ferret --
Dante's strength's in the writing, not enemy citing.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

Well, while this post is somewhat obnoxious, I don't recall you ever 'needling' me before. If you have something against me, on the whole, you will need to be a bit less subtle, I missed your previous efforts.

Needling != having something against a person. As for the post I worried was too close to needling, it was this.

Were you angry at me . . .

I know very little about anyone here. We are hopefully talking about ideas, or at least, if about people in a negative way, about people not present on MobileRead.

Why are you so full of hate?

I said I hated this book more than any I can recall. Being able to be say that about one book doesn't make someone full of hate. Substitute "strongly disliked" for "hated," if you prefer.

As far why I didn't like the book, I found it bigoted towards certain religious sects. Some readers will agree with me on that, and some will not.

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

What bothers me most about Eisenberg's post
Is the blatant inference that every occurrence
Of political bent in a book with endurance
Redeems it as roast or condemns it as toast

Every occurrence? Where did you get that?

This is a book that centers around a conspiracy in which the evangelical Christians and religious Jews plot to destroy one of the holiest places in Islam, the Dome of the Rock. So it's hardly imaginary to see this book as a political commentary on post-9/11 international relations. Few novels I read strike me as particularly political. This one did.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Every occurrence? Where did you get that?

Why, from quotes like this:

This is a book that centers around [insert plot involving political intrigue]. Few novels I read strike me as particularly political. This one did.

The problem is that you're judging a literary work based on the fact that it is political rather than on how well it functions as a novel. Judging a novel based on whether or not you approve of its politics is juvenile. George Orwell was a socialist and wrote like one, yet credible conservative critics of his time would never have stooped to condemning his writing based on their disagreement with his beliefs. It's always about the writing and never about the politics.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Judging a novel based on whether or not you approve of its politics is juvenile.

I'm just taking a different side of the old art-for-art's-sake discussion than you are. If you want me to consider the other side, saying I'm being juvenile is not a wise way to go IMHO.

Politics does not always, or usually, matter. It mostly depends on how political the novel is.

I recall that in Elizabeth Gaskill's Life of Charlotte Brontë, Gaskill relates conversations between Brontë and other still-admired English novelists where they discuss how they wish they could write something like Uncle Tom's Cabin. This wasn't because they thought Uncle Tom's Cabin worked better as a novel than Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair. It was because Uncle Tom's Cabin struck a mighty blow against slavery. They approved the politics, and judged the novel better for it. Nothing juvenile there.

Just as striking a blow against bigotry can make a novel better, going in the opposite direction can make it worse. I know that a lot of readers did not find The Yiddish Policemen's Union to be the morality tale that I did. But if I'm right that the book is a 9/11 morality tale, it doesn't make sense to ignore the morals.

Have you read Darkness at Noon? Aside from the politics, it has excellent, fully realized, characters. But it would IMHO be ridiculous to call it a great book if you think Arthur Koestler was wrong about Stalinism.