E-mail a friendMichael Chabon
airdate May 11, 2007
Novelist Michael Chabon has been compared to everyone from Fitzgerald to DeLillo. Raised in Columbia, MD, he wrote his first short story at age 10, for a class assignment. His first novel was originally written for his master's thesis and became a New York Times best seller. His second, Wonder Boys, was made into a critically acclaimed feature film, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Chabon's latest effort is Manhood for Amateurs—his first major work of nonfiction.
The impetus behind The Yiddish Policeman's Union. (1:11)
Michael Chabon
Tavis: Michael Chabon is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author whose previous books include "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" and "Wonder Boys". The latter, of course, turned into a notable film starring Michael Douglas. His latest project is the acclaimed new book, "The Yiddish Policemen's Union". Michael, an honor to have you on the program.
Michael Chabon: It's so good to be here. It's an honor for me.
Tavis: I'm glad to have you here. The story is?
Chabon: The story is, we are in a world in this book in which, in 1940, the United States government decided to allow eventually several million Jewish refugees from Europe to settle in Alaska. This was an actual proposal that was put forward by the Interior Department in 1940. It was defeated in our world. In the world of the novel, it happened and these people built this whole little miniature world up there in Alaska, a Yiddish-speaking world.
They have this very special status. It's not a great status, but they are not allowed to go anywhere else. They have to stay there. It's almost like they're on a reservation. But they've created this whole civilization up there. It's a murder mystery. It's a story of a homicide detective nowadays in this place and he's trying to crack a murder that seems like at first it's just a little random killing, but it turns out to be something bigger than that.
Tavis: And are they only speaking Yiddish in this society?
Chabon: Yeah, everybody speaks Yiddish and English. It's part of America, but it's not part of America, so everyone is bilingual. You know, it's written in English, but there's a Yiddish flavor to the English. At least I tried to put a Yiddish flavor to it.
Tavis: Let me go back and forth between the real and the fiction. Whose idea was it to send the Jews to Alaska (laughter)?
Chabon: I know. It seems crazy.
Tavis: I have great faith in my Jewish friends that wherever they land they can turn nothing into something, but Alaska?
Chabon: Yeah, I know. Well, Harold Ickes was Secretary of the Interior under Roosevelt. I think he genuinely had humanitarian concerns and the record of the Roosevelt administration generally on helping refugees from Hitler's Europe was not. He saw that it was never going to work unless he could sort of couch it in a more pragmatic kind of clothing.
We had this huge territory up there in Alaska. At the time, there are only fifteen thousand people of European descent living there. So a vast territory, a very small number of people, and he just couched it as "Let's exploit this vast untapped resources and all the wealth of Alaska. It will be good for the United States and, in the meantime, we could also help out these people that need a place to go."
It wasn't supposed to be permanent. It was always only going to be temporary, like a refugee camp situation. So it wasn't like he was saying to have them all come over to live. But in this book, you know, one thing leads to another and nobody quite got around to showing them the door, so they hung out for sixty years in this place.
Tavis: The short answer to this question would be, I am certain, that you are a Pulitzer Prize winner and I am not (laughter), so don't tell me that. I already know that already. That would be the short answer. You're a Pulitzer Prize winner and, Tavis, you are not. That said, where do you get an idea to take something that starts out as a real proposal and turn it into this?
Chabon: Well, you know, it all really started for me with this phrase book. There's a real-life phrase book. You can get it in any big bookstore. It's called "Say It In Yiddish" and it's subtitled "A Phrase Book for Travelers". I found this book in a bookstore many years ago now and I was just so taken with that idea.
It's part of a series, you know. There's "Say It In French" and "Say It In Croatian" and "Say It In Swahili". All the places that there are guide books for, they all have countries that go with them or many countries in the case of a language like French.
There's no country for Yiddish, but yet there's this phrase book. I would just sit with this phrase book and it has sections on like how to handle yourself in the post office and dealing with Customs Inspectors and in the restaurants. I would think, like, where would you take this book?
I wrote an essay sort of speculating on the possible destinations that you might want to have this phrase book with you. The more I thought about it, the more I just thought "I wish I could go somewhere and take this phrase book with me. Maybe the only way I'll ever see a place like that is if I make it in myself."
Tavis: That's amazing. Like I said, that's why he's a Pulitzer Prize winner and I am not (laughter) because I would never have put that together.
Chabon: Let me tell you, I would tell people what I was doing. They would ask me, "What's the book you're working on?" I would describe it and they'd like -
Tavis: - nah, nah, never going to make it.
Chabon: (Laughter) Exactly.
Tavis: Yet it will be at the top of "The New York Times" list in a moment. Tell me, beyond the obvious in your research, where is Yiddish? Is it spoken anywhere outside of the obvious places?
Chabon: Yes, it is. You know, at its peak just before World War II about 1938, I think it had about twelve or fifteen million speakers in the world. After the holocaust, you know, that decimated the speakers of the language. People who came here, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, they were Yiddish speakers and I grew up hearing Yiddish.
They still spoke it when I was a kid, but only when they didn't want us to know what they were talking about. You know, it was kind of like code talking and they used it to criticize your behavior behind your back basically and also to make off-color remarks and things like that. But I heard the language a lot. It was in my ear, you know.
Tavis: I'm sure there's somebody watching right now - but go ahead.
Chabon: I mean, primarily, a lot of the ultra orthodox communities like in New York especially and around New York, it's still the main language of home and family and kids are being born every day who grow up as speakers of Yiddish, but ultimately, they're not that numerous.
What they're not doing to a very large extent is creating all the things that go with the language like a lively press and poetry and fiction and movies. I mean, there was Yiddish cinema. There was Yiddish drama. There was Yiddish classical music. I mean, there was the whole rich world that goes with the language. That's what we don't really have anymore, even though we still have speakers of Yiddish.
Tavis: Sometimes in these conversations, we get ahead of ourselves thinking that people can follow every aspect of the conversation. That's not to cast aspersion on the viewer, but I suspect there's somebody watching right now, maybe in my own family, who doesn't know what we're talking about with regard to a language called Yiddish. We know French, we know Spanish. How would you describe Yiddish?
Chabon: Yiddish was and is the language that evolved among the European Jews, the Jews of Western and Eastern Europe starting about a thousand years ago, I guess. It descended from German, but over time, it changed into a language of its own and incorporated a lot of Russian words and Polish words until it became it's own language similar to German in some ways, but no more similar than maybe Dutch is to German.
As written, like a lot of the languages, wherever they went in the world, Jews tended to adapt and adopt the language of the place they were living. So in Spain, the Jews learned to speak their own kind of Spanish. Like all those languages, it was written in Hebrew letters.
So when you look at it, it looks like Hebrew, but if you know how to read Hebrew, then you start realizing that these words sound a lot more like German. So Yiddish was this language that never had a nation of its own to go with it, but it was spoken by all these people over a wide area.
Tavis: Are there a couple of words that we learn - those of us who speak English - that we can learn the text and impress our Jewish friends?
Chabon: Well, you already know. I mean, even if you don't think you know Yiddish, you already know a lot of Yiddish if you know a word like "klutz".
Tavis: (Laughter) I know a few klutzes, yeah.
Chabon: Yeah, I know. It's hard to imagine what people called the klutz before we had the word klutz. There's "schlemiel". I'm blanking now, but there are so many words that are in everyday common use that come from Yiddish that we use all the time.
Tavis: Your wife is also a writer?
Chabon: Yeah, she's a novelist.
Tavis: How does that work? You guys critique each other's work?
Chabon: We do, a lot. We're pretty much a full service consulting operation for each other all the time. What I say often is that it's like a family business. I mean, we both are in the same line of work. We talk about it all the time. From the moment that one of us first starts to get the idea for something and wants to just test it out and see how it sounds.
Through the writing, the first draft, the second draft, all the rewriting, whenever we get into trouble, when we're stuck, when it's time to try to figure out how to get a character out of a jam that we've gotten him into and I'm out of ideas and I can't figure it out, I go to her and we take a walk.
Tavis: I'm not trying to diss her. I'm just trying to understand why you value her. What is it about your wife that makes you think she's a good critic, a good sounding board, for your work? She could be a wonderful writer, but might not be in the same mind frame as the fans of yours. Why is she a good sounding board for Michael?
Chabon: Well, she's so intimately connected to not just the work itself, but the sources of the work and the things in my life, my biography, things that happened to me before I knew her and things that have happened to us since we've known each other. I should say that today is actually the fifteenth anniversary of our first date.
Tavis: Yeah, that'll get you some points.
Chabon: (Laughter) Some flowers are on the way.
Tavis: Points to Michael, yes (laughter). You recall her name while you're at it?
Chabon: Ayelet.
Tavis: There you go.
Chabon: She knows where I'm coming from and it's the same for her with me. I mean, when I see she's trying to articulate something and maybe it's drawing on an experience that I know she went through, I can help her by saying, "Well, you know, what about that thing with the guy that was there? Remember that?" She'll go, "Oh, my God, thank you. That's right." I mean, we're just so intimately connected with all the fabric of each other's lives.
Tavis: Isn't love a wonderful thing (laughter)? And it can help you write "The New York Times" bestsellers.
Chabon: Well, I don't want to make it sound too easy because, you know, when it's time to get a criticism and you sit down and she's got my manuscript and it's all marked up and she starts telling me what she thinks isn't working -
Tavis: - that doesn't feel so good (laughter).
Chabon: No. Usually I start, you know -
Tavis: - Michael Chabon's new books is "The Yiddish Policemen's Union", a novel. He is, of course, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, as I've said three times tonight. I can guarantee that you will see this right atop "The New York Times" bestseller list. Michael, good to have you on.
Chabon: Hey, thanks, Tavis.
Tavis: Congratulations on your fifteenth anniversary. All my best to your wife.
Chabon: Thank you so much.
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