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Yiddish Policemen's Union

Critique • Quotes

The Yiddish Policemen's Union original book coverFirst edition, 2007
By Michael Chabon
Publication details ▽ Publication details △

First publication
2007

Literature form
Novel

Genres
Literary, science fiction, crime, mystery, alternative history, satire

Writing language
English

Author's country
United States

Length
Approx. 116,000 words

Notable lines

Nine months Landsman’s been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered. Now somebody has put a bullet in the brain of the occupant of 208, a yid who was calling himself Emanuel Lasker.

— First lines

Men tend to cry, in Landsman's experience, when they have been living for a long time with a sense of rightness and safety, and then they realize that all along just, under their boot, lay the abyss. This is part of the policeman's job, to jerk back the pretty carpet that covers over the deep jagged hole in the floor.

 

It never takes longer than a few minutes, when they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That's what a family is.

 

Miracles prove nothing except to those whose faith is bought very cheap, sir.

 

When some drunken fool asked if she was a lesbian, she would say, "In everything but sexual preference."

 

A Messiah who actually arrives is no good to anybody. A hope fulfilled is already half a disappointment.

 

"I don't care what is written," Meyer Landsman says. "I don't care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son's throat for the sake of a hare-brained idea. I don't care about red heifers and patriarchs and locusts. A bunch of old bones in the sand. My homeland is in my hat. It's in my ex-wife's tote bag."

 

"Brennan," Landsman says. "I have a story for you."

— Last lines

 

Critique • Quotes