Into the Alternative: The World of the Yiddish Policemen's Union

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Beyond the Big Screen Podcast with your host
Steve Guera. Thank you for listening to Beyond the Big
Screen podcast, where we talk about great movies and stories
so great they should be movies. Find show notes, links
to subscribe and leave Apple podcast reviews by going to

(00:23):
our website Beyond the Big Screen dot com. And now
let's go beyond the Big Screen.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Well, welcome to another episode of Beyond the Big Screen.
I am not your host, Stephen Guera. He is the
number one guest for this episode and the reason for
that will become apparent in just a moment. My name
is Frank scalise I. Also right under the name Frank
Sapiro and Frank Saverio. Some of you might remember me

(00:54):
from other episodes that I've guest posted on BET. I'm
in the driver's seat on this one because Steve is
the expert on this book that we're going to talk about,
and it is a wonderful alternative history book. Multiple awards
given to this book called The Yiddish Policeman's Union by
Michael Chabone. Am I saying that right, Steve? I think

(01:15):
it might be Shabon, but I've heard it. I can't
remember with how he pronounced it exactly. But I'm sure
he's gone his whole life getting it pronounced that completely
murdered his last name, so as to give us guys
like you understand that, Yeah, I've probably just butcher Jurs.

(01:36):
So this was your suggestion, Steve, to talk about this
because this is a book that you've actually read.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Multiple multiple times.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, I've had to have read it since it was
released in two thousand and seven. I believe at least
six times, maybe more than that. That's amazing. That's amazing.
So how did you discover this book? I mentioned that
it is one on the the Nebula, the Sideways and
the Hugo. The Hugo and the Nebula, I know I'm

(02:05):
familiar with those as a sci fi reader. The Sideways
is sidewise is new to me. But did you hear
about it because of the one of the awards or
was it a recommendation from some honor?

Speaker 3 (02:16):
I can't.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
I can't one remember the I think I saw it.
It was one of those books. I saw it at
the library and it kind of caught my eye and
I read it cover to cover. Then then I listened
to it and it's one of those books where you
can especially I find this a lot with audio books.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
For some reason.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
At least for me, the audio experience puts me right
back in the place wherever I listened to that book,
Like I can just remember it was my daughter. It
was right before she was born, and I was ours
in the nursery trying to put bribs together and paint
and do it a whole punch list of honeydews to

(03:02):
get the bedroom ready for my daughter to get born.
And it put me into that place. And then over
the course of the years that put me I can
just think of every time that I listened to the
book and read read the book. But it definitely grabbed
me because I'm a big alternative history fan, and if

(03:24):
alternative history has done well, that is by far my
favorite genre of fiction. Where did you hear about it?
The first time? I was actually on a trip to Italy,
went to the Vatican during that trip that out to
interest you with your other podcast work, And we were

(03:44):
staying in Priano on the Mulfy coast for a few
days at a villa, and so it was one of
those like go go go vacations and then you take
four days or so to catch your breath and just relax.
And we were staying at this villa and there, you know,
there was half a dozen book or so on the
bookshelf and they hadn't brought anything through. Actually, I'd brought
a book on Julius Caesar to read, but I'd finished it,

(04:06):
and so I just grabbed it off the shelf because
it sounded the title was interesting, and I started reading it,
and unlike you, I, you know, I was unaware that
it was alternative history at first, because it was so
organically he did such a good job of organically mixing
in the what was different. It took me till I

(04:29):
got to a point in the story pretty early on,
but where they said something had occurred that I knew
factually had notten out, and it clicked for me, like, oh,
this is actually alternative history. This is not an actual history.
So I guess that's a good point to say, Like,
what's the logline for this book? People have been listening
to us for a few minutes now, it might be going,
what the hell is the Yiddish Policeman's Union. So this

(04:50):
book it was published in two thousand and seven, and
the reason why I thought this would be a perfect
book to talk with you. Frank is that it's process
lot of genres, and particularly it's fiction, and then a
big part of it is crime fiction, which would I
really thought that it would be interesting to get your

(05:11):
take on the crime fiction aspect and how it does
blend all these genres, and it has a science fiction
I think alternative history just by its nature has a
science fiction element to it. So I thought that you
would be really the perfect person to talk to. Now,
with alternative history, it always based it hinges on something

(05:35):
called the point of departure, and it's the event in
history where something changes that didn't happen in our timeline
that causes us new timeline to develop. In the Yiddish
Policeman's Union that the point of departure is. And so
back to real history and the real history. In the

(05:57):
nineteen forties, early nineteen four these late nineteen thirties, there
was this idea and a government report that had been
put out. It was called the Slattery Report to give
European Jews fleeing programs and all the persecutions that were
going on in Europe at that time, a little section

(06:18):
of Alaska to settle in and it was meant to
do a couple of things. That was meant to obviously
give the people who were being persecuted a place of refuge,
but it was also meant to sort of stimulate some
economic development in Alaska, which really up to that point,

(06:40):
the US bought Alaska in eighteen sixty seven, and really
not a lot had gone on in between that time period.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
Just the gold rush, that's about it.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, I think the oil the pipeline wouldn't be built
for quite some time afterwards. A lot of the oil
exploration hadn't happened at that And it was also meant
they figured if they had brought in the European Jews there,
it might be a line of defense against the Japanese
seeing a right target and taking it.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
So there was a couple of, you.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Know, a couple of decent ideas there to try and
in this report the plan really wasn't terribly popular all
around in real life. And the point of departure is
that the Alaskan representatives, so at that point Alaska wasn't
the state, so it didn't have any senators or actual

(07:39):
House of representative.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
People.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
It was just it had an unofficial representative sort of
like what Guam has or Puerto Rico territory.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
So the point of departure is that this the representative
was really against this in real life, he gets hit
by a car and so his opposition to the plan
goes away, and the government goes and signs up for this.
So there were some immediate outcomes that come. Now, none

(08:13):
of this is all of this is built through exposition
in the novel. And I guess spoiler alerts, we've already
given you a bunch of them. Well, we will have
a bunch of spoiler alerts well before we dive you
deep into the novel itself. I mean, you mentioned being
a fan of alternative history and saying if it's done well,

(08:35):
and I'm curious your take on why is it that
that you know alternative history. Counterfactuals is another way people
will describe it.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
Appeal to you.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
I like also alternative history and counterfactuals. Counterfactuals is an
actual subgen or sub study of real academic history. It's
not very popular in the United States from what I understand.
It's a lot more popular in Europe, where historians will

(09:08):
look at an event and play out immediate events or
immediate aftermaths of of a point of departure, and they'll
often use data, and you think that alternative history. I
think for American audience, we look at alternative history in
this fictional genre and it's always exciting.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
What if Robert E.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Lee had won Gettysburger and then in eighteen sixty three
he wins he wins the Battle of Gettysburg, and then
in two thousand and four, like we're flying in space cars.
I think that that's more what we think of as
alternative history. Counterfactual history can be extremely dry. I remember

(09:52):
buying a What If. It's one of the famous books
in counterfactual history in English, and I was reading. I
was like, wow, this is boring because it was actual
counterfactual history. I think that a lot of counterfactory or
counterfactual history which is turned into alternative history, it can

(10:13):
get very off the beaten path really quickly, like there's
I love the story.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Harry Turtledove is one of the masters of alternative history novels,
and he has a nine parts series and it goes
so far off the track. It just really has turned
into in my opinion here of fiction.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
So I think that that it was.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
I enjoyed it, and not to Turtles of it all
that I think that Michael Schaban just really nailed the
genre here where he takes that point of departure and
he keeps it very narrowly focused in and every single
event in the world that he's created keeps to that
one event. He doesn't ever go super far off track.

(11:03):
You know, both of us have a deep and abiding
love of history. You know, as my undergraduate degree was
in history. I think at any given time, on one
of the books I'm reading or listening to is it
as almost always a history book or a podcast. I mean,
it's just something I'm super interested in it. And part
of what's so exciting about it is that it's exciting

(11:24):
to discover what it is that that people did in
the past on these these these you know, big events
and small ones too, and and but inevitably, if you
study history at all, don't you immediately get to the
questions of, well, there's a whole lot of like we
don't know exactly what happened here, especially with ancient history,
like we're not sure what happened. We just know this

(11:44):
outcome occurred, or we don't know why Alexander decided to
do this, or we don't know what Caesar's motivation.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
Was to do this or why you know.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
And so you're already getting a little bit into not
not alternative history, but speculation. Is you try to piece
together with these you know, why this decision was made
or how this was carried out, or or or what
happened in between these two events to make it possible
for the second event to actually occur. What was it
about that day that caused the person to make that

(12:13):
decision or whatever? And then that leads you to that
what if. That's kind of the next lily pads you
jumped to, is like, well, what if what if Lincoln
wasn't assassinated? How would we reconstruction have been different? What?
You know, what if Caesar had listened to his wife
and knock gone to the forum that day, would you
know he had gone in and they died Parthia and
become you know what, he'd been the first emperor, or

(12:35):
would you know he's still have been assassinated just later,
or what would have happened. Then there's there's so many
of those what ifs all the way up you know,
to the present, and then the next liepad Is, I
think is now we're an alternative history where it's like, well, yeah,
let's say that happened.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Let's tell a story there.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
And I get what you're saying about the counterfactuals that
are being you know, those are usually the experts writing
about the changes in the history that would be in
the immediate aftermath of the event, whereas sometimes the alternative
history will go out ten, fifteen, twenty, one hundred years
even to shoot the chain of events. And of course
the further you get from what actually happened, the more

(13:14):
speculative it becomes. And Shaban is like, I mean, what
is the setting up of it? It's what year is
it in the book? I forget the exact year, do
you remember? I think he doesn't say a year exactly,
but I would say it's more or less the modern time.
So let's say maybe maybe two thousand and two thousand

(13:34):
and five. Yeah, at the time of so you're talking,
you know, sixty years down the road. And so definitely
we're in the alternative history land there. But the fact
that it's based in real history. I always find that
fascinating because it's almost like you work backwards from it
to the what if to the actual history, and it
just it's fascinating to me, so he he he creates

(13:58):
this other world where the Slattery uh plan goes forward
and Sitka, which is in reality a rather small little
town uh in Alaska today becomes this driving metropolis that
is populated with a lot of Jewish people and also
it's ling It people, the indigenous people who live there.

(14:22):
What other changes happened in the Shabon universe or Shaban
universe as a result of this born and departure. So
in Alaska proper, those that that's the big that's the
big difference. So the Sica District Cica is on I
don't know what they call that part of Alaska that

(14:42):
sort of shoots down towards uh, the mainland US A
warm Does that Heaven made the well less cold part tolerable?

Speaker 3 (14:54):
Yeah? And that in that part it's uh, it's pretty
close to the state capital.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Now. I think Anchorage is the biggest city in Alaska
and it has about five hundred thousand people give or take.
The district of Sika is more about the size of Pittsburgh.
It has two three million people. So that I mean
just right there would have changed the entire oh geography
of Alaska. Basically, you're plunking down a major US city

(15:23):
that is really in a way of foreign city because
the language that.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
That's worth backing up just a little bit.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
So the European Jews at that time they lived in Germany, Poland, Lithuania,
those areas, and the Jews, even though they were citizens
in a lot of cases of these places, they spoke
and they would speak the language of that area, Polish, German,
et cetera. They had their own language, Yiddish, which was

(15:53):
a it's predominantly German, but with a lot of Hebrew influences.
So that was an entire culture that really separated them
from Jews, other Jews that were say, living in the
Middle East or in Southern Europe.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
So they had this really unique Yiddish culture.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
And that's one of the things that was absolutely fascinating
is how much Jabon delved into Yiddish culture, but also
showed how it would have evolved being taken away from
Europe and put into the absolute middle of nowhere in
North America and actual Europe. With the actual history the Holocaust,

(16:34):
over six million people were murdered in those years.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
In the nineteen Jews.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, most of them Jews and almost entirely Yiddish European Jews.
So that really and Michael Chaebon gets into this and
an afterward in the book is that completely cut the
heart out of Yiddish culture. It killed over fifty percent
of European Jews. And then once those European Jews were allowed,

(17:04):
they left, they went to Israel. In Israel, in the
modern state of Israel, they really abandoned Yiddish and to
make a more of a homogenized new culture, they adopted
modern Hebrew as their language.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
That didn't happen in the novel.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
It was a rebuilding of the Yiddish culture and everything
that came with it. It really there's some of the
people speak Yiddish to this day in Israel, but it
is a minority of a minority there in this new
Sika district. It's everything and the culture of the language.

(17:44):
So you and you have that juxtaposed with the native culture,
and he juxtaposes it, which we'll get into later American
Jewish culture.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
And it's interesting. I was just listening to and.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
In the modern context and Israeli talking about the real
differences between American Jewish culture and European Jewish culture vis
a the Israeli Jewish culture and Sha Bom really teases
out that there really is a difference there and the

(18:18):
way they perceive each other. Yeah, they're fellow follows in
the religion, but the way they see each other and
their their cultures are quite different, which will play out
in the novel. He does still have the Holocaust occurring

(18:39):
in his alternate history, but the body count is significantly
like a third of what yeah reality?

Speaker 3 (18:47):
Right?

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, yeah, it was about two million as opposed to
the sixth plots, and also the formation of of of Israel,
which I believe was forty nineteen forty eight in an
our timeline, if we're being generous and saying it's not reality,
just our timeline.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
Yeah, it's so.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, but that was a failed we became a failed
a failed political uh movement, a failed attempt at statehood.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
Right.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
They were defeated in the Six Days War, and that
made Sitka essentially the largest the Jewish epicenter from a
religious and political standpoint in the Chabon world. Chaban World,
I keep doing it both ways, I guess I'm I'm
swinging both ways with this name.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
Yeah, your hedge and yourself on the Heed hedge in.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
My facts, I'm only gonna be wrong halfter that and
one other thing that came up that I had forgotten
but then you put in the notes, was that as
a result of all this or not necessarily as a result.
But in this timeline, this uh uh shaban timeline, there

(20:00):
was no Vietnam for the US. There's no Vietnam conflict,
but that they may he vaguely talks about a different conflict,
Steve here with a quick word from our sponsors, Yeah,
that the conflict. So I think he really he took
Vietnam and layered it into a war in Cuba, which
he doesn't really get into why he did that. But

(20:22):
I think it's interesting because of Vietnam style war in
Cuba and away might have been more possible than us
getting dragged into the kind of war that we did
in Vietnam. I could see that very easily that in
the early nineteen sixties instead of focusing all that attention

(20:43):
into Vietnam. It seems we're almost living in the alternative
history now that a big war like that didn't break
out in Cuba. Yeah, certainly there was a lot of
attraction in certain segments of the US GOTT in the
early nineteen sixties and particularly the military and intelligence communities

(21:06):
to just to.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
Invade Cuba, I mean, and depose.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Castro, and it'd be interesting. I mean, the US has
such powerful military force. I think we would have gone
about an invasion of Cuba far different than we went
about assisting in Vietnam. I mean, the way we got
in was to the back door in Vietnam. I think
we would have crashed in the front door in Cuba.
So it's an interesting choice that he makes there. But

(21:34):
certainly you could could it could have happened. I mean,
I mean, you look at how the Bay of Pigs failed.
Part of the reason it failed was that there wasn't
the uprising among the people that intelligence believe would occur.
So you know, maybe Castro was a little more popular
than we thought. You know, that was, yeah, the revelation
that they made. So if we weren't willing to do
a full scale invasion, because we didn't want to prompt

(21:56):
the USSR response of some kind and support of their ally,
and we had to do it like, well, we'll back
the Cuban rebels and in an advisory way, and then suddenly,
you know, we get the same you know, slow layered
involvement that you get in Vietnam. I could see it happening.
This was just a minor sub point in the book.
There wasn't a lot made out of it, as I recall,

(22:18):
but it's interesting to just show that when you make
one change in the timeline of any significance, then the
ripple effects are just uh, you know, can be huge
and long reaching. I think that would have been a
really cool if he had written a side novel about
just that, and how I think you could have He

(22:42):
could have gotten into a lot of themes of how
these sic Jews they weren't citizens of the United States.
He makes that very clear, and that's a big part
of the novel is that they're about a month out
in the beginning of the novel, six weeks before this
batter district that's been set up. It had never been
given back in the forties any sort of permanent status.

(23:06):
It was basically a tan picked down the road that
at some point the Jews that had been allowed to
be refugees that were going to have to figure something
else out, and it wasn't going to involve staying in Sica,
and the point is coming in the beginning of the
novel that they're going to have the Federal District of

(23:27):
Sika is going to get closed down and that area
is going to be given back to as Land to
the Clinket natives. They even dropped sort of hints throughout
the novel of that you basically have an entire city
built out already, that there's already international companies that are

(23:49):
coming in to scoop up the buildings and the hotels
and completely because it's like free money. Basically, it's just
free for the taking. And I would have been interested
to see is there. There's all sorts of subpots about
what different people who are living in Sika are going
to do. Some have been able to go to Canada,

(24:10):
some are going to Australia. Some of them are trying
to get some sort of US citizenship, and they have
some through different things that they've done for the government,
had rights to be or were given US citizenship for
things that they've they've done.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
And one of the major characters.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Fought in the war in Cuba. He was a Jewish
Sika resident, but he's been given some sort of status
because he fought in the war, and I think being
I would love to have seen an exploration about how
the different people, even the main character's uncle was a
federal agent, how did all this stuff flew together. I

(24:50):
think he could have written a series of ten different
novels based on this world that he created. And then
the fact is he only wrote this one novel. Yeah,
it's very rich in terms of potential, and I think
just that one little piece is so hard for I
think a lot of us to imagine. I mean, we're

(25:11):
you know, I'm a US citizen, I was born here.
You're a US citizen, you're born here. We both have
ethnic names for not Smith or Jones. But you know,
I've never in my life had to doubt or wonder
about my citizenry. And I've never had to contemplate the
idea of being forcibly expelled from my own country. And

(25:34):
yet there are people who in our world who are
experiencing this for a variety of different reasons, in a
variety of different places. And I think it's almost impossible
to understand how how impactful that would be on your
psyche to literally not have a home to be from,
and to not know where you're going to go or
what you're going to do, and and that angst that

(25:57):
would come with that, and and then you multiple that
because it's an angst that you know, half of a
major metropolitan city is experiencing at the same time all
of them. Uh, that creates a level of tension that's
going to bleed into everything else that's going on regardless.
And so I think he does really well with that. Steve,

(26:18):
maybe we could get into so the actual story a
little bit. We have this great promise, but well, what
is it? You know, you you mentioned all the alternative
history pieces to it, but it's also a murder mystery.
It's also a police procedural, kind of a hard boiled one,
but a police procedural what's going on in that area.

(26:38):
So that's one of the things that I think is
really interesting that ties into what your point is is
that that people are stateless and they have to figure
out something. But I think that he also paints in
there that it's the really natural inclination towards humans that
you're just going to keep living your life. The people
landed in Sika and nineteen forties and started to build

(27:01):
a LFE and now so many of the people who
live in the district. It's still they're six weeks away
from reversion, but there's still they really haven't come to
grip that something major is going to change. It's almost
like I'm sure everybody in their life has done it
that you know your apartment lease is up at the
end of the month, in about two weeks before then,

(27:22):
you start looking through the paper to try and find
your next place you're going to live. And that's where
I think he really builds that in there that the
main character maya landsman. He just, for whatever, for for
a lot of different reasons, can't put himself in his

(27:43):
mind that there's going to be a life after the
Sika District is reverted back to the US. So he's
just living his life how he's always lived. He was
a detective in the Sica Police Department, and he's just
going to keep investigating murders until they tell him otherwise.
That's what I think is so interesting, and the whole

(28:03):
novel is really based around it happens in one of
the very first scenes is that Meyer is living in
a sort of a flop house, and we'll get into
why he's found himself in such low circumstances. But the
manager of the it's one of those hotels where they
have long term rentals in them, and it's not the

(28:25):
highest quality. It's not a executive suite. It's more of
like a boarding house. The manager of this Rundown hotel
says that somebody's been found murdered in the room. So Lonsman,
being a detective, goes and checks it out. There's other

(28:47):
detectives who are the detectives on the on call that night,
but he figures, you know what, I'm here, I've got
nothing else to do.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
I'll go and investigate it. And it really.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
Identity is very tied up in who he is. Is
a police officer, yeah, one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
I would argue that that is that has primacy and
his his psychological makeup even more than his Jewish affiliation
being oh yeah, absolutely, and who he is, I think
he'd say, I'm a cop, I'm a detective, and then
if you probe further, he'd well, I you know, I'm Jewish,
and I'm you know.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
These other things.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
But I think certainly, which explains why he goes down
the hall and immediately starts investigating, because that's who he
is and you must have seen that as a police officer.
People who just that completely. It's a it's an important job.
It's a very specific kind of job that I could
see that that could completely take over your life for

(29:45):
certain people. Yeah, it's and you know, I mean it's
one of those things in a broader sense too that
like if you if you want to be really good
at something, if you want to be elite at something,
the level of commitment and that it takes is extremely high,
and the amount of time that you put into it

(30:06):
to perfect your craft whatever that is is.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
You know, there's the.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Ten thousand hours and more that go into it, and
so you can achieve great things and be you know,
elite at whatever it is that you do, whether that's
an athlete or least investigator or teacher or anything else.
The danger there is those that if you know, if
your entire sense of self becomes wrapped up into that

(30:34):
thing that you've become, and then that thing goes away.
I mean, I think of hockey players and who play
at the elite level. You know, they get to the
NHL and you know they're playing there and then they
have a concussion syndrome and can't play anymore, or they
just they get to be quote unquote old, you know,
which is like late thirties and can't play anymore and

(30:57):
have to retire. And some people do great with life
after hockey, you know, other people really struggle. And I
think that that that's the same thing can happen in
other careers as well. And I've known people who all
they thought about was they were like Meyer. They all
they did was what they did. They were detective or
patrol officer or whatever, or in leadership roles, and that

(31:21):
was their entire identity. And they only socialized with other
police officers and they read, you know, police fiction, and
their nonfiction was all police related and boh yeah. I
mean someday that'll end, you know, and that can be
a hard transition for people. And you know, I think
that Meyer Landsman is kind of I think he's in.

Speaker 3 (31:43):
A little bit of denial. Certainly he's procrastinating, but I
think it's coming from a sense of denial.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
He's not ready for what is going to happen to happen,
and so he's just not letting it happen in his
mind really, even though intellectually he knows it's coming. It's
interesting though, Steve, because, like you know, that tendency among
people if you think about throughout history. I mean, on

(32:10):
on the first day in four seventy six CEA when
Augusta Augustulus Romulus, I think, is the right, the last
emperor was deposed by by the Ostrogoths, and and that
was the end of the Western Roman Empire, right, I
mean the baker who got up the day after that
still made his bread the same way and sold it

(32:31):
maybe at a slightly different price, but the same people
came about it. I mean, people's lives went on when
the Rome, when Rome left Britain, you know, you know,
people's lives kind of went on, and yeah, they changed
over time, but that day to day it doesn't, it
doesn't always change radically. Now Here we have Sikah is
about to become you know, if nobody leaves, there's gonna

(32:54):
two hundred and fifty thousand illgals in the city, you know,
or whatever. I mean again, they really don't address that,
you know, what does that mean exactly? So the change
could be pretty radical. But if you don't have to
leave for some reason, how much is your life going
to change? And and yet at the same time, it's
changing radically and so there's a little bit of almost
a strangextaposition there that that creates more unease and some

(33:18):
people are responding to it and exactly the way the
Landsman does. So he goes down and he checks on
this murder and who's the victim's murder the victim at
that point, they really don't know who the victim is.
He he looks like he has the elements of a
drug addict. He's skinny, but he's clearly been murdered assassination style,

(33:43):
murdered where they put a pillow over his head and
shot through the pillow as a way to muffle the shot.
And he has a little travel chess set up, and
that's another that's so that's another thing that Schavan sets
up is this whole theme that goes through of chess
and everything being a chess game because Lonsman, his father

(34:06):
was something of a chess master. But Lonzman, through conflict
with his father, h chess and it just keeps coming,
going back and forth of this hatred for chess. But
he's got he has to learn chess and look through
at the world through chess because everybody else in this

(34:29):
either metaphorically or actually are playing a game of chess.
One thing I wanted to hit over to you, as
being a former cop and an author of crime fiction,
is that in the interview that Chaban has about the novel,
he said, when he originally wrote the novel, his idea

(34:51):
was to have Lonsman as a private detective, and he
found it and he wanted it to have a more
of a noir feel to it, but that almost immediately
the sort of things that a private detective. A private
detective is basically always having doors slammed in their face
because nobody has to listen to them, whereas he needed

(35:13):
it to be a police officer who could legally or
kind of had a lot more leniency to kick in
those doors that might get slammed in his face. And
I'm wondering, have you ever written or considered written writing
a private detective novel? And do you see that you

(35:34):
would be kind of limited in having a private detective
as opposed to a regular police detective. I have written
private investigator novels, and I don't look at it as
an obstacle, to be honest with you, Steve, I think
it because there are obstacles that the police face too.
One is that they have to follow the rules. Now,

(35:56):
you can write it that they don't if you want to,
but if you're trying to write an accurate police procedural,
something that's pretty closely based to reality, even if you
dial it up to eleven a little bit for dramatic purposes,
then and if the cops are the good guys in
your story, then they have to follow the rules almost
like ninety nine percent of the time. And if they
make a mistake once in a while, that's something that

(36:18):
it's not you know, they're not going to kicking indoors
that they have no right kicking in. They have to
respect the Fourth Amendment and so forth. So certainly, on
the one hand, they've got all this legitimate authority and
access to information, and people have a tendency to defer
to them or to cooperate based on that, you know,

(36:40):
legitimate authority that's granted to them by the state and
by society. So that's an advantage. The disadvantages is obviously
they have guardrails in place in terms of if they
want to bring this to a successful prosecution, you have
to play by these rules. And if you don't want
to get, you know, arrested for civil rights violations, whereas
a private detective doesn't have those advantages. But the private

(37:03):
detective also has the advantages of they don't have to
follow the rules. They can bribe somebody if they want to,
They can slip in through an unlocked door and conduct
an illegal search because they're not trying to convict somebody
at the end of the day, they're trying to solve
a crime or solve you know, they're trying to seek information,
whatever that might be. And so there's actually a certain

(37:23):
degree of freedom there. And so as I've written each
of these different styles, I've tried to keep that in
mind that you know, if the cops are the good guys,
then they play by the rules, and if your private
detective is the good guy, well then he or she
might not necessarily have to. You know, My main series
is the River City series, and that's one where there's
an enselable cast and the cops are the good guys,

(37:44):
and so I adhere to that. But one of them
made a big mistake one time and ended up leaving
the job, and I picked his store up about ten
years later in the River City timeline and had him
become a sort of an unofficial and sanctioned, unlicensed, a
private investigator. And that's when I discover all a sudden weay,
he doesn't have to go get a warrant nobody's home.

(38:07):
He can force the door and go in and search
because all he wants is the information. He doesn't care,
he doesn't have to show how he got it and
present it in court. He just his client wants to
know X, Y and Z. And you know, if he's
willing to take the risk of getting it, you know,
shot because somebody's inside or caught and get charged with
Burberry that you know, that's a decision he could make,

(38:28):
he can make as an individual, And so I think
it's actually kind of liberating to be able to to
write both. I do think that that Chabin made the
right choice to make Meyer a police officer not a
private investigator here, because him having the access to those
resources really moves the story ahead. And it's already a

(38:51):
pretty thick novel for for crime fiction, not so much
for sci fi fi, five bit for crime fiction. And
if he had had to overcome the mini offstles that
a PI would have to overcome, I think you would
have added another one hundred pages to this book. Steve
here with a quick word from our sponsors, I think
that it also gave him freedom, because that's one of

(39:14):
the things that the themes of the book is that
Lonsman's ex wife, Bena is she's become the head of
the Central Detective Bureau of the sick Of Police Department,
and her only job is to clean up and any
of the messes that are left over, eye everything into

(39:36):
a nice, neat boat, to hand over everything to the
US federal police that are going to take over until
they figure out whatever they're going to do with this district.
But they've been handed this just total mess of a case.
That will see pretty soon why it's turned into a
total mess. And the case could have just been Lonsman

(39:58):
could very easily have just well it's an unsolved homicide,
throw it into the bottom of the fire back of
the filing cabinet and leave it at that. But because
of all these things of going on with Lonzoman, of
his question of his identity and is trying to find
some purpose and like he wants to solve this case.

(40:21):
But the fact that the whole edifice of the district
is about to implode and nobody cares. It starts to
give him a little bit more freedom of that maybe
warrants don't matter so much, or talking to the wrong
person politically that might have ruined his career given five

(40:43):
years previously. He just doesn't care anymore if it will,
so he might do something that's either pushing the boundaries
of legal illegal, or pushing the boundaries of politic or unpolitic.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
He I mean, if you're not going to have a
job in a week, then you do, you have a
little bit more freedom to try to solve the case,
and in that you can take risks that you don't
have to live to find another day necessarily where your
career is concerned. One thing, I really I want to
avoid going much deeper into anything spoiler related, because I

(41:21):
think if anybody's listening to this, I mean, I highly
recommend giving the book a read. And I think the
more that you discover completely on your own, the better.
I mean, I like I said, I started reading and
I was like, oh, I didn't know there was a
Jewish settlement up in Alaska. That's kind of interesting. I
told I mean, I probably didn't know that. And then
I read a few more pages and I'm like, that

(41:43):
doesn't stop, right, And then a few more pages like oh,
I'm reading alternative history here. But but then to discover
all the things that are you know, that happen in
the mystery, and all the things that happen in the
in the social and the political realm, it's it's a
really cool discovery to make on your own. So and
I try to avoid dropping any more of those because

(42:03):
we've already had quite a few spoilers the setup, but
that leaves a whole lot more to talk about. And
I guess, you know, we could summarize by saying that
that the investigation proceeds and it becomes a very twisting
and turning set of affairs that involves religion, it involves politics,

(42:24):
it involves organized crime, it involves cross cultural conflict, and
you will be surprised on multiple fronts. And the chess
keeps coming up, like you mentioned, But what is it
about this book, Steve that that has you, you know,
coming back to it again and again. I mean I

(42:45):
read it once in twenty thirteen. I haven't revisited it
until you brought it up a few weeks ago. But
you've read it six or seven times. What is it
that has you coming back to this book over and
over again? What are the things that you liked that
made you do that? For me, it's the rich world
that he created, and being that he didn't make more

(43:05):
novels based onto it, I feel like when I read
it again, I get put back and I can discover
more richness built into the world. Also, I have obviously
having a podcast on the papacy and religion, and I
do a lot of comparative religion. I love that what

(43:26):
he's built in the novel of showing the different aspects
of religion. I think a lot of times for people
who maybe even who aren't into religion so much, they see, well,
there's Christian there's jew they're homogeneous, and right off the
bat he goes and just delves into all these specific

(43:47):
silos of Judaism and even Christianity, and he gets into them.
And I didn't really know a terrible amount about the
specifics of different groups and within Judaism, but I learned
a lot more from reading this book, and it made
me go and read more about it, to the point

(44:08):
where I know a fair bit about how all these
sometimes it'll call them denominations, but it really isn't denominations
as such, like if and when you read the book,
that just the word Yiddish that essentially means Jewish in Yiddish,
and they call each other yids And I think that

(44:30):
as a sort of a pejorative the sense in modern
American usage, but the way they would use it is
it's just a person. A person is a Jew, and
that's they're basically calling each other Jew like almost like
brother or something to that effect. But even though the
main group that he's in the lonesman's in connection with

(44:54):
is this group that he calls them the verb of hers,
and they're a branch of Judaism called Cidism. And the
Hasidic Jews are the ones they kind of always wore,
wear black blows, and they're usually the ones that have
big beards and the sidelocks or the hair that comes
from the side, and they're very traditional, but they also

(45:16):
are very they're traditional in a way, but they also
have some kind of radical views that separate them from
mainstream Judaism. Another thing that really separates them or makes
them more identifiable, is that they're very much based on
one group. So each I don't think the verber Verse

(45:41):
is a real group of Hysidism. But all over the
place there's these groups of Hasidic Jews that they had
all come from the same place in Ukraine, Poland, Belarus
kind of area, and they when they translated to a
lot of them came to the US, they stayed in

(46:01):
that plan system. So they all they came, they they
moved lock stock and barrel together, and they even though
they would have nominal pretty shared beliefs with other groups
of in the Hasidic movement, they would have a lot
of conflict with them. There's even a really famous case
in New York. There's a city called I'm blanking on

(46:25):
the name. It's Cis Joel, I think, and it's somewhere
up in upstate New York. And a whole group of
Hasidic Jews moved into this town that was before that
I probably didn't have one Jewish resident. Thousands of Hasidic
Jews moved in and then really rapidly changed how the

(46:45):
government worked, caused a lot of conflict with the people
who had lived there.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
And it was all because they have.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
A hierarchical leadership where the leaders said we're all going
to move to this town, and they all do, and
Shaiban sets up this duxtaposition with other Jews. Like you
think about it, Lonsman, he probably hasn't gone into a
Yiddish they call it a showel, We would call it

(47:16):
a synagogue. He probably hasn't stepped in there since the
last wedding he had to go to her funeral he
had to go to and you see that. Yeah, the
Christmas Easter, Christian, that sort of thing. Not everybody who
you slapped that label onto, Jewish or Christian has the
same level of religious fervor. The Hasidic like the verber verse,

(47:37):
they are. Religious fervor is absolutely through the roof. Lonsman
probably keeps minimally to the rules just to not cause
too much of a stir basically or what culturally has
done chop sandwich or whatever. But yeah, probably more for

(47:58):
cultural reasons as a post any religious conviction.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
Right, He's not viewing up at the temple.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
To the worship anytime soon.

Speaker 3 (48:08):
You know.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
One of the things I love about science fiction, and
I think it's true of crime fiction too, which is
probably why those are the two of the main genres
that I also write in. But science fiction, science fiction especially,
you can explore all of these interesting ideas and spend
social concepts or human elements or behaviors or whatever in

(48:35):
a way that isn't always as threatening to the reader
as it would be if you're writing an essay or
doing it is nonfiction or even general fiction. And so
you almost like come in under their defense's initial defenses,
and that makes them more likely to entertain the idea.
Now they still may reject it, they may still have

(48:57):
the same opinion they had before, but at least they
took the time to go, well, huh, I wonder now
this is what I think, or I wonder that actually
maybe I might change my mind on that. You don't
get that with the frontal assault. Usually you go in
underneath that their defense is with science fiction or the
same thing, especially with sociological questions. Crime fiction does that

(49:20):
as well. And and like I enjoy writing crime fiction
where the cops are the good guys, but I never
write white hat, black hat hype fiction. I mean, even
even in university. The cops are the good guys, and
they usually win, but not always and never without a cost,
and they make mistakes, and they they're human, and and

(49:40):
you know, they're not glorified you know, demigods or or whatever. Uh,
you know, I like that shades of gray and writing
nuanced characters and stories and win sites. In crime fiction,
you can explore why a criminal might do the things
he does. Maybe he's just a bad guy. That that
could be it that people that people exist there for

(50:02):
whatever reason. But you know, how are they made into
a bad guy? Like what who took a child? I mean,
there's a great line in the movie Manhunter where will
Will Graham asked that question, you know, like how did
this brutal serial killer become a serial killer? You know,
somebody took a child and created a monster, you know,
and he is sympathetic towards that child while still condemning

(50:25):
and hunting and eventually in the film killing actually involved
killing film in the book this this monster, and that
that dichotomy is uncomfortable for some people. That crime fiction
allows you to delve into that and to explore those
social questions. You look at all the noir from the

(50:45):
you know, even the forties. You know, that's class systems
are being you know looked at, I mean Chinatown, look
at I mean the why the politics and social exploration
of that, and so I think the crime fiction allows
you to do that, and science fictional allowed to do that.
And here's you know, Michael Chabin putting both together and

(51:08):
exploring all of it. And he's exploring all of it,
and so it becomes much more. I mean, it's a
very layered book there are. It reminds me a little
bit of another science fiction novel in a way, and
that is Dune. And I've mentioned Dune on other episodes
of the show. But you know, the the number of
layers that you can read book are amazing, and you

(51:32):
can read just the surface layer. It's an adventure story
where family gets deposed, conquered and kicked out by another
family and goes to war to win back. You know,
the father trying is killed and the son is trying
to avenge his father and become a man in his
own right. And I mean, you could enjoy the book
just on that level. But then you start looking at
the religious elements of it, and the geographical and the

(51:56):
geological elements of it, and the climatology of it, and
the all politics of it, and the meta level politics
because of course it's a galaxy. It's a huge you know,
huge span of planets that are involved. You know, it
becomes far more layered. And I think the same thing
is true here. You could read it as a murder

(52:16):
mystery with an interesting backdrop and enjoy this book one
hundred percent. So when you read it with through the
eye of the religiosity that you're talking about, or you
read it with an eye toward the political spectrum or
the cultural the conflicts between the cultures that live side
by side, it becomes even more.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
Layered. You know, it's like watching the wire. I mean,
it's a good storytelling, does that, I think, or at
least measured deep storytelling does that? I one hundred percent agree.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
And I didn't really think of that until you said
that the unique problems that prime fiction can approach, he
does that. He approaches the you know, why do people
do the bad things that they do? And what are
the different motivations that people might have to do bad things?
And the bad policing but good policing trying to get

(53:10):
to a good end. Those are all things that you
can really explore in prime fiction that you really couldn't
explore and you can explore in sci fi by itself,
but not really And then the aspects of sci fi,
of those other things of politics and religiosity that you
can explore in sci fi, and being able to mush

(53:32):
those two together is a really interesting thing to do,
and he does it very well. It doesn't feel like
anything has been done ham fistedly that taking all those
different genres and putting them together, it comes out very organically.
And maybe that's another reason why I keep going back

(53:54):
to visit it, is because every read I do get
something different out of it, or maybe I'm reading it
through a different lens, so I'm focusing in on that,
and let's on another aspect. Like having read a lot
of your crime fiction lately, I was focusing more on
the crime fiction element of it, and I was that
was more in the back of my mind during this

(54:17):
past reading, where the alternative history and the sci fi
have been more in the forefront at different readings. Well,
in the science fiction they you know, you can ask
the question what if and then, and that's that's totally acceptable.
Like the science fiction readers right there with you, They're
going to go right along, Yeah, what if, let's explore,

(54:37):
whereas if we're general fiction and be like, that's a
stupid question.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
What if that that didn't happen?

Speaker 2 (54:42):
You know, So you get that latitude immediately in the
science fiction and you can you can fashion this story
where things are radically different than they are in reality,
and and because the reader is expecting that, it's accepted
on the flip side or I guess alongside that. In
crime you can ask questions like, you know, does evil exist?

(55:04):
Or why do people do evil things? Or you know,
some something along those lines, however you want to phrase
it or however you want to frame it, And the
crime friction reader is right there with you, because that's
a central question that gets asked a lot of times
in at least any kind of a crime fiction story.
That's that's seeking something beyond mere thrill, and you know,

(55:25):
why do people do these things? And people are right
there either. So when you much the two together, you
can say, well, what if this happened in the world
and you had to contend with this question of you know,
are people just evil or is it all on a spectrum?
Why do people do these things? And how do you
navigate that world? I mean, ethics is a huge question
in crime fiction. It comes up all the time. It

(55:47):
comes up in science fiction too, and maybe it comes
up everywhere. Maybe I'm just too narrow of a reader,
but it seems like these two genres in particular really
allow the writer and the reader along for the ride
to explore these these questions in a way that that,
you know, that just feels like you use the word organic,

(56:09):
I think it does. It feels so organic to the
type of storytelling that's going on, and so I think
he did a great job.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
Ok.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
I think too, with the taking the alternative history, it
lent itself more towards blending the genre of crime fiction
that if he had if it had been space opera
or something like that, then it would come off as
a little hopey of the intergalactic policeman or something trying

(56:40):
to solve an intergalactic crime. I think it would have
been a tougher cell. But the the idea of the
hard bitten Jewish detective working in this district that he created,
it really did work. And it just it felt seamless.
It never felt hopy at all, It felt natural, organic,

(57:02):
I guess yeah. I mean it's the reason that word
has popped up several times is because, I mean, good storytelling,
almost good storytelling. You can almost predict what's going to
happen next, because it's what should happen next, and then
at some point you get surprised with another thing that
is just as likely that could have happened. That that's

(57:23):
where the surprises come from. Like it's not contrived, and
I like that. I think alternative history in particular is
a subgenre, though it also you know what we're talking
about with the sci fi genre and the current fiction
genre is all about the reflection of ourselves at the
individual and at the society level, the human level as

(57:46):
a population. And if you look at the story that
he's telling, I mean and compare it to what's happening today.
I don't want to get into a lot of current events,
politics and so forth, but just from a factual standpoint,
there's massive conflict in the Middle East, particularly centered around
Israel's existence, and there's and there's and the political and

(58:08):
religious conflict there are so inhistorical are so intertwined that
good luck on tying that Gordian knot right. That's the
struggle for eighty years now, just on the existence of Israel.
And even in this alternative history where something different occurred,
you still have so many of the same elements happening.

(58:30):
I mean, there's a strong support for a return to
Israel in Chabon's US, you know, and that that Zionist
movement exists. There's still a ton of conflict going on
in his version of the Middle East. I mean, it's
not like it's a panacea because Israel wasn't created as
a state or whatever, and so it I guess what

(58:54):
I'm driving at is that both science fiction in one
particular sense and fiction in another. I think crime fiction
has more social questions, in science fiction leans more into
the humanist and perhaps political and maybe larger meta type
of questions. But they all serve as a reflection of

(59:15):
what we're the world that we actually live into in today.
And that's why you can identify with it. You know,
when he talks about the conflict going on, you you're like, well,
that's plausible, because it's going on in our world anyway.
It's just has a different flavor. I mean, we're you know,
tacos or entrolata's. You're still eating Mexican, right, I mean, yeah,
that's that's kind of the he just again he does

(59:35):
a masterful job. Steve here again with a quick word
from our sponsors. That's another good part of what I
think of as good alternative history. It never gets you
too far off of what really happened, or it takes
the world that you've created in the events in that world,

(59:56):
and then just molded them to fit back into actual reality,
just changing some of the faces, some of the players,
some of the details, but it's still keeping you rooted
in something that really happened. It hasn't gone completely off
the rails. Nobody's in flying cars because of the SIKA

(01:00:19):
District being founded. It's all it's staying pretty tight to
what really happened. It's just in the sandbox of what
might have happened if this one event changed. What's going
to happen. It's not going to be an enormous butterfly effect.
It's going to be a pretty zeroed in butterfly effect
that eventually gets us back to in the end. This

(01:00:43):
will be like a half spoiler episode, not full of
the full spoilers, but in the end it gets us
to something that could actually happen.

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):
Yeah, I don't want to spoil it either, but it
was a satisfying ending I felt.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
And and maybe not as clear cut of an ending
that some people would like. I don't know if that's
too spoilery, but you know, it's such a big story
because I mean, so many things are going on, and you.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
To have ended that with a.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
Very definitive this is exactly what happened with this person,
that person, this person that, and here's ere you. That
might satisfy some readers because they want to have a
definitive ending to the end degree, but but I don't.
I think you made the right choice to be slightly
less uh precise, and slightly less concrete, and it made

(01:01:39):
it a more satisfying ending.

Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
I tend to agree with you. Uh so, are you
going to read it again? Is there is there? Oh? Yeah,
for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
Maybe not, probably not anytime soon, but I definitely will.
And I would say with the ending, it's a very
frank as a pharaoh esque ending. At how your novels ended,
I really I would.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
I don't know. I can't put myself back to that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
I thought that the ending was in that earlier times
that I had read it disappointing. I think the ending
is very appropriate for the whole tone of the novel.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
It's not, And I you know, I won't lie.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
I sometimes like the ending that's very concrete, very end,
very much like this is what happened, and this is
not the type of ending that later being a Gelfish
became the second the thirty fourth Attorney General of Alaska,
and so and so did this so and I think
that that would have been a terrible ending for this book.

(01:02:39):
We need to end it in a way that has
carried us through the entire novel, with a lot of ambiguity.
That's kind of a minor spoiler, but I think if
you read the first ten minutes of the book, you'll
see that there's a theme of the book is ambiguity, yeah, well,
and nuance, right, and which are shades of the same thing.

(01:03:02):
I suppose. You know, if if a writer does that,
if a writer, regardless of you know, it's a book
or a film, if they choose to end the story
in a way that isn't definitive on certain points, that's
a huge clue that those points weren't the major points
that they want you to take from the story.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
You know. I was.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
Inspired by a book called Vision Quest when I wrote
a hockey book for adults called It All That Counts,
about a guy who's just kind of going through a
little bit of a midlife crisis. But instead of buying
a camaro or dating on twenty three year old, he
goes from being a skater to being a goalie and
he starts playing goaltender for his team. And that's his

(01:03:51):
journey that he's on right, and that sounds and it's
a humorous book with blocker romantics and on ice antics
and stuff. Anybody likes hockey would love it. Anybody likes
humored love it. But you know, he eventually becomes, you know,
his team's goalie. He has to move away, and so
he becomes goalie for his team because he was just playing,

(01:04:11):
you know, elsewhere, and he's not as good as the
old goalie. And he's still becoming a decent goalie, but
he's not as good as the old one.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
He's not as good as he may be some day.
It's a big deal.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
But the team has been like championship team for like
three years running and they want to win again, so
there's some conflict there going on. Meanwhile, there's things going
on in his life that he discovers are more impartnered
than hockey, particularly his relationship with his wife and stuff.
And so in the Harry davis novel Vision Quest. The

(01:04:42):
whole book is about this wrestler's desire to cut weight
to get to the point where he can wrestle the
best wrestler in the state at any weight. He's now
propound the best, and he's got to cut weight to
get there. And he's on this journey while all these
other things are happening in his life, very similar to
what happens to you know, kind of conceptually what's going
on with My Goalie guy. And so the spoiler for

(01:05:06):
both books at the end of Vision Quest, the book
ends with him getting on the mat and them saying
go and in all the counts they make it to
the championship game. It ends up going to a tai game,
ends up going to overtime and in a shootout, and
and My Goalie is based with a situation where he
makes the next save, his team wins, and the guy

(01:05:28):
comes skating down the middle with the puck. He cradles
the puck and he shoots, and that's where the book ends.
And then people got so pissed, like finish the book,
you know, even like some of the reviews were like,
love this book, you hilarious People who like hockey will
love it. You know, I felt like I was in
the locker room with the guys. Heartfelt story blah blah blah,

(01:05:49):
but finish the damn story, frank, you know, and things
like this, And people have the same reaction to Terry
Damis's book, which he wrote years before me. So, I
mean I totally stole the idea of the NBA this
ending from that, so much so that when they made
a movie out of Vision Quest, they they showed the
wrestling match and had an ending because people would have
flipped out if we're a movie and they didn't have

(01:06:12):
the ending. And yet, so here's my point, Like I
knew what Davis was doing because I chose to do
it too because I liked it so much. But what
was the device there? You know, if if you are
trained as a viewer or a reader to focus on
the surface story.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
Will they win the championship? Will he win his wrestling match?
Whatever that is?

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
And then you don't get satisfaction in that. It forces
you to search elsewhere for what the point was, like
where where what was the truce climax are? And in
both cases it was about the journey and the realizations
that are made along along the way. It sounds cliche
a little bit that it makes more of the point
when you don't give that resolution, and I think, I think,

(01:06:55):
to a less dramatic degree, I think that's what Shavun
is doing here. Be it a little more subtly. You know,
he points in the compass direction of where these characters
are probably going to end up and lets you decide,
you know, the specifics of it. It just remind you
that the important thing is is what they experienced along
the way and what they learned and what their character

(01:07:15):
arc was is more important than the outcome of a
recreational league hockey game or a high school wrestling match,
or or even where somebody ends up applying their trade
for the remainder of their career, whether it's in sit
or elsewhere. And so I think it is a pretty
good storytelling, and I dug it I would. I didn't

(01:07:36):
feel disappointed at all. But I guess that probably that
makes sense given what I just talked about, And I
absolutely agree if you couldn't at the say, in your
hockey book example, if you had had it where either
he makes the big save, maybe maybe you could end

(01:07:57):
it at the big save or if the guy scores
the goal, or if he does get the big save,
then what do you have to do after that? Then
you have to talk about, oh, he got picked up
by the Spokane Stars, but a single a affiliate of
the uh you know whoever, And then it becomes a
different novel that's totally distracted you from what's the real
point of it. It's this guy working through his middle

(01:08:21):
life struggle and trying to learn something new and become
a new person in a way, a new identity.

Speaker 3 (01:08:29):
Why do you want it? You're not.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
You don't want to take away from that. Well, I mean,
think about the original Rocky movie, right, I mean, if
if Rocky had won that first fight, that was a
that's a completely different story. It wasn't winning. It wasn't
about winning, it was about going the distance. And yeah,
so the journey, yeah yeah, so, I mean you still

(01:08:52):
got the outcome that he lost, so it's a little different.
You didn't They didn't like end it at the referee saying, well,
you have a split decision and cut the black like
the Sopranos finale or something, right, I mean, but at
the same time, you know it wasn't the cut and
dried you know, he wins, and you know, everything is
exactly put into neat boxes and everything. We don't know

(01:09:16):
what's gonna happen with Rocky after this. We just know
he he the two journeys that he was on, you know,
to to prove he wasn't a bum and go the
distance with the champion, and to find a love with
Adrian and be a good partner. You could see that
he accomplished both of those things. And so even if
they hadn't given like they could have cut that movie

(01:09:39):
in a way that you didn't hear the outcome like,
and it still would have been as powerful, you know,
with the fact that he went the distance and he
got the girl, you know, and that's what was important.
It didn't matter if he won or lost. So you know,
I but you know, I I think you and I
are people who liked to go a layer or five

(01:10:02):
layers deeper into stories and books and movies, and not
everybody wants to do that. I mean, I talked to
my wife about it the other day and and she's like,
you know, sometimes people just want, you know, popcorn, and yeah,
I want they don't want steak for every meal.

Speaker 3 (01:10:16):
And that I'm like, yeah, you're absolutely right.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
And and I don't usually write popcorn, and I don't
usually read popcorn.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
That's just what I know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
But but there's a you know, doesn't mean popcorn writing
is an art, and it doesn't mean people who want
to eat popcorn or not are vacuous or whatever. They
just they're looking for something different in their entertainment art.
And and the wonderful thing about this book is I
think you can read it. It's not quite to the
popcorn level, but you can read it as a murder

(01:10:47):
mystery with an interesting backdrop and enjoy it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
Or you can do what we've been.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
Doing here for the last hour and and dive into
even you know, more of the the dark corners and
the you know, the dirty alleys of the mind that
exists who it's concerned. Do you have any books novels
that you go back to? Are you a one and

(01:11:11):
done kind of reader? I go back to some and
TV shows as well, good ones like I won't surprise
you at all to know that I rewatch True Detective
Season one every couple of years, and even the entire
season one, two, and three, even though they're different seasons.

(01:11:32):
I'll sometimes do it all three of them every four
or five years. I've reread Dune a few times for
the longest time. I reread The Lord of the Rings
pretty frequently. Those are ones I like. I like to
reread another alternative history sort of sci fi slash and

(01:11:53):
that's not really horror. But eleven twenty two sixty three
by Stephen King write read reread that one every you know,
a few years, because it's a in many ways, it's
very similar to the Shaven book that we're discussing. Whereas
it's the you know, assassination of JFK is the pivotal

(01:12:15):
moment that they're that he's focused on. It's it's a
much more personal story, I think than this one in
that we spend a lot more time with the main
character doing things other than what we think is going
to be his main role when we pick up the book,
whereas meyern Lands been he you know, he's on top

(01:12:35):
of what we think he needs to be on top
of pretty much the entire time. But yeah, eleven twenty
two sixty three is one.

Speaker 3 (01:12:43):
And I go back to.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
The Dark Tower series by Student King two periodically, So
I mean, I think when when it's a layered book
or a layered film or television series where the writing
is as this level of detail and nuance. You can
enjoy what you enjoyed the first time you were there,
but also see something additional and that makes it worth it,

(01:13:12):
you know, I mean, I want you. And I did
a show on Tombstone, and I watched Toombstone every couple
of years, and occasionally I noticed something I didn't notice before.
But it's you know, that's not a popcorn movie at all,
but it's but you know, it's one of those things.
I watch it to enjoy it, you know, And yeah,
it doesn't. It doesn't have to be any deeper than
it is, and it's it's not a again, I don't

(01:13:33):
think it's a popcorn movie, but it's.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
But it can't. You can watch it that way and
totally enjoy it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
So what are some others that you come back to
Aside from this one? There's a couple of Cormack McCarthy
books that I reread The Road every now and again,
and then No Country for Old Men, which is interesting
because I've tried to read Blood Meridian. I picked that
one up three or four times, and I get a

(01:13:59):
couple of chapters in and I just can't do it anymore. Yeah,
I cannot connect with that one. I like a lot
of McCarthy. I liked all the pretty horses and.

Speaker 3 (01:14:09):
The road and how there's another one that he wrote
that I really liked. Tho it's to slip in their
mind right now. But yeah, Bled Meridian is a difficult one.
A lot of people like it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
So, but again, there's a lot of layer to those characters,
and the setting is very you know, one thing that
I think makes repeated readings or viewings attractive is when
the sense of place is strong enough to draw you in. Obviously,
the characters are everything, but if the characters are in

(01:14:43):
a vanilla location, it doesn't have the same power as
they're on the Texas border and going into Old Mexico,
or they're in Sitka. Yeah, it's a metropolis and not
a town of ten thousands. So was there anything about
this book that you'd I didn't like, Steve? I mean,
we've been really giving it such a ringing endorsement. But

(01:15:05):
are there any criticisms that you could level at it?
I think the one it's hard to find too many criticisms,
but I think one of the things that I could
definitely see is that, And I mean, I'm not gonna lie.
I feel it in some way more detail, like I
want to dig into more arts of this world much more.

Speaker 3 (01:15:27):
I want to learn more.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
About the middle history in the early history.

Speaker 3 (01:15:33):
He gives it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:34):
You get these senses and it just makes you hungry
for more and more. I'd say, is the novels constructed,
It sort of drags a bit in the middle, the
end of the middle before it starts to get to
the end, and then the end feels sort of rushed
about last the novel really unfolds really quickly. It's almost

(01:15:57):
like a balloon letting out the air, like once a
couple of really key events happen, it goes towards the
end very quickly, and I think that it spent a
You could, in a way it was a good thing
that they built up a lot of time in that
middle section and then once everything does come, all the

(01:16:19):
pieces come together, that it's going to end quickly, but
it it just felt like it they had built us up,
built us up, and then it's over.

Speaker 3 (01:16:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
I can't criticize the quickness of the ending because I
think that's usually pretty good storytelling, but that saggy middle
is a is a valid criticism that that. I think
many many works that that that I've written and those
I ran probably suffer from that. And it's a hard

(01:16:49):
one to get around because the storytelling that takes place there,
much of it is critical and necessary. And so it's
almost like you got to eat your vegetables if you
want to get dessert. I mean, yeah, that's that saggy
middle sometimes is eating the vegetables. And as a writer
you try to find ways to prop up that sag

(01:17:12):
so that it doesn't at least doesn't feel like it's sagging.
And and and you know, you're always trying to trim,
you know, how concise can I be without losing.

Speaker 3 (01:17:21):
The what I need to convey.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
And that's a game that that's always difficult to win
when it comes to the middle of a book like that.

Speaker 3 (01:17:29):
But yeah, I think those are some valid criticisms.

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):
I I really don't have any criticisms of it.

Speaker 3 (01:17:36):
I thought it was so well.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
The writing is really good. The guy's a good writer.
He adopted a style that I that I understand is
not his usual style, because this is the only book
of this that I've read in that he wrote in
a much more punchy, you know, short and direct style,
in keeping with the the genre of crime fiction elements

(01:18:02):
of it anyway, and I thought that was a good choice,
you know, Uh, sometimes science fiction. I'm reading a book called,
uh oh, it's the Verge of the Fires, Fire on
the Verge or something like that. I haven't read it
in a couple of weeks. I have to go back
and pick it up again. It's a pretty well known
science fiction novel and and it's good. But there are

(01:18:26):
some long, convoluted sentences in there, you know. And that's
okay because that's a norm for the for the genre.
Would not have worked if he had adopted that aspect
for this book. He needed to go with the crime
fiction way of storytelling. Uh, and he did so, and
he did so. I would I would definitely recommend this book.
Any any uh last thoughts on this, Steve that you

(01:18:47):
want to leave the listener with. One of the things
that I found really interesting in his uh interview that
he did about the book is that he had written
an entire draft for beginning to end entirely in the
first person as Meyer Lonsman. That the book winds up

(01:19:08):
being it's written in the third person perspective. But he
said that after he had written this entire book, even
himself was sick of Lonsman at the end because it
just lent itself to so much that Lonsman was somebody
who was loquacious and loved to hear his own voice,
and it would just turned into his own voice. I

(01:19:28):
think that one thing would have then it maybe would
have satisfied a little bit of my desire to learn
more about the rest of the setting. Was even though
it wasn't in the Lonsman and the first person, Lonsman's
really the only POV character in the only book or

(01:19:49):
in the book, And maybe if he had even just
done a little bit of something from the other character's
point of view that Lonsman wasn't directly involved in life,
I'm pretty sure was in every single scene.

Speaker 3 (01:20:03):
Yeah, that was a limited third.

Speaker 2 (01:20:04):
Uh, you know, Yeah, they could have he could have
done a limited third with multiple povs and maybe had
the cousin his partner be a POV, maybe a couple
of scenes from his ex wife's point of view or
or something like that that might have been interesting. Yeah,
I would have shaken the tree a little bit and
I think we would have learned more about Lonsman. We

(01:20:26):
get the sense that the people they his cousin. He
loves Lonsman, his wife even though their ex wife she
does love him, but he has some idiosyncrasies that drive
them all, you know, absolutely bananas that they just can't
stand about him, and I think that that's what makes
them such an interesting character. But if we could have

(01:20:47):
maybe investigated those a bit independently from him, that could
have been fun.

Speaker 3 (01:20:53):
Well, this was the only book that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:54):
He's written in this universe, and you actually had an
interesting analogy and might be a good way to end
this episode with the I mean, if you're disappointed that
there wasn't more about the world that we were playing in,
and that there weren't other books set in that world

(01:21:15):
and other stories told, then he's done a pretty good
job of making you be engaged in that world and
and liking it and accepting it. But you you couched
your your your disappointment in an interesting way in the
notes that I think we could close with that. Yeah,
I did. I almost forgot about that too. I wasn't
sure what you were talking about. But the whole idea

(01:21:38):
that it's Jaybam was like that director, those directors in
the wild West.

Speaker 3 (01:21:42):
I know that was a common thing in wild West movie.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
Making, as they would create a completely actor at Old
West Town or an Old West railroad car and only
to blow it up at the end. And I think
that that's what he did for us. Does he created
this entire world and then he blew it up at
the end, And I think that you have to give
an artist some credit for that that it doesn't have

(01:22:09):
to be completely dug over and kind of like the
Star Wars universe, where we just dig into it, dig
into it, dig into it. It's make something perfect and
then destroy your creation. Yeah, everything doesn't have to be
an ongoing IP. I mean some things are best is
a lot off and this is probably one of those things. So, folks,

(01:22:32):
the book, if case you haven't caught it yet, the
book is The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabin or
Chabone or cha b o n if you prefer to
say it that way. And I appreciate you letting me
be in the driver's seat on this episode, Steve. Steve
will be returning to the driver's seat in the next episode,
so don't fret as one listener, you will have your

(01:22:56):
Steve garback. But thanks for being here with us while
we talked about this interesting book, and I, for one
strongly encourage you to check it out, and I know
Steve will be checking it out again in hopes that
you do too. M M yeah yeah, h h h

(01:23:22):
h h h

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