The Anchorage Daily News (my state’s newspaper) has the inevitable Alaska newspaper story today. As in, “You mean there’s a book coming out that has 3.2 million Jews in Sitka? Has this guy ever even been to Sitka?”

“I fully expected Alaskans to just be horrified by this,” Chabon laughed, “that so many people would show up on their doorstep, regardless of who they are.”

Seriously, the article is a good backgrounder into the history of the Jewish Alaska plan. Why? Because the article’s author, Tom Kizzia, wrote a four-part series in 1999 about the real plan Chabon based his novel on.

The New York Post on Sunday labeled Michael Chabon’s new book, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, as having an “ugly view of Jews” and said it “is bound to set off a firestorm of controversy.”

The book, which hits stands in May, “depicts Jews as constantly in conflict with one another, and its villains are a ruthless, ultra-Orthodox sect that resembles the Lubavitchers.”

The article goes on to say the book “depicts some of his Jewish characters as willing to do anything, including massacring other Jews, in the cause of Zionism.”

“Film rights were sold to producer Scott Rudin five years ago, long before the book was finished,” the article says. “But with Chabon’s take on Jews as the central element in endless struggle, maybe Mel Gibson would like to direct.”

Good thing it’s just the New York Post and, you know, no one takes it seriously.

In an interview with Details magazine, Michael Chabon gives an update on the forever-stalled film adaptation of Kavalier & Clay:

“We were so close,” he says. “As far as I was told, we had been greenlighted, and we had part of a cast. Tobey Maguire was supposed to star, and Natalie Portman. Then around Thanksgiving it just completely went south for studio-politics kinds of reasons that I’m not privy to. I have a lot of faith in the producer, Scott Rudin, who has the rights to the material. He’s a great movie producer, and if anyone can pull it all together, it’s Scott. But right now, as far as I know, there’s not a lot going on.”

To read the full interview, and an excerpt from The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, click here.

In case you haven’t noticed it yet, Michael Chabon has posted on his Web site a poster for the 1977 Sitka World’s Fair, held in the Federal District of Sitka, where his up-coming novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union takes place.

The poster is from the collection of “Leon Chaim Bach.” The name is an anagram for “Michael Chabon.”

The fair, according to the poster, occurred from May to October 1977. In the novel, which hits stands May 1, Chabon describes the fair as a “pinnacle of Jewish civilization in the north.” The novel takes place 30 years later.

In the real world, Sitka is Alaska’s fourth largest city with nearly 9,000 people. In Chabon’s novel, the city sports a population of 3.2 million and is part of the alternate history’s Jewish homeland.

For those die-hards out there who can’t wait until May 1 to get a copy of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, I just noticed that someone in San Francisco is selling an advanced reader’s copy of the novel on eBay.

The auction ends March 17, and the starting bid is $9.99. No one has bid.

And here’s an odd detail: “From a smoke-free environment.”