YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION LISTED INTERNATIONALLY ON AMAZON
Friday, February 25, 2005, 5:30 PM ET
Source: Amazon

Michael Chabon's next novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, now has a listing on the British, French, and German versions of Amazon. All three versions contain the same information: that the book is 640 pages, published by Fourth Estate, and scheduled to hit bookstores October 3, 2005.

Strangely, no American listing exists yet.

Many thanks to Frank from Germany for the heads-up!

CHABON EDITING BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES
Saturday, Febnuary 19, 2005, 5:15 PM ET
Source: Shaken & Stirred

According to Shaken & Stirred, Michael Chabon is editing this year's Best American Short Stories. At least three stories have already been selected. First, there's Kelly Link's "Stone Animals," originally published in Conjunctions:43: Beyond Arcadia. Next, there's Tim Pratt's "Hart & Boot" from Polyphony 4. A third sci-fi story has also been selected, though its name and author have yet to be revealed.

"I keep thinking there's been some horrible mistake," Pratt wrote over on his blog. "No, seriously. I really do half-expect Michael Chabon to write me apologetically saying "Um, no, I meant that other Tim Pratt..."

The third story has not been revealed publically, though it seems as though everyone and their brother knows within the literary world (sadly, I don't). Jonathan Strahan gives the best hint: "Suffice it to say that it's a story I'd picked to reprint from its online publication in a book I'm doing, so I'm very chuffed for the author."

Chabon previously edited Link's "Catskin" in McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales.

RAIMI HEARTS KAVALIER & CLAY
Saturday, Febnuary 19, 2005, 4:00 PM ET
Source: Word

A website visitor named Judy was kind enough to pass along this fascinating interview with Sam Raimi from the British Word magazine. In it, Raimi declares his love for Michael Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay . . . I just love that book. He wrote the story for Spider-Man 2 but I admire the book independently of that fact! For people who don't know it, it's the story of two young Jewish New Yorkers at the dawn of the comic business, the '30s and '40s -- it's actually a lightly fictionalised version of the real origin of the modern comics industry.

I love the journey that Chabon takes his characters on, the emotional power, that very great interest and sadness and tragedy of that time in Eastern Europe . . . it's just an amazing, gripping and excellent book. It's so desperately sad what happens to the Joe Kavalier character, to his family and his brother in Europe as the Nazis take over, but his new beginning in New York, as he escapes persecution, is so beautiful and filled with wonder -- it really makes sense of the early comics business, the desire for truth and justice that runs through all the classic comics, that need for heroes at a very dark time. I loved that Chabon had really researched the early days of comics. He makes it as real and dramatic and exhilarating as it must have been, and you understand how badly the comics creators themselves needed heroes.

For me, being from a Jewish family which was destroyed in Poland in the Second World War. I really related to that because I knew it was the story of my family too. My grandfather tried to warn his family that the Nazis were coming a nd they just didn't believe it, or didn't take it sufficiently seriously. It made the book especially poignant for me. For the same reason I thought that the X-Men movies were brilliant. Bryan Singer did such a good job, and to make the villain Magneto a survivor of the death camps added so much to the story: the theme of persecution.

CHABON ON A "VOYAGE OF REDISCOVERY"
Saturday, Febnuary 19, 2005, 4:00 PM ET
Source: Rocky Mountain News

In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News, Michael Chabon revealed that he's on a "voyage of rediscovery" for his literary insperations.

"I had been on this voyage of rediscovery the past four years or so, trying to explore the sources of my interest in short stories," he said. "As part of that project, I was re-reading Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories - those were definitely my first favorites."

As a result, Chabon wrote The Final Solution.

"I started thinking of what little I remembered about what became of Sherlock Holmes when he retired. I knew he retired to Sussex to keep bees. I pictured an old geezer, living by himself, keeping bees. From that point, it became a rapid, fairly unconscious business."

Oh, and the interview also has a really cute exchange about this little book Chabon's working on:

Titled The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Chabon's new novel is based on a proposal that was floated by the Interior Department and rejected by Congress, he says, that would have allowed Jewish World War II refugees to settle in Alaska. His story - a murder mystery set in the present day - imagines that such a Yiddish-speaking territory had been allowed.

I mention that I think his story, as alternative history, is bound to remind readers of Philip Roth's book, The Plot Against America, in which Roth rewrites history as if Charles Lindbergh won the presidency during World War II.

Does he agree?

"Yes," he says, uncharacteristically curtly.

The response seems to require further exploration - OK, some might call it prying.

"Is that a problem?" I press.

"No," he says. Long pause. "Just for Philip Roth." Long pause. "I liked him until I heard that (he'd written The Plot Against America). I think he's a big jerk for copying my idea in advance."

Chabon's deadpan tone finally dissolves into a chuckle, and it's clear he's joking. Still, he admits that when Roth's book came out to much critical acclaim, "It made my heart sink. It's not so much that he did it, that he got there first or anything like that - he didn't." There's a long literary tradition of alternative histories, Chabon says.

Rather, "it's knowing that, oh God, I'm going to have to answer this question over and over. I'm going to have to talk about Philip Roth's book every time I talk about mine."

On the bright side, he congratulates me on being the first to ask.

AYELET BEGINS AT SALON, ENDS AT BLOG
Saturday, Febnuary 19, 2005, 4:00 PM ET
Source: Salon.Com, Bad Mother

Ayelet Waldman, wife of Michael Chabon, contributed her first column to Salon last week, writing on her experiences with abortion.

"I had a second trimester abortion," Waldman wrote. "I was pregnant with a much-wanted child who was diagnosed with a genetic abnormality. I made a choice to terminate the pregnancy. It was my third pregnancy, and I was very obviously showing. More important, I could feel the baby move. We had seen him on the ultrasound; I have a very clear memory of his two tiny feet, perfect pearl toes, footprint arches, round heels. This was, for me, a baby, not a "clump of cells" as an older woman, steeped in the arcane language of the early feminist movement, called him. He was my baby, and I chose to end his life."

This is not the first time Waldman has written about her personal experiences with abortion. Her blog occassionally featured posts about the experience.

Salon's new editor, Joan Walsh, welcomed Waldman in a Feb. 10 letter to the site's readers. "This week we introduced a new columnist, novelist Ayelet Waldman, whose debut "Looking Abortion in the Face" provoked more passionate mail than anything we've run in a long time (besides our feature praising all things Mac)."

As a result of the new, regular column, though, Waldman has decided to stop blogging over at Bad Mother, which was recently featured in a New York Times article.

"For a while there I was posting a few times a day," Waldman wrote. "For the past week or so I've put the breaks on a bit (in part due to a book that needed copy-editing, in part due to a catastrophic depression). Then, this week I was offered a column on Salon. Okay, to be perfectly accurate, I browbeat the fine editors of that inspired on line magazine into letting me have a column. I thought for a while I could do both the column and the blog, but I'm afraid that if I tried that, I wouldn't have enough time and energy left over to write my novels or drive carpool."

WIGHT STRENGTHENS O.C.-KAVALIER CONNECTION
Saturday, Febnuary 19, 2005, 4:00 PM ET
Source: USA Today

Revelation time: I don't watch The O.C.. *gasp* I know, I'm a loser. But I'm not so ignorant that I haven't heard about the frequent Kavalier & Clay references that pop up in the show.

And the connection stretches to the off-screen as well, as Eric Wight, frequent contributer to The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, is currently lending his artistic abilities to the show, providing the art that Seth Cohen, the show's resident comic geek, draws.

And how did he get the gig, you ask? Thank Kavalier & Clay, according to an interview Wight did with USA Today.

"I did some comic-book work for the adaptation of Michael Chabon 's Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," Wight said. "I was selling one of the pages on eBay, and the guy that bought it was Allan Heinberg, one of the producers from the show. He was a big fan of my stuff and was like, 'Yeah, we had this idea to take Seth in this direction, and I think you'd be perfect to do it.'"

To read the rest of the interview, click here.