Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Mystery Kibbitzer


I saw in the news today that the Coen brothers have acquired the screen rights to film Michael Chabon's novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union. (Okay, not that I consider Variety magazine to be the "news" or that I check it regularly, or ever, but this is exciting news nevertheless.) I can't imagine a better-suited team to handle the mixture of mystery and comedy that pervaded the novel than the Coen brothers. In fact, the entire time that I was reading the book, my handicapped 21st century imagination kept picturing the events unfolding as if it was a movie, from the sour patzers at the Einstein Chess Club to the daring, near-naked escape from Peril Straight. I just can't wait until I start to hear about the casting. Who could possibly fill the role of Willie Dick, the miniscule Indian police chief whose office and motorcycle are built to two-thirds scale? For some reason I kept picturing Mel Brooks as the boundary maven Itzik Zimbalist.

Is it only a coincidence that the publishers of this book originally marketed it with a movie-like trailer?

I started a book club in St. Louis a little while ago, and the first book we discussed was The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Not as many people showed up as I had hoped, but what we lacked in quantity we made up for in quality. Everyone seemed to enjoy the book, even if the ending did go a little too far-our, Law & Order for our tastes. (If you watch Law & Order, particularly the SVU variety, you'd know that I'm not saying the book got bogged down in technical legal jibber jabber, but how solving one murder case somehow spirals into much larger, less believable conspiracies that always manage to implicate well-organized, nefarious criminal entitities. I imagine the Coen bros. could make this absurd escalation more enjoyable.) I selected the book after falling in love with the much touted, Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which, incidentally, is also being made into a movie.

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