In some ways, this one-two from The Yiddish Policemen's Union, a novel that's equal parts detective/noir genre piece and contemporary-Jewish-lit, captures what the book is all about:
"It's not much," Landsman says, rain pattering the brim of his hat. "But it's home."
"No, it isn't," Batsheva Shpilman says. "But I'm sure it makes it easier for you to think so."
In this book, it's often in the dialogue that the melding of the two divergent literary streams with which Chabon is here engaged is most evident, and also in the dialogue that some of the hidden consonances between the two become apparent (a cynical wisecrack is a cynical wisecrack, after all, whether hard-boiled or ancestrally resigned). The Yiddish Policemen's Union is no mere exercise in style or cleverness; rather, it's a genuine attempt at synthesis, which entails grappling with the conventions and concerns of both of the main forms on which it draws (in the passage above, the play on the meaning of 'home', itself of course particularly significant for the Jewish diaspora, is characteristic). It's not a complete success (I liked Kavalier and Clay much more), but, at once extremely enjoyable and unobtrusively serious-minded, there's plenty to like about it.
