  A while ago urlLink Ben provided a link to Quinn Skylark's BookWatch. I love this book blog. urlLink Here is the scoop on Michael Chabon's new project (from EW ): Chabon describes the book on which he's working, a "mystery-thriller with a twist" called The Yiddish Policemen's Union. "It's set in an alternate universe," Chabon tells the magazine, "where instead of there being a Hebrew-speaking Jewish nationalist state in the Middle East, there's a Yiddish speaking Jewish state in Alaska. " Alaska seems a better place for the Zionist state. I mean, who the hell wants Alaska anyway? They don't call it Seward's Folly for nothing. Nobody is going to blow themselves up in an Anchorage disco.
There are only, like, three Eskimos left anyway. I love alternate history novels. A lot. It's a kind of crazy and highly nerdy fascination of mine. I am enraged that Philip Roth stole my Lindbergh-as-fascist-president idea. I used to voraciously read the works of the estimable Harry Turtledove, whose series on the Great War if the Confederacy had won the Civil War is pretty remarkable. Also a delight is his series about an alien invasion during the Second World War, in which the aliens become addicted to ginger, which causes the females to enter their mating cycle, leading to lizard orgies of the very hottest sort. But in addition to being imaginative, Chabon has a clear advantage over Turtledove. Motherfucker can write! His short fiction is really amazing stuff, both lyrical and adventurous, maximalist in the most minimalist of ways.
And then there is The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay which actually made me kind of want to read some comic books, and was a totally engrossing narrative that left me feeling wrung-dry by the end, emotionally, physically, the whole works. It was bold and brave and era-defining without being too clever and full of itself. Chabon may well do for the Yiddish language what he's already done for comic books. Now that I've had to abandon my Lindbergh plans, however, I've come up with a new idea (that someone is bound to steal.
) What might have happened had Seward not committed his Folly? What if Alaska had remained a Russian holding up until, and after, 1917? A Soviet Alaska would have dramatically increased the tension of the Cold War. It's like the Cuban Missile Crisis times a million, dude. 
