I’ve recently read The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon. And while it’s somewhat different from the rest of his books that I’ve read (most, but not all of them), it’s still very clearly Chabon writing and therefore, lovable. There’s something sensual about the way he writes. I associate it with taste. His style is chewy. I want to put the sentences in my mouth and roll them around, bite down, lick. Some tastes are large and some are small, only two words at a time. His prose is mostly savory, with the occasional spurt of tangy, tart, or bitter. And the finish is sweet– he never pulls punches. He goes right directly for the happy ending.
It’s a detective story, inside an alternate history. There’s not a lot of mystery to it– no red herrings, no clues dropped along the way, no stunning reveal followed by triumphant denouement. But there is a lot of detecting, a lot of piecing together details, and a lot of reading the odd paragraph and trying to visualize the world he’s built, where after World War II, Arabs wiped out the fresh settlement of Jews in Jerusalem, killing most, and forcing the rest into a wider diaspora, possibly a permanent one, making quite a few of them end up in Alaska.
I read most of this book sitting in what used to be the dining room, on my former living room furniture, feeling guilty about not sitting on my new furniture. But more importantly, I did it with my big old American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edition, sitting right next to me. I had to look things up constantly. I didn’t find most of the words, because I was looking in a dictionary of English, not of Yiddish. And there’s a whole big ton of Yiddish. But I did find a couple new English words (in the book, they switch to “American” for swearing purposes), and one stonkingly brilliant German word that should be appropriated early and often.
First, hortatory:
He aches. He wheezes. There’s some kind of mystery pain in his rib and another in his left knee. He has to stop once, halfway up, to smoke a hortatory cigarette.
Urging to a course of action; exhorting; encouraging. This is pretty contextually evident, but wow, neat and new. Plus, I like the word “exhort.” Probably too much, so I’ve been concentrating on not using it so much. But here is a way I could use it! Its etymology is pretty run of the mill late Latin, -vus, -us, -ari, -riri and whatnot.
Then, senescence:
The last time Landsman saw him, Dick kept having to take a pair of reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on. Now he has given in to senescence and adopted a slick black-and-brushed -steel pair of Italian spectacles, the kind worn in thoughtful interviews by aging British rock guitarists.
This is a fascinating word. Try saying it out loud. It’s been stuck in my head for a few days around and I walk around muttering it. It’s less contextually evident, like a wild card of a word. It means simply: aging. From the Latin present participle senescere meaning “to grow old.” The Indo-European root it’s traced back to is “sen-” which also gives us words like senior, senate, sir, sire, and surly.
And finally, with flourishes, bells, whistles, and possibly dancing girls: zugzwang:
“You don’t notice it at first. But after you make it, every move Black has leads directly to a mate. He can’t move without finishing himself. He has no good moves.”
“No good moves,” Bina says.
“They call that Zugzwang,” Landsman says. “‘Forced to move.’ It means Black would be better off if he could just pass.”
I think, had I been outside my body when I read this word, I would’ve seen a giant neon yellow interrobang appear over my head, indicating that I thought, all at once, “Whatthehell?AWESOME!” He defines it for you right away, so you know exactly what it is, but how are you not going to pursue this word? I have no idea, either.
It’s German. Should I say of course? Of course! Only German ever invents these magnificently perfect niche words. It’s a blended, almost enjambed, word. zug meaning “to move” and zwang for “constraint.” Put it together and you have a compulsion to move, but to not achieve anything while you do it. You have to make a move and any move you make lessens your position. The zugzwang wikipedia entry has a lot of great information on different version of it, and the oppositional game theory behind it. Extreme zugzwang is called trebuchet:
It is also called a full-point mutual zugzwang because a full point (win versus loss) is at stake.
I’ve recommend Chabon’s novels before, and I’ll recommend them again. They’re just fantastic. Meanwhile, off to talk myself out of using “zugzwang” in conversation today by any means necessary.
