Tuesday, May 27, 2008

My Favourite Paragrah of the Moment.

I would have just said, "the man was fat" but I guess that's why I'm not a novelist.

Rabbi Heskel Shpilman is a deformed mountain, a giant ruined dessert, a cartoon house with the windows shut and the sink left running. A little kid lumped together, a mob of kids, blind orphans who never laid eyes on a man. They clumped the dough of his arms and legs to the dough of his body, then jammed his head down on top. A millionaire could cover a Rolls-Royce with the fine black silk-and-velvet expanse of the rebbe's frock coat and trousers. It would require the brain strength of the eighteen greatest sages in history to reason through the arguments against and in favor of classifying the rebbe's massive bottom as either a creature of the deep, a man-made structure, or an unavoidable act of God. If he stands up, or if he sits down, it doesn't make any difference in what you see.

From Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. A book I picked up at the library randomly based solely on the cover. I hadn't even heard of Michael Chabon at the time. I was then further convinced by all the praise and the crazy sounding plot.

I've been very impressed so far.

No comments: