Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
This is one of my all-time favorite books--I mean, seriously, it has like every kind of theme and cultural reference that I love, Jews and folklore and comic books and just everything!--so I was pretty happy when one of my many book groups chose this as its first selection. I know most of the other people in the group haven't read it yet, so I'm very intrigued to see what they think.
I just finished The Yiddish Policemen's Union and really enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteI had to wonder if all the yiddish-isms in it were actually real, because every single word seemed to have a -sch attached to it. Ah, if only my grandmothers were still alive, they could have taught me a few good curses :-)
I don't remember any noticeably fake Yiddish-isms, but of course there were plenty I didn't know--most of my Yiddish is the vocabulary directed at little kids! If you have a specific phrase in mind I'll ask my Bubbe.
ReplyDeleteThey were mainly names, so I'm sure he made those up, or used yiddish-y variants on words he already knew.
ReplyDeleteYou know it's funny - I never called either of my grandmothers bubbe. And a book I just read "The Family Diamond" calls the grandmother "Bubba." Bubba?!!
(a jewish grandmother!)