Nazi Literature and Yiddish Policemen

Provoked by a proof copy of "Nazi Literature in the Americas", Roberto Bolano's novel, floating around the office, we were discussing yesterday the usefulness of striking titles for books. Bolano certainly had the gift. His earlier novels included "The Savage Detectives", "By Night in Chile", and "Last Evenings on Earth".

Then Jon Fasman, the novelist among us, surprised me by saying that the title of his first novel, "The Geographer's Library", was chosen by his publisher, and that very probably the title of his second novel would be the publisher's choice too. I was surprised, first because I would have thought that naming the thing was at least half the fun; and second, because a novel is surely such a personal production, or reproduction. A bit like letting somebody else name your children. But there again, if you were producing your children for sale, perhaps you would do just that.

* * *

Today Evgeny Morozovâ€”our writer on robotics, weather-art and interactive clothingâ€”who has half my age and twice my IQ, e-mails me from Salzburg, to say that he is taking part in a high-powered international seminar, drafting scenarios for the world in 2030. My first thought is that our future is in safe hands. My second thought is that I don't actually care what happens in 2030. if I am not dead by then I will be well into overtime, and pathetically grateful for any scenario at all, even if it resembles one of the less frivolous passages from Cormac McCarthy's "The Road".

* * *

Since you ask, my books of the year are:

1 "Gentlemen of the Road", by Michael Chabon

2 "The Yiddish Policemen's Union", by Michael Chabon

Close readers may detect a common thread here. We are used to genre novelists' trying to write big books, but Chabon is the opposite: a big novelist having fun squeezing into genres, and overfilling them riotously, like 40 students in a Mini.