Lots of Michael Chabon News

August 25, 2006 | 7 books mentioned 2 2 min read

Michael Chabon has posted some news on his infrequently updated and often cryptic blog. Here’s the latest:

His forthcoming novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is “completed and headed for copy-editing.” The book will come out in May of 2007 – really looking forward to this one, by the way. You’ll recall that late last year the book was postponed until “winter 2007.”

Chabon talks about a project with the working title “Jews with swords,” which is “a projected 16-part serialized novel,” or perhaps a graphic novel, since he indicates that it will run in the NY Times Magazine Funny Pages section in January following the Michael Connelly/Seth collaboration (That sounds cool, too). No word on who will provide the art.

Update: Obviously I haven’t looked at the NY Times Mag lately. It turns out that these comics and serialized novels are separate things that have been running in the magazine. So “Jews with swords” will most likely just be a straight up serialized novel… See the comments of this post for more details.

He also provides some movie updates. On the film version of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, he writes: “About to enter the magical estate known as ‘principal photography,’ in the great city of Pittsburgh.” We already knew that thanks to Pinky’s update from the scene. Of the film version of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, he gives us this update: “Status: Complying With Polite Request To Stop Posting About It On This Website, Already.” I guess he got in trouble for his post about it in June.

There is also reference to a project called “Snow and the Seven.” In July, The Guardian wrote about the project saying, “Snow White is about to be transformed into a martial arts epic with Shaolin monks replacing the seven dwarves of the original Grimm Brothers fairytale.” Chabon wrote the script apparently, but it sounds like it’s not going very well. “‘They love you, but they want to go in another direction.’ ‘What kind of dir–‘ ‘More of a fun direction.’ ‘Oh.'” IMdB still lists him as one of the writers, along with two other scribes, but not for long it seems.

Finally, Chabon adds some books to his “Reading Ten Books At Once” list:

created The Millions and is its publisher. He and his family live in New Jersey.