The Instructions

by Adam Levin

Beginning with a chance encounter with the beautiful Eliza June Watermark and ending, four days and 900 pages later, with the Events of November 17, this is the story of Gurion Maccabee, age ten: a lover, a fighter, a scholar, and a truly spectacular talker. Expelled from three Jewish day-schools for acts of violence and messianic tendencies, Gurion ends up in the Cage, a special lockdown program for the most hopeless cases of Aptakisic Junior High. Separated from his scholarly followers, Gurion becomes a leader of a very different sort, with righteous aims building to a revolution of troubling intensity.

The Instructions is an absolutely singular work of fiction by an important new talent. Combining the crackling voice of Philip Roth with the encyclopedic mind of David Foster Wallace, Adam Levin has shaped a world driven equally by moral fervor and slapstick comedy—a novel that is muscular and exuberant, troubling and empathetic, monumental, breakneck, romantic, and unforgettable.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literary Fiction, Jewish, Contemporary, Literature, American

1030 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

Adam Levin’s debut novel, The Instructions, was published in late 2010. His stories have appeared in Tin House, McSweeney’s, and Esquire. Winner of the 2003 Tin House/Summer Literary Seminars Fiction Contest and the 2004 Joyce Carol Oates Fiction Prize, Levin holds an MA in Clinical Social Work from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. His collection of short stories, Hot Pink, was published by McSweeney’s in 2011. He lives in Chicago, where he teaches writing at Columbia College and The School of the Art Institute.

Authorial Influences and Inspirations: Adam Novy, George Saunders, Leslie Lockett, Stanley Elkin, Christian TeBordo, Rebecca Curtis, Jerzy Kosinski, David Foster Wallace, Salvador Plascencia, Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, JD Salinger, and Katherine Dunn

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

fortunately, all the literary lynch mobs are occupied settling that mark twain business, so i can slip in here and give this book four stars instead of five with minimal outcry. this book is excellent. at times, it is perfect. this is the highest four a four can be before becoming a five - put down that torch, straggler!

and after finishing it, i feel somewhat stunned, drained, like wandering blinkingly outside after a movie marathon. i need a moment. but what i can say now, with certainty, is that it is a remarkable book, and a pleasure to read, despite its daunting length. it reads much more quickly than it would seem, and i will probably read it again.

having said that, my quibbles are minor and have to do mostly with consistency and follow-through.i'm sure it is really really hard to write a book of this length, and when you have spent nine years on it, it is hard to part with any of the elements of it, even when you have someone as astute and gentle as oriana on your side to guide you.so i am totally sympathetic to and in awe of this book's existing at all.

and i know my gentile status makes me miss out on certain resonances - reverberations of religious significance that even a faux-jew like greg would feel stirrings in his soul over, because this is the jewiest of all books ever.i have picked up some stuff in my way through life, but i am no israelite; gurion would have looked right past me, leaving me to defend myself with my saxophone.

and that's all i am really willing to say. i approve of the caution most reviewers have shown regarding this book - no one wants to commit to a book of this size if they know what happens. this is why i will probably never read anna karenina, because everyone (except ariel) knows what happens there (except she knows now because i totally ruined her life), and i want everyone to read this book.

but if you must know, it is a potential-messiah story told in the first person that attempts to answer the question - gurion maccabee: ten-year-old messiah, or just an articulate thug?

and because greg shared his and mine is different:



come to my blog!

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know this much is true.

Or I think this. Suspect this. Realize this.

I know that this is the childhood of Infinite Jest before it was exposed to its titular component. I know that nothing is sacred, least of all childhood, which suffers on its sanctified pedestal. I know ideology and theology and coprology and the razors they stretch tight around the skin. I know how the blades slip into the throat in childhood, and how the ability to spit them at another screams itself out in adulthood. I know that ability, to harness your damage to your own purposes, to be the true determination of being an adult.

I know that if you act like a child, you will be treated as a child. I know that if you are a child, and act like an adult, you will be disregarded as a child. I know that if you are a child, you will be hit as an adult. I know that if you are a child, you will be molested as an adult. I know that if you are a child, you will be beaten as an adult. I know that if you are a child, you will be raped as an adult. I know that if you are a child, you will be blamed for the actions of the father as an adult, you will be blamed for the beliefs of the mother as an adult, and you will be condemned for your skin and your creed and your being. As an adult.

I know that if you are a child, and commit atrocities like an adult, you will be feared beyond belief.

I know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I know that the road to hell is the path of least resistance. I know that the road to life is the path of most conviction, the path of least analysis, the path of tropes and logos and prejudices shortchanged into social slogans that lubricate your lifestyle and damage everything in its wake.

I know that WE DAMAGE WE is tennis.

I know that life is beautiful and love is beautiful. I know that a sound mind in a sound body is beautiful. I know that knowledge is beautiful, and that conviction is beautiful, and that reasoning is beautiful. I know that appreciation of and willingness towards these qualities is beautiful.

I know that misguided praise of all this is as equally damaging as condemnation.

I know that a child is not empty. I know that an adult is not full. I know that no one can truly say where one ends and the other begins, and anyone who uses age as reasoning confuses the length of life experience with humanity. Anyone who uses cooperation with an ideological system, which grinds and grinds and grinds, as reasoning confuses mirroring the crowd with humanity. Anyone who uses might as reasoning does not know humanity. In other words, fuck them. They know nothing.

I know that we try, and we try, and we try. I know that we bleed, I know that we fall, I know that we suffer. I know that we are objectified. I know that we objectify. I know that we make others suffer, we make others fall, we make others bleed. I know that we try, and we try, and we try.

I do not know the ending. No one does. Perhaps it will all be for something. Perhaps not. Does it matter, truly? Does closure really matter that much to you?

Who am I kidding. Of course it does. We would not be having this conversation otherwise.

[BlackOxford · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Talmud in a Weird World.

According to some Kabbalists, there is at least one Messiah in every generation. He of course may refuse to recognise his calling or, in any case, is likely be rejected when he announces himself to the world. Nonetheless the Messiah is essential for the attainment of justice: "..it is good to do justice because God will kill you and your family whether you do justice or not."

So what if, just what if, a young Chicagoland boy feels himself called, responds to that call with caution but also with persistence, and creates a following of other young Jewish kids? He might know the odds are against him but so what:

"If ever you are asked if Adonai can create a boulder too heavy for Him to lift, you will answer the fool who asked you: 'Fool, we are two of seven billion such boulders, you and I.' And when the fool insists that Adonai cannot then properly be called almighty, you will not argue, for the fool will be correct. Instead you will answer: 'He is Adonai nevertheless. We re superior to the Angels not because we control ourselves, but because Adonai does not control us.'"

Then what if that young boy choses to resist the admonitions and restrictions of unsympathetic adults as well as the low level threats of school yard anti-Semites? What might happen? Well, a surprisingly thrilling saga of human rebellion and retribution. And an even more surprising confrontation with the Almighty himself: "Our thoughts to You are what You are to us. Noisy but hidden...Even if you can read our faces you can do so only in the way we read Your scripture." In other words "You may interpret us as human beings but don't claim, for heaven's sake that you can understand much less judge us."

It's hard not to be on the side of the putative Messiah, against Adonai as well as the bigots and bureaucrats, despite the disruption and even death that he initiates. At over 1000 pages, Levin has to be good to keep the reader. And that he does. Amazing for a first novel.

[Chris Via]

2024
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Discussion with Adam Levin on Leaf by Leaf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HERMY...

2022
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Video on Adam Levin's work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvAgG...

[Oriana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Third read, Nov ’17: My god, I love this book so much it makes me feel kind of crazy.

***

Nov ’10: Karen & I went to see Adam Levin read last night and he was great, not to mention ridiculously cool & nice. He is also the second author I've met who hugged me when he found out I was his copyeditor (Deb Olin Unferth, who is also fantastic, was the first). As if I could have liked him more! Shit you guys, read this fucking book already and make the man rich & famous.

also: for anyone still on the fence about trying this -- especially those with whom I've lost reliability because I so overly effusively love everything -- check out this essay compiled from the Rumpus Book Club discussions. It's very detailed and measured and illuminating, although a bit spoilery.

***

Oct: Ooh, I just found out that this book is on the shelves now, so I feel like it's okay to expand my review a smidge.

First I will say again: holy moly, this is fucking stupendous. Totally unlike anything I've ever read before. it's the story of Gurion Maccabee, a ten-year-old Hebrew scholar and brilliant, brilliant boy, whom many of his friends (and also some grownups) believe is the messiah. It's absolutely steeped in Jewish philosophy, which believe me, I would have considered a huge turnoff if someone'd told me that that was what I was getting into, but it is just fascinating the way it's done here. (n.b.: I'm not anti-Semitic or anything; I'm a Jew by birth myself, but I just don't tend to gravitate toward religiously expounding books.)

Anyway, Gurion's dad is a fallen Chasid and his mom is an Ethiopian Jew who was a sniper or secret agent or something in Israel, and dad has taught Gurion to be an intense scholar and mom has taught him to be a serious fighter. The parents are thrilling characters, sexy and brilliant and terrifically fun. But most of the story actually takes place at Gurion's school, a last-resort school for fuck-up kids, because he's been kicked out of three other schools in a row for inciting and participating in serious violence. The whole book is written sort of as his scripture, as he rallies and trains his troops, then foments and carries out the Gurionic War against those who would keep down the Israelites with draconian rules and unjust punishments. The kids in the school, and especially Gurion's inner circle, are just amazingly complexly realized characters, so full and fascinating and devastating and fucking real. His girlfriend Eliza June and his best friends Benji (a gentile and a thug and in his own way even more brilliant than Gurion) and Eli (a beautiful and terribly sad transfer student and scholar who is it turns out so strong)... oh god, they are just so goddamn good.

I may have mentioned that the book is over a thousand pages, so obvs I've told you basically nothing at all so far. But each character is a wonder. The dialogue is phenomenal. The theology, rather than being a pedantic distraction, is thrilling. The scope is massive. I don't even know.

Obvs it's impossible to describe truly unique works of literature, and obvs I've done a bad job. But I am sad to say that I also think the promo copy does the book a bit of a disservice by name-dropping DFW and Philip Roth. I mean, it's like they went, "Uh, the book is really long and weird...compare to DFW! And it's super-Jewy...compare to Philip Roth!" Not to say that there isn't maybe a little something to the comparisons—it is long and weird and super-Jewy—but that just seems lazy to me. Adam Levin is his very own brand of insanely awesome, is all I mean.

Anyway, fuck. I'm getting shivers just thinking about this book. I can't wait to read it again.

***

June: Holy shit, you guys, this one is going to blow your fucking minds. Brilliant, sprawling, edifying, invigorating, devastating, dreamlike, utterly unique, just totally spellbindingly spectacular.... It's over a thousand pages and still too short. I don't even know what to say.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Updated 11/5. I still have no review. But Adam Levin signed my copy last night and I love what he wrote, so I'm sharing.



I recommend reading this book. I haven't had an almost* back to back awesomeness reading experience like JR and this since 1999 when I read Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest in the same month.

*I'm saying almost because I'm aware that I read four books, and nine days passed between finishing JR and starting this book.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m a little overwhelmed. After finishing this, I just can’t see it as clearly as while I was in the middle of reading it. Because after finishing it, all I can focus on is the ending, but the book is so much more than that. Yes it is a unified work and it is saying big things, but I love the small things he does as much as the big things. The book is as much about these small things = slapslap, chinning, Harpo Progression, hyperscoot, I’m-Ticking, ‘Tch’ = there is an obsession with, or an understanding of, gestural communication but also signficance of gestural motions outside of the goal of communication alone. There’s also a particular vocabulary = trickle, snat, emotionalize, Slokum Dies Friday, darkers, the robots, Desormiate, chomsky, pennygun, Arrangement, damage, Ulpan = a grandiose kind of language-making in which everything is internalized, nicknamed, externalized, passed-on, becomes myth-like. People’s names too = Main Man, Janitor, Asparagus, Brooklyn, Call-Me-Sandy. The book creates an internal logic, an environment where everything in it makes its own particular sense, and is driven by a most unique voice, a voice that gets in your head and even made me dream things in that same voice, a voice of one who is constantly thinking and re-thinking, obsessed with logic in the big things (including scriptural and moral ideas, example = lying to God, and how God is complicit in your lying, etc.) as well as the smallest of small, seemingly irrelevant things (= why simple slapslap was inferior to normal slapslap... ) logic which becomes illogical because it has so much faith in its own logic, that logic is possible, that the world can be logic-ed out. Those are the little things. And I loved those little things, the particular world of the book that was so real (Levin GETS it = this is just like childhood, in a certain way) and often funny, alive, entertaining, engaging, and intellectual. The humor is very odd, sometimes I don’t even know why it is funny as in this passage that totally cracked me up:

Maybe take away the Shovers’ semi-private-club status? But then they’d meet at recess, wholly private, with impunity. Ban scarves in the classroom? What about cold kids? - p241

The book is as much about these little things as the big themes that will get over-focused on. The character’s, too, were so real, though they all spoke Gurion-speak: even the ones not like him at all have a particular him-ness (maybe because he’s narrating). At the same time, the characters are easily distinguishable, and have very strong distinct personalities of their own. Interesting paradox.

I liked eggs soft-boiled, but in the morning couldn’t prep them, not if I wanted to put them in my stomach. Those insect-like screams emitted by the shell when you pried its fragments from that film they clung to--the mastication of wet chicken sounded musical by comparison. p.773

What of the big things? What is the book saying? I have no idea. Something about terrorism? Something about God/belief? Was it about verbosity/iniquity? About verbose boys who are too smart for their own good? About the institutional aspect of education? Modern technology? The modern world’s tolerance for divergent thought, or true uniqueness? I don’t know but I know by the end I knew it was about something but maybe also about multiple things or maybe about something in a way that it wasn’t totally about it, otherwise it would be a shallow one-dimensional work anyway. By the end, I wasn’t even sure what was happening sometimes. The last hundred pages totally devastated me, and I shall put a SPOILER warning here (though if you pay attention to the very beginning, none of this will really be a surprise, but who will remember the beginning after 1000+ pages? The shocking-ness of the ending is that everything was built up so carefully and logically that it doesn’t seem like violence (though talked about and even performed in small doses, but TRUE violence, TRUE irrevocable violence of the death-sort seemed beyond the scope of possible outcomes, however much foreshadowed, until it comes) seemed unimaginable at least to me, as I was able to imagine the rest of the story so fully: not unimaginable as in unbelievable, but believable, totally believable, yet completely shocking and really really fucken sad. The Gurionic War passage, the 100+ pages or so of it near the end anyway, was such a dizzying array of action, and of action that made me want to turn away from it, because I had so invested in these characters and I could see now the inevitable damage and I did not want to see it happen I did not want to know that it was going to happen even though I knew and I knew that I knew. What use was it?

Then, also, the book is so detail oriented that I feel like I can dissect every bit of it for meaning, almost, yes, like scripture. What is the meaning of Gurion’s own words never having “quote” marks around it... except near the end when he speaks to the soldiers = “There is damage,” I said to the thousand soldiers. What does that mean, or was that just a slip up where he forgot to not quote? I refuse to believe that this would escape him. What does it mean that the whole book is written by future-Gurion, who remembers these events... So the book leaves you hanging at the end, not knowing what version of Gurion comes out of this experience, we only know past-Gurion and past-Gurion as described (or mis-represented?) in the head of future-Gurion, but we know also (or more accurately, we can imply also) that future-Gurion is relatively unchanged, still belief-heavy in that he finished this huge book, in that he believed in it that much and did not allow the tragedy of the events to cause in him doubt, depression, etc. (like it would have if I were Gurion but then again I would not be Gurion nor would I ever want to be), or if he did allow that (he did mention something about suicide in the very ambiguous Coda), that he was somehow able to overcome it. But how was he able to overcome it, what were his thoughts on all these events? What was the meaning of the miracle? Does it vindicate anything? What about in “Commentary on Commentaries” chapter where he hints at things about Main Man being somehow more involved than he ended up being at the end:

So even though, on reflection, Main Man’s weird utterances seem to have been obliquely prophetic--and maybe they were--there was no good reason to believe they were prophetic at the time.

And what to say now? How to end this review? It would be unfair to not mention the book’s flaws. The ‘damage’ at the end, though obligatory, became dull to read after a while. I can only take so much straight action and so much of this book was an alternation between action and thought whereas the last 200 pages or so were almost entirely action in a way that seemed... a bit meaningless. What does it matter what happened, as much as it matters that it happened and that we know something happened, and are able to reflect on the end result of what happened. The specifics seem superfluous = who was standing where, doing what to whom etc. This is a gripe on my part, even though I know it is probably necessary to have that action described in detail, to keep consistency with the character of Gurion feeling overly important about these events. Also, little things with characters, like how Eliyahu seemed to suddenly change personalities, becoming more susceptible to violence, even inviting it, perhaps I missed what brought this on. Also, the ending which affected me deeply, but I’m not sure what to think about it at all, and feel a vague sense of disappointment at the same time. Also, the voice which is captivating in its endless logical digressions became slightly tiresome at around page 635. There are probably more, but really it does not matter. The book has flaws but the book is a triumph also. It is a dizzying experience and I don’t know what to think about it, and that makes me want to think about it all the more.

[Krok Zero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Epigraph as authorial hand-tipping:

It is a curious enigma that so great a mind would question the most obvious realities and object even to things scientifically demonstrated... while believing absolutely in his own fantastic explanations of the same phenomena.

Were it not for this epigraph, which comes from Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, the reader might, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, believe that Adam Levin tacitly approves of the violent actions of his ten-year-old scholar/terrorist/possible-messiah Gurion. It's not a spoiler to say that there are violent actions or that he is a terrorist, because this information is pretty much revealed before the book even starts, in a message from the "publisher" as part of the book's framing device. We read the first 800+ pages knowing that some shit is gonna go down, we read the last 200 pages of nonstop shit-going-down, and then the book is over, and we are left to ponder the moral implications on our own, because Levin and Gurion have cut and run, so to speak; instead of allowing the reader to continue living in this world after the shit has gone down, to observe the shit's effects on the book's many characters and to carry their moral questioning to the point it has seemingly been building toward, Levin and Gurion porkypig the reader: That's all, folks.

You can't read a book this long without the book becoming part of you. It's doubtful I will ever think of the word "damage" or "arrangement" the same way again. Despite the exaggerated reality of a world in which a ten-year-old can write a thousand-page scripture and lead actual armies in violent revolt, the characters are pretty vivid and knowable (with at least one problematic exception) and it's not hard to form attachments. So the attachment I formed to Levin's world partly accounts for my disappointment with the ending. I really hate to sound like one of those rubes who complained about The Sopranos ending being too ambiguous, or one of those dim fanboys who couldn't handle the ending of Lost failing to answer all their burning questions. I can handle ambiguity, really I can. But when Levin ends it where he does, he effectively cuts the book off from its themes, so that the book just isn't enough about what it's supposed to be about. Or at least, that is my near-immediate reaction upon finishing; I reserve the right to decide that I'm wrong.

From where I sit, the book is principally about two things: (1) the rabbit-hole of (over)analytical thinking about both oneself and the world in terms of morality, faith, and practicality -- what Douglas Wolk's Bookforum review describes as being "talmudically obsessed with worrying out every possible interpretation of everything" -- and (2) violence, violence, violence -- the mechanics, the ethics, the causes, the justifications, the consequences, and so on. For whatever reason (mainly an aesthetic one, I suspect), Levin avoids the word violence like the plague and replaces it with the word damage. Damage takes many forms, and nearly every scene in the book is somehow related to some form of damage. (One of my favorite digressions in the book is a brilliant monologue by one of the school security guards that's basically a long, impassioned moral defense of bullying and bullies.) When the book ends where it does, Levin forces us to reconsider these themes in light of the shit that has gone down, without actually further developing them himself. What does Gurion, with all his endless analytical hand-wringing over fucking everything, have to say about the events that came to define his life? We don't know, except in little hints. Maybe this is totally fine and I'm having a naive, unsophisticated reaction. Maybe I'm just pissed at the disappearance of Bam Slokum from the narrative, a fascinating character who was built up as the villain of the piece and given a handful of stunning monologues before Levin discarded him and left his purpose in the novel unresolved. The book is over a thousand pages long, but it seems unfinished.

I had other problems, too. The aforementioned obsession with interpretive analysis is a pleasure to read for a while, but after several hundred pages it becomes extremely tiresome. The love interest, June, is a vaguely defined character, and I never found her relationship with Gurion convincing. I've mentioned before that I have trouble following action sequences in prose fiction, and this book's big violent set piece just made my eyes glaze over -- though that's maybe more my fault than Levin's. (Also, from the department of petty, meaningless complaints: some of the Chicago geography is questionable, even though Levin lives here.)

But this review has been mostly griping, and you can see I've given it four stars, so...yeah, The Instructions is not optional. It's as ambitious as it is huge, written in as inventive and precisely calibrated a first-person voice as I've ever read, often very funny, full of individual scenes of holyshit perfection, weighty without getting weighed down, and almost maddeningly thought-provoking. My disappointments with it are purely a result of its successes, if that makes sense. I look forward to seeing what Levin can do on a less massive scale, and I seriously regret missing his appearance at my local library (also Joel's local library) back in October. Still, I know where he teaches, so I suppose I could always go downtown and stalk him. I just hope he doesn't try to damage me.

[Paul Bryant]

Abandoned for now and maybe forever because of sentences like this :

EXAMPLE THE FIRST

Context - our 10 year old hero is engaged in stealing a Coke from the Coke machine in the teachers' common room in school in order to impress a girl called June. He has already tried and failed to smash the clock in the gym hall as a tribute to his new love :


It occurred to me that maybe the Coke I was getting for June, if a strong poem were taped to it, would come closer to approximating a smash-faced gym-clock than would a Coke without a strong poem taped to it. Granted, I couldn't make a strong poem, but there was no doubt in my mind that a weak poem was a closer approximation to a strong poem than was no poem, and therefore a Coke with a weak poem taped to it was a closer approximation of a smash-faced gym clock than a poemless Coke, so I wrote a weak poem in my head, in the doorway. P76

EXAMPLE THE SECOND

Once the sound-code failed, we tried a time-code, i.e. we agreed that at certain times we's revolve to face each other. Benji and I, for example, agreed that we would revolve at every eleventh, seventeenth, thirtyfirst, and fifty-third minute of the hour, whereas Vincie and i would revolve at th second, twenty-seventh, and forty-fifth minute, and Benji and Vincie at the fifth, thirty-ninth, and fifty-eighth minute. p201

So I guess this is supposed to be hilarious stuff. Or just not hilarious but stuff you would anyway want to read.

So, you takes your Murphy and Molloy by Samuel Becket and your Skippy Dies by Paul Murray which is a stand-in for any recent school story because I haven't read any others recently, and you throw them in a Hasidic blender and out comes this kind of prose.

And finally...

He's NOT the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!

[TheBookWarren · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Previous review below) A Reread review — A Favourite Book Check & ultimately, an Indulgence 😎

5 ⭐️ — My favourite Author is now entrenched. This reread took me 8 months, (inc 30% on audiobooks.com) and it was not only worth it, it was transcendent & something I’m grateful for in words that are well beyond my limited vocabulary!

Adam Levin's magnum opus, "The Instructions," emerges as a sprawling literary masterpiece, a novel that defies categorization and boldly ventures into the uncharted territories of the modern literary landscape. In the grand tradition of epic storytelling, Levin's work stands as a towering achievement that demands recognition and celebration.

At its core, "The Instructions" is a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age tale that follows Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee, a young and brilliant Jewish boy, as he navigates the tumultuous waters of adolescence. However, to label this novel as merely a bildungsroman would be akin to describing a symphony as a mere collection of notes. Levin's narrative ambition soars far beyond the conventions of the genre, transcending boundaries and expectations with audacious panache.

From the very outset, it becomes apparent that Levin is a virtuoso of language. His prose dances and dazzles, a linguistic kaleidoscope that paints a vivid portrait of the multifaceted world within "The Instructions." It is a testament to Levin's narrative prowess that he can sustain this linguistic virtuosity for over a thousand pages, never once allowing it to devolve into mere linguistic gymnastics. Instead, the language serves as a powerful conduit for character development, thematic exploration, and emotional resonance.

The character of Gurion Maccabee is nothing short of iconic. In the grand tradition of literary protagonists, he is at once endearing and infuriating, a brilliant and charismatic enigma. His relentless quest for moral rectitude and justice is both inspiring and maddening, and readers will find themselves alternately rooting for him and questioning his motives. Gurion's complexity and the depth of his character are a testament to Levin's masterful character development.

One of the most remarkable aspects of "The Instructions" is its unflinching examination of faith and identity. Levin delves into the complexities of Jewish identity with a fearless and uncompromising gaze, exploring the intersection of religion, culture, and politics. Through Gurion's journey, readers are invited to grapple with profound questions about belief, belonging, and the search for meaning in a rapidly changing world.

The narrative structure of "The Instructions" is a tour de force of storytelling innovation. Levin employs a metafictional approach that blurs the lines between reality and fiction, author and character. The novel's unconventional formatting, including footnotes, diagrams, and annotations, serves to enhance the immersive experience. It's as if the novel itself is a living, breathing entity, inviting readers to actively engage with its labyrinthine layers.

Levin's exploration of the concept of messianism adds an intriguing layer of intellectual depth to the narrative. The novel's themes of messianic fervor, cults of personality, and the power of belief are both timely and timeless. In an age marked by ideological extremism and charismatic leaders, "The Instructions" serves as a cautionary tale and a thought-provoking meditation on the seductive allure of messianic figures.

The Authors debut novel is a literary triumph of near unparalleled magnitude. It is a sprawling, audacious, and intellectually exhilarating work that defies easy classification. Levin's linguistic virtuosity, complex characters, and fearless exploration of faith and identity combine to create a narrative that is as profound as it is entertaining. This is a novel that demands to be savored, dissected, and celebrated. It is a testament to the enduring power of literature to challenge, inspire, and provoke. "The Instructions" is a modern masterpiece that will leave an indelible mark on the literary landscape for generations to come.




———————————————————————————————

5.0 ⭐️ — Adam Levin (pronounced Le-VIN) didn’t become familiar — to me — until approximately Late 2018. I’d just read an auto-fiction-short-story he’d had published in a little mag called the New Yorker (STILL by far the absolute best magazine to of been pro ported to exist in this mad works) — From that moment on, it’s more than fair-game to state, I was hooked-in-perpetuity! Even re-trading this now (Oct 4, 2021) the volume of newly discovered trials and sprouts, green-shoots that spring off into the ether or a black hole or six.. The beauty and bounds of the pros where is nye on perfection.

Is he the messiah? Or just a very naughty-kid-deity? Either way, This novel — it just eh said — has both an enchantingly fun cover as well as one of the most verbose opening pages in all of literary fiction. This stark genius is the exact microcosm of what it is to be reading Adam Levin. It’s a crazy, rollicking good time that will also surprise you in all the right ways in its sensitivity, warmth, stupidity & all round craziness.

Make no mistake, The Instructions — a thumping-sized novel about a ten-year-old Jewish-boy, whom believes he is the messiah to all boy-kind — is a modern-classic that is as must-read as anything by DFW, Courtenay, Saunders, Franzen or Mccarthey, Adam Levin’s The Instructions is an unrelenting, unshakeable, unbelievable, indefinable, Insane, Immeasurable force of literary excellence. It really is quixotically, that fucking good!

In a number of interviews, the author has revealed he writes “line by line” — a revelation that enables some semblance of understanding as to how any writing can be this ballistically good — and it is akin to the fact that in my very humble opinion, this is also the most savvy-method to read his work. In fact, reading these monstrous-sized novels any other way — once this is discovered — does kind of feel a little impotent, at times.

The story of Ten-year-old, Gurion Maccabee is one that cannot be poked at, there is no synopsis in which can be brokered to adequately enlighten a potential reader to its trope, arc or narrative. In fact, upon further reflection — the only viable manner of the aforementioned — I would like to point out that the books Tagline from the front of the most recent paperback — says it all, “This is the story of Gurion Maccabee, A lover, A scholar, A fighter”... and it is a story that is both epic in scope and trope but, moreover in the sense that every paragraph has its own unique personality, all of its own. That is the true genius in this novel. The sum of its parts is far greater than even the wonderfully woven narrative seen throughout. The take off Gurion, through his life and childhood as a smart, tough & conflicted ladies man who fights a thousand battles in his head for fun at lunchtime, and or group therapy sessions he happens to share with his favourite friend, foe & female all at once.

Levin writes with such an overtly brash, overstated neurosis of which begets a nonchalantly perceived reckless abandon, that is indeed a mirage! A mirage of epic proportions, for inside his writing, Adam is a cyclone of literary-psychosis that’s been lit on fire with 3 key accelerants, all the while knocking down Kentucky blended-whisky & inhaling a carton of filter-less cigarettes.. each and every day! The best I can describe AL’s beautifully-neurotic prose, is say imagining he were a milkshake that’s got Dave Eggers ice-cream, with a majorly afflicted sense of sanity that’s been inexorably mixed with & bonded to David FW milk, finally topped with a cherry that’s Jesse Ball & shavings of Bukowski chocolate & served with a James Joyce Straw.

[nostalgebraist · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been wanting to review this for a while, but I feel like anything I would write would just be the verbal equivalent of those five stars up there, plus a exhortation to keep reading even if the narrator's voice and the pimply middle school stuff put you off.

I've realized, though, that what I really want to do is write a retrospective analysis of the book. This will require spoilers. I know that there's this notion out there that if a book is sufficiently good or literary or whatever, spoilers don't matter, but that's BS. A good author will arrange every aspect of the reader's experience with care, and that includes the way in which plot details come to light. So, here's a warning: the spoiler cut below is for real -- if you haven't read the book and plan to, don't click it.


The Side of Damage

For most of the time I spent reading The Instructions, I had no idea what to make of Gurion Maccabee's beliefs. They seemed vague and under-specified, a nebulous mixture of opportunistically employed Torah references, cliquish adolescent edginess ("The Side of Damage") and generic anti-authoritarianism ("robots," "the Arrangement"). Was the apparent inanity of Gurion's beliefs a flaw in the book? Did Levin think this stuff was profound? Probably not. So why not fill in the holes in Gurion's worldview? Was Levin just indulging in adolescent edginess himself -- creating an ambiguous ideology to win the hearts of ambiguity-loving lit-nerds, to inspire one of the standard "the emperor has no clothes" / "you either get it or you don't" wars that crop up around any weird/ambiguous/"pretentious" work of art?

It wasn't until I finished the book that I realized what was really going on. In retrospect, it seemed utterly obvious. (I apologize if most of the stuff in this essay seems utterly obvious -- I can be pretty slow sometimes.) What's going on is this: The Instructions is an exploration of the messianic personality. If you look at successful cult leaders (including cult leaders like Jesus whose cults went on to become bona fide religions) in the real world, they always seem to have a charisma, an inspirational energy, that in some sense comes before whatever creed they actually stand for. Their force of character is such that it appears (to the faithful) to justify in itself whatever they happen to say. The actual sayings always tend to be kind of vague. I mean, try to read the New Testament as a story about a guy who came up with a coherent and explicable religious worldview and went around advocating for it. You can't do it! Because it's clearly a story about a guy who had the force of personality to acquire a bunch of devoted followers, and then went around making enigmatic remarks to them. The apostles weren't convinced by Jesus' worldview, whatever that was; they were convinced by Jesus' Jesus-ness, his blinding messianic force of character.

Depending on who you are, you will either take this vagueness as 1) an indication of the inarticulability of true mystical revelation or 2) a sign that messiah figures are cynical bastards who deliberately keep their views ambiguous so that they can be twisted in whichever direction suits their desires at any given moment. These may not be mutually exclusive -- after all, there's something especially effective about liars who believe their own lies. In any case, option #2 sheds some light on Gurion's own brand of vagueness.

Take the phrase "The Side of Damage," for instance. What does this mean? "Damage" is one of the central terms (perhaps the central term) of the Gurionic vocabulary. As far as I can tell it simply means something like "violence," except more broad -- covering, for instance, both the destruction of inanimate objects and the causing of psychological (as opposed to physical) harm to human beings. In past participle form -- "damaged" -- it means something like "suffering the lasting effects of trauma." Many of the kids in the Cage, the lockdown program at Gurion's junior high school, are "damaged." So what does it mean to be on the side of damage? Well, it could mean being on the side of causing damage -- on the side of causing harm. It could also mean being on the side of the damaged. Gurion clearly seems to mean both of these things, and encourages the conflation of the two by his idiosyncratic use of the word "damage." This basic ambiguity, and Gurion's broader refusal to state exactly what he means by "the side of damage" or even what he means by the word "damage" in any given case, are very dangerous. They allow "the side of damage" to mean, simply, whatever Gurion Maccabee wants it to mean at the moment. If you're on the side of damage -- and if you're damaged, why wouldn't you be? -- then you're with Gurion, and Gurion tell you what "the side of damage" stands for. The leader's messianic will comes before any specific creed.

And of course the very undefined quality of the Side of Damage, combined with that edgy suggestion (just a suggestion -- so always deniable) of anti-authoritarian violence -- is catnip to adolescents just starting to form their own identities. "You either get it or you don't[, mom.]" Gurion knows his audience.

Adonai is Damaged

There is an obvious irony embedded in the ambiguous definition of "the side of damage." For damage (violence, harm, smashing and breaking things) is what creates damaged people. If you are on the side of causing damage, how can you be an advocate for the damaged, who presumably resent the damage done to them? The ambiguity is summed up in the Side's graffiti tag:

WE DAMAGE WE

In the story, this arises as a compromise between two suggestions, "WE DAMAGE" and "DAMAGE WE," both arising from an overly literal interpretation of the statement "we are on the side of damage." Of course, these two phrases are the two sides of the Side of Damage polarity -- we cause damage, and we are damaged. Fix the grammar and WE DAMAGE WE becomes WE DAMAGE OURSELVES.

One imagines that this would be a problem for Gurion's damaged followers, though thanks to Gurion's messianic charm and verbal sleights-of-hand, he manages to keep this objection from surfacing and causing him trouble. For Gurion, though, there is no contradiction. Because although Gurion conceives of himself as an advocate for the damaged, he himself is not damaged. This is one of the purposes of all those cute scenes with Gurion and his parents -- singing in the car with his dad and so forth. Gurion comes from a happy family. There is no central moment of trauma in his past. "Damage" has not harmed him. To him damage is a good thing because it produces damaged people, and Gurion loves -- one might say romanticizes or fetishizes -- damaged people. He loves his strange friends from the Cage and would love for there to be more people like them. He doesn't feel the pain of trauma, only a fondness for the traumatized and, as their advocate, a self-righteous fury.

The last few paragraphs of The Instructions are a beautifully dark cacophany of Gurionic terms and notions bouncing off against one another as the book's whole edifice seems to fall apart. "Adonai is damaged," Gurion writes in the last paragraph. A bleak, pathetic notion. This is the core of the Gurionic worldview (to the extent that one exists). It's a mixture of the Torah and the focus on childhood trauma of modern psychiatry. God is, like us (downtrodden people that we -- "Israelites" or "the damaged" -- imagine ourselves to be), a sufferer of trauma. That's why he smites and rages and sends floods and hardens hearts. When we suffer from His damage, it makes us who we are. And when we are violent -- as the ancient Israelite leaders were, as Gurion is -- we make more people like us, like God. We are God's chosen people because we're as fucked up as He is. The cycle of violence cannot be ended without losing our identity.

It is, in its bleakness, a pretty and clever notion. But it is not clear how much relevance it has for the lives of people who are actually damaged -- as opposed to Gurion, who merely romanticizes the damaged and attaches his romantic religious ideas to them. (If he had recognized the disconnect between his idea and reality, he might have done something more valuable with it, rather than going out and preaching to the damaged. He might, say, have written a nice little novel about it.)

I Am An Israeli, Chicago Born

We are informed even before the first page -- in the fictional "publisher's note" -- that within the fictional frame, The Instructions is no ordinary novel. In fact, as we eventually learn, it is one of the central holy texts of a bizarre new religious cult. This cult, which is widely considered a terrorist organization, has a number of curious beliefs about the book -- for instance, that it was translated into Hebrew and then back into English (by two different people) and came out word-for-word identical to the original English text. They also believe that Gurion's words have magical effects upon their readers or listeners. As Eliyahu puts it in the "Translator's Note" that opens the book's second part:

Anyone who reads or listens to Gurion ben-Judah without enmity becomes more like him. E.g., before I, at the age of twelve, met Gurion, I was no doubt booksmart, even exceptionally so, but I was not on a path toward finishing college at the age of nineteen. . . . If you are with us, you will certainly witness such changes in yourself as you proceed through the scripture. I would not be too surprised were I to learn that you have already.

In any other book, this would seem ridiculous. In The Instructions, it works -- first, because the book is so long and odd that any reader who has stuck with it to page 578 might actually be in a position to believe that the book is having profound effects upon them, and second, because it fits the characters and setting perfectly. This idea that reading the book will change you, will make you smarter . . . it feels hokey, dumb, trying-too-hard, like something that a pretentious teenager would say about their first attempt at a novel. Well, yes -- The Instructions is about a religious cult started by teenagers.

This side of The Instructions -- the religious fanatic side, the side of ridiculous but earnestly held beliefs, of people who write things like "come heavy next year in Jerusalem" -- is something Gurion wants to downplay. He takes for granted that his audience (readers in the fictional version of the year 2013) will think of him as the fanatical leader of a terrorist cult. He wants to portray himself as sensitive, likable, perhaps a bit more childlike than he really is. So the book, at least in the first of its two parts, is drowning in cuteness. Funny slang, teen crushes, tender parent-child moments, trivial schoolboy concerns. It is also drowning in literariness: Gurion tosses in lots of references to bildungsromans and Jewish literature -- The Catcher in the Rye, Philip Roth, etc. -- to try to give his book the pedigree of pleasant, non-dogmatic, sensitive psychological realism. Among Gurion's two favored groups, the sentimental psychologizing of "the damaged" takes precedence over the cold ethnic partisanship of "the Israelites." The fictional audience needs all this so it can see a monster as human; the real audience needs this so it can wonder how the hell it will get from cutesy junior high bildungsroman to the terrorist stuff warned of in the publisher's note. That's the wonderful metafictional trick: the book works for both the real and fictional audiences, and it's only at the end that the real audience has reached the position that the fictional audience had at the beginning.

The Instructions uses its length very well. One of the ways it does this is by investing details with importance by letting them stand out from the vast tapestry surrounding them. Emmanuel Liebman is one such detail. In the first part of the book he appears rarely, and when he does appear Gurion says little about him, as if expecting the reader already to know who he is. Of course the fictional audience does know, because he's one of the major figures of Gurion's cult, the Scholars Fund. But Gurion also wants to downplay his role because he is part of the fanatical side of the story, the side that cannot be reined in with literary references and precocious cuteness. Liebman's presence is an unnerving hole in the story -- it indicates, to the first-time reader, that something is being left out.

The second part of the book has the following epigraph:


Emmanuel Liebman: Diaspora Judaism is what?
Terry Gross: "Diaspora Judaism is masturbation."
Emmanuel Liebman: And who'd you say you were quoting?
Terry Gross: A.B. Yehoshua.
Emmanuel Liebman: Who's that?
Terry Gross: A novelist.
Emmanuel Liebman: He sounds Israeli.
Terry Gross: He is Israeli.
Emmanuel Liebman: An Israeli novelist?
--Fresh Air with Terry Gross, 11/17/12


This tells the reader that the fanatical side of the story, the side of Liebman and the Scholars Fund, the un-literary side that does not see Gurion as a novelist, is beginning to take precedence. As literary as Gurion fancies himself to be, he is playing with forces more real and brutish and consequential than those apparently at work in his sensitive bildungsroman.

In that last paragraph, Gurion writes: "I am an Israeli, Chicago born." Here the literary pretensions unravel. Gurion makes reference to a famous young protagonist, Augie March, created by a Jewish literary writer. But, once Gurion's ideological side injects itself, the quote becomes absurd. No one -- well, no one but Gurion -- would say "I am an Israeli, Chicago born." It's simply a ridiculous, aesthetically unharmonious statement. The clash and clang and clutter of unliterary ideology ruins the literary image Gurion would like to project. He might have wanted to exculpate himself in the public view by writing a masterpiece, a humane and subtle novel -- but The Instructions is in the end not a novel at all. Ideology keeps rushing in and crushing subtlety underfoot. "I am an Israeli, Chicago born" -- this is the sound of a cult trying to justify itself by appropriating literature. An Israeli novelist?

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Gurion Maccabee, Adam Levin has created one of the most likable and compelling voices in recent fiction. His obsessively analytical and verbose stream of consciousness creates a world rich in idiosyncratic detail, which despite being in many ways absurd, manages to feel entirely relatable. The writing is original and refreshing. It’s very accessible – a breeze to read despite its length, and fun as hell. Sure, it gets silly and unbelievable at times – maybe most of the time - but tell me, was Gravity’s Rainbow believable? How about Infinite Jest?

The lightness of the narration belies some pretty dark and heavy themes. The novel explores the relationships and ambiguous boundaries between what we call genius, charisma, greatness, fanaticism, terrorism and righteousness. These are tensions that have existed in leaders like Caesar, Christ, Napoleon, but also those like Hitler, Manson and Koresh. The line that defines how posterity will regard these charismatic leaders is not always a clear or a moral one. Usually, it is a case of rationalising competing moral positions, with a lot of political and historical realities thrown into the calculus. In The Instructions, Gurion’s charismatic pull is powerfully felt, and through the escalation of the “wars”, the reader is forced to examine their own allegiances, and perhaps participate in these same kinds of rationalisation processes. The moral issues that are implied here are fascinating, but to my disappointment the book too often takes the easy way out on these questions. Levin seems reluctant to directly confront the implications of these darker themes, opting instead for the fantastical and fun. While this affected my feelings towards the book after having finished it, it did not detract from the pleasure while reading it - I can't overstate how much fun this book is.

I can understand why this book would not resonate with everyone, but I found it just hit all the right notes. The Instructions was (unexpectedly) one of the standout books of the year for me.

[Ren Risi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me be succinct (a quality which totally escapes Adam Levin): this is not a great book. Those reviewers who are writing "I'm 2 chapters in and it's amazing!" should heed warning - it dazzles in the beginning and fades out like a muffled fart. I damn my own literary hubris for blindly believing that The Instructions would ultimately reveal itself as the messiah of contemporary fiction. Instead, I am embarrassed to admit that I have spent nearly two months pushing through this constipated, babbling ramble, always hoping that I was just on the edge of 'getting it'. There are mere moments of humor and wit that shine through like sullied gems, only to have a 1,000 pages of plotless turd heaped on top. The characters are only half-realized caricatures - all dialogue and no action. This is especially disappointing when it comes to Gurion, the main character, narrator and 'author' of The Instructions - so much of Gurion's inner dialogue devolves into nonsensical doublespeak and semantic debates, which ultimately makes him wholly unlikeable as a protagonist. I found the footnotes (one of my favorite things about DFW's Infinite Jest) to be a stylistic filler, much like the arbitrary maps and diagrams that peppered the pages. I hated that I found myself skimming over portions of the text, but the alternative - reading every floundering sentence on the page - was unbearable. Not enough can be said for the simple gravity of well-placed prose, but in The Instructions it is totally lacking.

I can't recommend this self-important treatise to anyone but my most masochistic enemies.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

(pictured above: Che Guevara, analogue of Gurion Maccabee, antihero of The Instructions)

Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee is an incredibly verbose and intellectually gifted ten-year old potential messiah. He aspires to write capital-S Scripture on par with the Torah he so dearly loves. This large book is his Scripture, the Book of Gurion, his Instructions.

This is a metafictional delight. In the fashion of Lolita, The Instructions begins with the disclaimer that in reading this book, the reader is taking no part in support of its fictional author, Gurion Maccabee, who has done some truly awful things and will receive no financial gain from the publishing and purchase of The Instructions. (This also serves to warn the reader not to get too chummy with Gurion.)

Gurion is an immediately likable character. He's got Holden Caulfield's frankness and critical eye, Hal Incandenza's* succinctness (or lack thereof), and the eloquence of, well... Torah. And he's not the only great character in his Scriptures. The cast resembles that of Infinite Jest's Enfield Tennis Academy. To name a few... Eliza June Watermark, the redheaded beauty and object of Gurion's affections. Call-Me-Sandy, the insecure and probably overwhelmed social worker. The Janitor, who is not actually a janitor but a student with early budding OCD. Ronico "pee so pungent" Asparagus. Benji Nakamook. Etc.

Flashback to November, 2006: Gurion has been expelled from three schools: The Solomon Schechter School of Chicago, Northside Hebrew Day School, and Martin Luther King Middle School. The reason(s)? In brief, the manufacture and distribution of weapons and messianic tendencies. And now he has been placed indefinitely in the CAGE program for troubled youth.

But is Gurion troubled in the sense that he needs to be locked up, safely away from the normal student population? After all, he only manufactured and distributed weapons (homemade "pennyguns") after an attack on his synagogue so that his fellow Israelites could protect themselves. And he doesn't really think he's the messiah, just that he could be.

And here is a good place to return to the photo above. Che Guevara, if you've ever read his book or seen its adapted movie The Motorcycle Diaries, comes across as a sympathetic and likable character. He was compassionate, smart, energetic, and he traveled around South America because he had an adventurous spirit, and he saw people in great need and wanted to help them. And I'm still very unclear about how it all happened, but he became a cold-blooded killer and now is a symbol of revolution for revolution's sake.

Likewise, Gurion falls into a similar pit. The perfect storm of ability and circumstance come together and a boy who could have become the messiah becomes something else entirely.

The Instructions is an incredible character study of a brilliant young mind gone awry.

Although I don't like for this to be a focus of my reviews, I'm obligated by its length to talk about its length. It is a long book - 1,030 pages - but it reads very quickly. This is only one of the many reasons it's compared to Infinite Jest, but it's much easier to read. If I were talking about music instead of literature, I'd say that The Instructions is more poppy than Infinite Jest, like listening closely to Radiohead's No Surprises compared to trying to hear and understand every bloop and bleep in Kid A.**

...Which is not to say that The Instructions is not deep, because it is. There's so much investigate, especially if you're not familiar with Torah and extrabiblical material. Gurion's last name, after all, is Maccabee, the titular family of The Book of Maccabees in which a revolution is staged against Jerusalem's Hellenistic colonialists. There are myriad references to contemporary literature as well, including Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, and Don Delillo.***

This is a highly recommended festival of words and is probably my favorite book I've read this year. And if you want to read the perfect triptych of young and troubled but absurdly gifted youngsters, read this, Infinite Jest, and Skippy Dies.

Comparisons Round-Up/Recommended If You Like...
-Infinite Jest
-Breaking Bad****
-broken fingers, teeth, shoulders, etc.
-the Bible
-Jewish history
-intense introspection and analysis paralysis
-Groucho Marx
-great literature



*This will be the first of several references to David Foster Wallace's wonderful Infinite Jest, a book which, after I read it earlier this year, has influenced my reading of any book written after the publish date of Infinite Jest. They are all influenced by it, mark my words. Also note my use footnotes, inspired by Infinite Jest.

**This is not a great analogy. Forgive me.

***Gurion is a voracious reader not only of religious texts but also great fiction.

****But only if you're the smart, critical type of viewer who recognizes that Walter White is not the good guy.

*****What? There's no referent for this note? Oops.

[MJ Nicholls]

This is my holy shit, this-book-is-the-second-coming, The Recognitions of our time, better than the other 1000-page bricks being written in cloying precocious childese, sort of like The Brief Life of Oscar Wao crossed with references to every postmodern luvvie of the 20th C, sort of like Palahniuk’s style in Pygmy or, dare it be said, A Clockwork Orange, heavier-than-a-box-of-satsumas, publishing event of the millennium, better than Joshua Cohen’s Witz even in the first thirty-two pages gushing gasping review of Adam Levin’s The Instructions: I’m not reading this shit for 1030 pages. Are you fucking kidding me? Laters.

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps it is winter, but I've found myself brooding on the roulette of contemporary literature: for every Zone or Wolf Hall, well, there's always Franzen's Freedom. A honest albeit flawed effort like The Imperfectionists can convey you only so far. I noted elsewhere that this is the season of Balzac for me personally. Thus qualified, I am so glad I picked up this book today at the library.

Having finished the novel ten minutes ago. There is a hazard in any ranking system; and yet, despite some puzzling distractions in the last 100 pages including a submersion into brutality, I have to regard the tome as nothing short of amazing. I like to lose myself in messianism. It appears so much simpler to possess such clarity.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

I'll keep this short. Immediately after finishing this brick I picked up Arno Schmidt's Calculations in which he sketches out a number of formal possibilities for prose. And I see quickly how Levin missed an opportunity to do something interesting with his material, formally. And one sees quickly the distance between the middle of the road and the elevated, rigorous pursuit of literary arts.

An unfortunate juxtaposition on my part ; it may be the exact politico=thriller you're looking for though.

[Kathrin Passig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein Buch aus einem der widerlichsten aller Genres: Autor über 30 verkleidet sich als zehnjähriger Ich-Erzähler und malt detailliert aus, wie heroisch die eigene Schulzeit hätte verlaufen können, wenn man damals schon alles gewusst hätte, was man heute weiß. Bullys demütigen! Von noch größeren Bullys respektiert werden! Die Schulpsychologin analysieren, bis sie weint! Über Lehrer triumphieren! Scharfsinnige Entgegnungen in jeder Situation! Im Kopf des Zehnjährigen geht alles spontan vor sich, was im Kopf des Autors vorgeht, nachdem er jahrzehntelang Nerdkenntnisse angehäuft und dann das Kapitel noch 100x umgeschrieben hat. Und nicht nur der Erzähler, alle seine zehn- und zwölfjährigen Freunde reden genauso. Noch schlimmer, alle diese Freunde sind ungefähr 1995 geboren, ergehen sich aber in Anspielungen auf Natalie Portman, Fight Club, The Godfather, Philip Roth, Punkrock, Spinal Fucking Tap, ich meine, das ist doch einfach nur Recherchefaulheit des Autors (Jahrgang 1976). Frauen kommen als Love Interest vor, sind meistens verrückt und zählen eigentlich überhaupt nur als Lebewesen, wenn sie Krieg führen können.

Es war leider trotzdem ein großartiges Buch.

[Sentimental Surrealist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wayside School Stages a Coup D'Etat, complete with questions of Jewish identity, a pile of metafictional aspects, social commentary, a surprising amount of heart behind all the violence, and special guest Philip Roth. Not as proverbially perfect as some of my five stars but an undeniably me-approved novel.

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

If this book is 1030 pages, which it very much is, then it should be worth the journey, but if it isn’t then it’s because the main character is wholly unlikable, but if Gurion is unlikable then his actions should make sense, but if they do make sense the novel would be worth the time, but if they don’t make sense then it isn’t. If Levin had any sense of self-editing his prose wouldn’t be ponderous for pages on end as Gurion goes down endless spirals into his own head, which are meant to be taken as scripture the likes of which were to infer will stand alongside the Torah, or not, but if it isn’t ponderous to read the thoughts of ten-year old who thinks he may or may not be the Messiah then it wouldn’t seem ponderous at all, but the book is ponderous for this very reason, and ponderous = suck. Upon seeing an equation sign mid-text seems like an interesting play on conventions. Seeing it crop up again and again may be fun, but if it seems boring and just a dumb way to break up the text then it would seem trite, but if it is neither trite nor interesting but just something to tolerate, does it then have an impact at all? A book should be fun to read shouldn’t it? If it is supposed to be fun or pleasurable or redeeming then pages on pages on end of characters speaking in circles wouldn’t be fun to read, but maybe it is fun to read if the characters say things that are of interest, but maybe it isn’t fun to read if they say things that are not interesting, and maybe if all the characters leave almost no impact then no matter what they say will seem boring, and whether or not that is case, who’s to say, but certainly the words they speak don’t seem believable given the age bracket we’re suppose to believe the kids are bracketed within, though granting a certain artistic license is allowable. Or maybe it is fun to pretend they are all hyper intelligent and feeling beings that most, those in the Cage, just happen to be misunderstood rather than unfit for society, but are still people. But if any of this is true or not, it certainly can be a test in patience to read the bulk of this book of which is maybe or maybe not done in this style.

I just stabbed myself in the thigh with a pen. There is blood starting to seep around the entry point of the pen. The pen was a fountain pen and I think the tip is broken in my leg. I’m going to pull the pen out. “Tch” = ow, that hurt more than I expected. There’s a lot of blood to account for.

Mark Walsh
Review of The Instructions by Adam Levin
04.01.2011

There are admittedly some well done portions of narrative within the main text that generally come from outside sources. These are a breath of fresh air since for the most part they very clearly and directly move the action along at a nice clip. Please understand that I do not need a book shoveled down my gullet for me to enjoy the text. The problem is after reading that first paragraph is to understand that pages upon pages are just like that. Sure, I’ll readily admit it sounds much better coming from Levin then it does from my very meager writing skills, but the general idea is the same. Levin then punctuates all that ponderous prose with violence -from Gurion’s constant attempts to break his own fingers, Benji’s self-harm, and the final 200 pages of which is a laughable riot of blood and death of which, had I known that was the collision course I was on when I picked up this book I probably never would have done so. These are declarative sentences with lots of verbs since it is that very sentence structure that makes the reader move quickly. It is a very cheap trick.

And here’s the climax to my review* I hated this book. Simply as that.

Or maybe I didn’t hate the book, or I hated the book but I still finished it because I felt obligated, or there were moments where I really enjoyed it, or no moments of enjoyment but I thought the ending was going to pay off so I kept reading. Or, hate, hate, hate, hate.

*Sadly I’m quite serious. The climax in this book isn’t hard to pick out. Any decent reader will recognize it as such. Yet still, Levin in his efforts to be post-modern (to a painful degree as this whole text attests to) literally references the climax as the climax in the narrative.

[El · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before anyone starts cooking up the tar and feathers, let me just begin by saying I was probably doomed from the beginning knowing I was stepping into McSweeney-land here. I'm not going to spend time in my review defending my stance on that, other than I have preconceived notions about a lot of things that have relations with McSweeney-land - most apt to this review would be the word "clever". I would say since the early aughts there has been this whole "I'm-cleverer-than-you" movement in literature and it got old fast, in my opinion.

The Instructions feels that way to me. It's too... gimmicky.

That being said, it's a clever (this time I mean it in the "good way") story idea and it's not a horrible story in itself. Troubled, ten-year-old Gurion Maccabee from Chicago might be the messiah. He doesn't know for sure if he is, but as a natural-born leader, he certainly takes advantage of the possibility that it could very well be true.

While I'm never afraid of a big book, there are times when I don't feel a big book needs to be as big as it is. I understand the purpose here behind the length (it's meant to be scripture), but felt it was too purposeful that it actually lost some of its meaning. It could still have been a big book! It just needed to be trimmed down... a bit.

I've seen some reviews from people who fell in love with all the characters, but I had trouble doing that myself. Gurion is certainly fascinating, but through his perspective I never really achieved complete understanding or visualization of his peers. There would be episodic glimpses into their character, but then they'd be yanked away again, to the extent that I wouldn't be able to point them out in a line-up if I had to.

But this is a first novel! Holy shit, right? Over a thousand pages of a first novel, and that's nothing to sneeze at. And good for him for finding a home for it at McSweeney-land, though it would be hard to imagine that it couldn't have found a place there - this book is right up the McSweeney-alley.

I finished this book last night, and to be fair I've been going back and forth between 3 and 4 stars in my head ever since. I think had Levin not tried to be as clever as he did here, it would have achieved a higher rating from me. But I feel he did try too hard to have it fit the McSweeney bill, that it dripped from almost every page. That's a turn off for me. But again, I already have issues with that sort of thing. Some are really into it, and good for them - then this book will be the best choice EVER for them to read. For me, however, I'm sticking with the 3 star rating because it's a big book that just wanted to be bigger than it needed to be.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee is a ten-year-old Jewish misfit in Deerpark Illinois, but a brilliant misfit and Talmudic scholar. He aims for "perfect justice" and claims to be a person of peace, but he keeps getting into fights at school. He invented the pennygun, a handmade weapon that is laid out in his tract, "The Instructions." This coming-of-age novel, which takes place over four days and 1000+ pages, is so packed with adventure and metaphysics that I felt like I lived through an odyssey. Oh, I did!

Gurion is in the behavior-disorder section called "The Cage" at his middle school, which is monitored by a cruel, one-handed Australian named Botha. Gurion falls in Olympian love with a Gentile named Eliza June Watermark, who is not in the Cage and is a little older, being twelve, and is a superb mirror to his soul. However, according to Talmudic edict, he cannot have a Gentile wife. He already knows he wants to marry June. So there's another rub, along with the quest for perfect justice. Gurions's mother is a retired Israeli commando of Ethiopian descent and his father is a frequently reviled civil rights lawyer who is ensconced in a case to defend the free speech of the most appalling human beings. They have endowed Gurion with a lot of chutzpah.

Gurion may be the Messiah, or he may not be the Messiah. In the meantime, he is translating his story in Hebrew and English--the four days leading up to and including "The Gurionic War," with the help of some unorthodox Orthodox classmates. Lovers of David Foster Wallace will feel an aphrodisiac-like pull to Infinite Jest, but this book reads faster and is more to the point, albeit with fantastic digressions.

I could lay out some flaws here, such as--these pre-adolescents act and think like thirty-five-year-olds! I considered closing the book at the beginning rather than take that leap of faith. But all the flaws are crushed beneath Levin's intrepid imagination and iconoclastic ambition. He commanded this story with an epic gracelessness--yes, gracelessness-- that was infectious and wholly original. What's a few bumbles and brambles in the midst of a spiritual apocalypse? I recommend this tome to readers who can cut some slack to a little obtuseness. The story is its own redeemer.

[Cait · Rating 5 out of 5]

A song so appropriate it was referenced in the book: You And Whose Army

I don't think that I will ever be able to properly review this book. I'm definitely unable to muster up enough energy to try doing so now. I'm a strange mix of exhausted and exhilarated - maybe exhausted because of my exhilaration? 200+ pages of Damage Proper will do that to you. All I know is that I'm exhausted and exhilarated and bleary eyed and heartbroken. And I love this book. No it is not a perfect book, not by a long shot, but I love it despite its imperfections. Everything good here is so damn good that it made any and all flaws trivial in comparison, even the abruptness of the ending, which would probably be my biggest complaint if I felt inclined to complain about the book. But I don't, so I won't. The characters though? They were the best freaking part. See, my chest got all tight just thinking about them again...


ETA: I should also add that the first 300 or so pages took me a month to read due to very limited reading time. The next 700+ pages took me about 4 days. Once I was able to settle in to the story, I found it read insanely fast. I would blink my eyes and somehow another 100 pages had flown by. If anything is going to deter you from reading this, don't let it be its size.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an extremely impressive achievement and should be on anyone's must read list. Levin packs in layer upon layer of metafiction, wonderful characters, amazing lines, vivid description, and an urgent storyline- among other things. It's readability belies its complexity. I turn it over in my hands over and over again and it just keeps going down, yet it reads as easily as some of the simplest written novels I've seen. That alone is impressive. I mean, if the weight of the book in my hands did not remind me of its size, I would never remember. It reads like a small book and has nothing that is not essential. I'm rambling here and I can't do anything about it. Any description is pointless anyway. The book must be read, not explained. Anything explanation is useless.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I just finished this book and it took me a while. Honestly, I did get a tad impatient near the end but that didn’t mean that the book wasn’t doing its job or lost its vision, it was more about me being the kind of reader who, (like most, I assume) wants to know what’s going to happen and how it's all going to end, the kind of reader who is wanting things, by page 800, to start wrapping up. But that, I’d argue, is more my fault than the book’s. So yes, the book is big, but it didn’t take me that long to read, maybe a couple weeks start to finish, and that was without having too many substantial stretches of time to sit back a devour it, and devouring it is what the prose asks you to do. For whatever reason, I didn’t underline while reading, but instead dog-eared pages where stuff I really liked appeared, maybe because it was difficult enough to actually hold the book much less an additional writing instrument. Anyway, I probably dog-eared as many pages of this book as a regular book would have, and to be honest, I could’ve dog-eared a lot more as the book is, as many people have said, great, and is worthy of five stars if only for how relentlessly entertaining it is. One of the first things I feel compelled to point out is that other than its length this book bears little—and I do mean very little—resemblance to Infinite Jest. Sure, the writing’s SORT of like DFW in that it’s voice-driven and often bends back on itself and the author really very deeply hunkers down inside the characters or really character (singular) since it’s technically first person (I say technically because there are plenty of POV shifts thanks to artifacts—emails, transcripts, essays, letters, etc.—that are included in the narrative) but the comparison seems lazy (long, voicey book = DFW) especially since the character does not resemble, in the least, any character that DFW—not being obsessed or even overly concerned with either Judaism or God—would have created. Mostly, though, what struck me about this book is how generous it is. It’s a funny book. It seems simultaneously to give a shit and not give a shit about the reader in that it makes no bones about going on and on about something for as long as it wants but at the same time, it’s really, really good at generating linguistic energy (in a Saramago-ian or Bernhardian or even Stephen-Dixonian way). It’s sort of like taking a road trip with someone who’s speeding and driving recklessly ninety-five percent of the time, while talking and texting and smoking and cracking jokes. Which means that because of the speed of the narrative, which is really the speed of Gurion’s consciousness processing and reprocessing and explaining and re-explaining stuff (like why “African-American” is an inadequate way to identify people of African descent or why it’s bad to twist the wording of a Law or why Adonai bargained with Avraham about whether or not to destroy Sodom), there's not much time to stop and smell the sensory details, though the details that you do end up getting are vivid and/or idiosyncratic and/or funny. A random smattering: “Flowers thumb-flicked his swearfinger” (325) and “A woman with nostrils the size of dimes chomped on gum the way kids stomp bugs that keep not dying.” (330) and “I dumped the sip of cloudy topwater from a tub of Greek yogurt” (773) and “For the duration of the ride, she chewed granola from a bag and, though graciously muffled, her crunching was audible, and oat particles gathered on her lip unswiped.” (776) and “a blue pelican was embroidered on the tit of his shirt” (same page). Yes, it is weird that a ten-year-old boy is as superintelligent and superarticulate as Gurion but the thing about that is it never comes across as pretentious, there’s always this mix of high (thinking about Adonai’s Law) and low (cursing and playing slapslap) to keep it balanced. I can’t say that I ever “struggled” with believing how Gurion and his friends could have conversations that most 25 year olds aren’t capable of having, because I love it when kids in fiction are supersmart, but I did wonder what he was up to. And the way I read it was that these kids, they’re Israelites. And if you’ve ever read the Old Testament, you know that the Children of Israel, most of whom are adults, often act like children, so maybe here what we’ve got is a reversal of that, we’ve got children who act like adults (and also children), children who act like a sort of mutant child-adult and maybe we’re being asked to question what makes a child and what makes an adult. I don’t know. In the end, what’s haunting about the book is that while I feel like I’ve never read anything that so clearly lays out the way in which a single character’s consciousness operates, I also feel as though Gurion is essentially unknowable, as if all this talk and all this talk about talk and thinking about thinking is obscuring something essential. But I also can’t say what that essential thing is or explain what it might be. Maybe that’s just me.

[Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I almost gave up on this book several times. Probably every 50 pages I had to put it down and look at favorable reviews to convince myself that it was worth reading. At around page 400 I resorted to some really heavy skimming, and, honestly, I don't think I missed out on much. The plot revolves around an awful and unlikable middle schooler who thinks he is the messiah and incites a riot in his school. It's kinda mean-spirited, his Israelite followers stage a coup at a pep rally that wounds a bunch of kids and kills their coach. Protagonist Gurion is resolute in his righteousness as he steps all over his parents, principal, and peers.

Levin tries to be funny but its all very holds-up-spork humor befitting the age group he is writing about. "'What if I itch on the wang?' On the wang? 'The wang,' said Fox. Try scratching with your thighs. 'That never works.' I— 'I’m just kidding, Gurion. I can handle a wang-itch. The secret is to picture a nice blue stream full of fishes who are friendly except when there’s heat, which makes them grow fangs and try to eat the hot thing.' Okay, I said. 'Really,' he said. 'Because an itch is heat, so you cool the itch down so the fishes don’t tear off your itchy-hot penis.' That works? 'Always works.'" I often felt like I was reading a YA novel.

There are some gratifying bildungsroman parts that are interesting to read, but every single part that involves the motel owner Flowers, Gurion's parents, any scanned emails, meetings with Principal Brodsky, anything other than kids fucking around is just so incredibly dull. My one compliment I will pay to this book is that the very ending is pretty interesting, the anticlimax is pretty evocative. However I don't think it was worth 1000 pages to get to.

My heart says 2 stars but I will give it 3 since I somehow managed to stick with it through it's entirety.

"Those are my instructions for all you wicked sons. What you write matters little, your scholarship is nothing, it will die as soon as you."

[Marc Kozak · Rating 5 out of 5]

This kind of book is basically catnip for me: 1,030 pages of heavy David Foster Wallace influence; post-modern flourishes like books-within-books, tv news transcripts, email threads and diagrams; a giant cast of characters, all given the love and attention needed to make them feel real; Phillip Roth making a guest-appearance as a hostage negotiator -- this thing has it all!

And then there's the fact that the entire book is meant to be a document and testament written (in Hebrew and English) by Gurion ben-Judah Maccabbee, a genius nine-year old who may or may not be the returning Messiah. The book's fake forward tells us that Gurion is currently in the custody of the US government for his involvement in such events as "the Gurionic War" and "the 11/17 miracle," all of which are described in length by the book's author (Gurion). It's a clever strategy that adds an increasing sense of drama and importance to what transpires, even if you're never sure if Gurion IS the Messiah or just some disturbed, violent kid that leads a group of other kids to commit a local act of terrorism.

Gurion is aggressive and super violent throughout, but only in the interest of protecting his fellow "Israelites" from jocks and bullies. He gets in fights to defend nerdy Jews and kids with disabilities, making him a kind of hero to a large percentage of the Chicago suburban school system (of which Guiron attends a few different schools after getting kicked out of several). Gurion believes he might be the Messiah, to the extent that he writes scripture and tells his friends he can't die. And eventually he has the allegiance of an army of kids, ready to bust skulls and take down the Arrangement (i.e. teachers and adult school workers).

There is certainly a lot of Jewish subtext here that I, a non-Israelite, didn't pick up on, but Levin does a good job of making sure you get the basic ideas. And really, given events in our current political climate, you can certainly sympathize with Gurion's cause. He sees Jewish people everywhere being bullied, beaten and killed, and decides he's going to be the one to do something about it. Even his own father, an unpopular but successful Jewish lawyer who defends the rights of anti-Semites to spout hate speech, is under threat. Everyone in Gurion's life, including his parents, treat him as special, because he is unusually intelligent for his age, even much more intelligent that his teachers and adults in his life. Kids and adults alike naturally want to follow him. So in Gurion's mind, why shouldn't he be the Messiah?

If you can't get over the fact that the events in this book are performed by nine-year olds, you're probably going to have a bad time. It's certainly not realistic, but it's something you just have to go with. If it helps, there's a part where Gurion writes a letter to his favorite author, Philip Roth, and Roth responds with incredulity, not believing Gurion is as young as he says. Roth suspects Gurion is actually an adult trying to create a mythology about his own childhood. What Jewish boy didn't think they were the Messiah as some point, Roth asks. From this perspective, you could see "The Instructions" as the work of an adult Gurion (or maybe even Levin himself) reflecting on the events of their past childhood, which might help you re-frame the book in a more realistic way.

Regardless, this book is a hoot. There are so many darkly funny moments that capture the dumb activities of kids. There's even a large section that spells out the rules (in GREAT detail) of the game Slap-Slap, that game we've all played where you put your two hands under the hands of someone else and try to pull away fast enough to not get your hands slapped. Kids delight in the use of curse words, dick and poop jokes, and the wonders of the opposite sex. Gurion and his cause are very adult and sophisticated, but Levin does a good job at letting the kids be kids every once in a while.

Levin also repeatedly utilizes a device that I loved quite a bit: breaking down a problem in minute detail by using logical reasoning, almost like he is a lawyer (like his dad). There are many large, unbroken paragraphs throughout the book where Gurion goes through every (and I mean every) angle of a problem and talks through every possible scenario until he reaches a logical conclusion. I can see many readers glossing over these sections, but my mind works in a similar way, and it was fun to see that represented in the book. It also helps to give creditability to Gurion's intelligence, as you can see how well he's thought things through, imbuing his actions with authority, even if they make you uncomfortable in their aggression.

If you were like me and have been interested in this for a long time (it was pretty hyped when it came out 12 years ago) but are putting off because of its length, I can only tell you to wait no longer. There's so much to enjoy here and I'm sad that my time in this world is over.

[Joseph Michael Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

I flew to Chicago. I actually flew to Chicago a couple days ago on the 27th of October for a single night, just to hear Adam Levin read from the last-- though, admittedly, incredibly recent-- book I truly loved (TLBI[t]L), TheRumpus.net’s own Book Club pick, The Instructions (supplanting Rick Moody’s The Four Fingers of Death, of which I still feel somewhat compelled and obliged to write something at a later time, at the 11th hour as my pick for TLBI[t]L).

At the time of Levin’s Chicago reading, I was nearly 900 pages into The Instructions out of the novel's 1,030 total, which made me fairly confident I wouldn’t hear any spoilers. To be honest, at only 50 pages in, I could already tell that I was experiencing something special.

I issued a challenge to anyone who’d recently thought I'd been overpraising this book; to them I said, “Pick it up and read five pages, then just try not to read another five and another five after that. Ostensibly, I challenged them to not read the next five pages 206 times, and when they got to the end, I challenged them not to feel like they’d just experienced something wholly unique and unprecedented.

So far, four literary friends and colleagues have taken me up on the challenge, and not a single one of them has yet to put it down after any segments of five pages. One finished the book in eight days from the time he started it. The book is simply unputdownable.

Being’s that this is a gushing-filled essay rather than a truly objective, down-the-middle book review, there will be almost nothing negative written by me. There’s simply nothing, coming from a purely personal-taste-oriented perspective, that I can say I disliked about this book. It’s a literary achievement by any sense of the definition.

When I was originally asked how to describe the book, before I was able to get a firm grasp on everything that was going on in The Instructions, I told people that it was kind of like the love-child between A Clockwork Orange and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I saw Gurion Maccabee, Levin’s highly intelligent and fairly violent young protagonist, as equal parts Alex from Burgess’s novel about a bit of “the old ultra-violence” and Safran Foer’s utterly inquisitive and impossibly adorable Oskar Schell. When asked for television comparisons, I said that, “If Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was Grey’s Anatomy, then The Instructions was more like House M.D.”

However, I realized that any and all comparisons were moot in the sense that none of them truly expressed the complexity and originality of Levin’s opus [which also happens to be his debut novel, a fact that can’t help but make me want to quit writing and become a substance abuser, but, of course, only in the best and most loving way possible] which defies comparison because it, instead, creates comparison in and of its singularity. While nods to Infinite Jest (n.b. my favorite novel of all time) are flattering and appear to make sense initially, such comparisons are only scratching at the crust of what The Instructions has to offer on its own. The Instructions is not the next Infinite Jest, it is the first The Instructions. Down the road, books will be drawing comparisons between themselves and Levin’s masterpiece — yes, I said the “mp” word, as such a designation is completely deserved.

Gurion and his gang [for lack of a better term], The Side of Damage, including his best friends Vincie Portite and Benji Nakamook are not the clean-cut, squeaky clean heroes readers are used to, nor are they the prototypical anti-heroes, either. They are fully fleshed out and believable characters of incredible depth and personality. You will believe these 10 and 11-year-old kids are really this smart; you will believe Gurion is in love with Eliza June Watermark so passionately it makes your heart hurt, you will believe that Benji Nakamook might just possibly be the toughest character to come along in fiction since Goliath of Gath, and would die out of sheer loyalty to Gurion; you will believe that Bam Slokum really is Goliath of Gath or even the serpent with the persuasive tongue in the Garden of Eden. Most of all, you will believe that The Instructions is incredible and that Adam Levin is the real deal.

Many more words at this juncture simply feel superfluous to me. In the end, I make the same challenge to anyone who reads this spiel; I challenge them to finish The Instructions and say that they simply finished “reading a book” rather than experiencing a genuinely singular event. I’d tell them, “You'll feel exhausted, you'll feel emotionally depleted, but, ultimately, and most importantly, you'll feel completely satisfied.” I guess what I’m saying, is that I'm issuing that challenge to you.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't review this book objectively. Not only am I a subjective writer to the core, but The Instructions also hits too close to home for me. It's about a boy, Gurion ben Judah Maccabee. He's in a special program at his current school, Aptakisic Jr. High. He's extremely violent and, along with all the other kids (ranging in age, mostly, from 10-13), is fantastically intelligent. Aptakisic is one of several real-life schools mentioned in the book which I or friends of mine attended. Levin, from the same area as myself, mostly fictionalizes the geography of Chicago's North Suburbs, but it's impossible for me not to picture certain places without using my own memory bank.

Gurion, who "may or may not be the messiah," is an learned and, among peers, extremely admired Torah scholar. He has loving parents with whom he nonetheless has universal-feeling issues (and they with him.) His friends at Aptakisic are a twisted, relatable band of misfits. As the story unfolds---four days over 1,030 pages---we also watch his descent into love with a girl named June.

And so we see this consciously-potential messiah plot to overthrow, violently, the social structure (and its physical setting) which he calls The Arrangement.

Now, I doubt I could have read this thing when I was in junior high---if I could I wouldn't have understood it. But The Instructions is tailored to appeal to two sides of me: secondly, The Writer. Primarily, The Sensitive Junior High Daydreamer.

On top of familiarity with and fondness for the geography, characters and action, The Instructions---which is truly an epic book, seemingly traditionally and nontraditionally at once---the book is steeped in Judaic culture, history and text, for which I also have a fetish. (It get at the punk rocker in me too, with a lovely scene that references The Clash and Stiff Little Fingers.)

The comparisons which The Instructions has won to Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, are apt in ways and miss the mark in others. It is an enormous, unique, articulate book. The scope, though, is smaller. But that's not to say it's any less dense. The Instructions is simply more focused, and its story---the climax of which, by the way, knocked me on my ass---is more conventionally structured, and that's a very good thing. Infinite Jest made me feel like I was working much of the time, which is sometimes good. The Instructions felt like play. I read it with much more pure enjoyment with remarkably less difficulty. It is entertainment that will make you smarter. (There are many passages of dialogue and internal monologue wherein characters weigh their situations from every possible angle they can think of. This book will nourish your reasoning skills, if you pay attention.)

So, while I admit this book is a personal favorite for personal reasons, it is great on its own merits: Old Testament overtones, realistic dialogue (if you forget that many of its speakers are in 7th grade), masterful storytelling, and one goddamned unforgettable central character and narrator.

Shit, the book's first scene is of kids trying to waterboard each other in swim class, a scene which gets a heartbreaking callback on the final page.

The Instructions is the opposite of suck.

[McKenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This is the kind of book that I'll have to think about for days in order to figure out what I really think. It was truly a reading experience. Levin's writing is astonishing, the characters--though implausible--are intriguing, and the plot of this gargantuan novel is something that I don't think I'll ever forget. The descent from Tuesday to Friday, from locker room fights to the Gurionic War, at times terrified me because Levin wrote in such a way that the increasingly violent actions seem justified. This book is so much more than a story about a 10 year old Israelite boy who might be the Messiah--it's a comment on terrorism, religion/faith, the power of the written word, our failing education system, and human decency. It ranges from funny to inspiring to horrifying. When I first started reading, it reminded me of A Clockwork Orange, and though I then dismissed the comparison in the middle of the novel, having finished I think it's somewhat accurate. I would recommend this book for people who love reading to expose themselves to new ideas and realities--even if the subject doesn't interest you, if you want something to really think about, read this.

Possibly my favorite passage (not a spoiler in any way): "The baldness of Both was the kind where the hair that remains rims the head like the seat on a public toilet. As did pretty much every other man in the world who'd balded similar while being a scmendrick, Botha grew the upper part of one side long and greased its strands flat across his sticky-looking pate. I still have a hard time understanding why men do that. Forgetting that the hairstyle doesn't fool anyone, ignoring that it highlights what it's meant to hide, the hairstyle's name - combover - is in the same class of words as unibrow and needlenose and muffintop and trampstamp, i.e., not only does the name mock the thing it refers to, but it's the only name there is for the thing it refers to. So any speaker of English old enough to sport a combover has to be aware of what it is called, and thereby aware that electing to do what he does each morning in front of his mirror invites disdain." (95)