The Instructions

Dec 25, 2010 karen rated it really liked it

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 th 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:

...more

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Mar 07, 2012 Aubrey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 5-star, reviewed, heartbreak, books-are-the-best-invention, ever-on, 1-read-on-hand, small-press-biz, r-2013, r-goodreads

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 ...more

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Jul 07, 2010 Oriana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: too-smart-for-their-own-good, read-for-work, read-2010

Nov: 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 ...more

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Sep 30, 2010 Greg rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Greg by: Oriana

Shelves: fiction, big-cut-jewish-books, mcsweeneys

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.

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Sep 03, 2010 Jimmy rated it really liked it

Shelves: novel, male, year-2010s

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 under 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.
...more

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Aug 12, 2010 Krok Zero rated it really liked it

Shelves: winter-10-to-11

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 sc 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. ...more

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Feb 07, 2012 Christopher rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, 500-pages-or-more, favorites, future-classics, american, epistolary, jewish, 1000-pages-or-more

(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 ...more

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Dec 30, 2010 Hadrian marked it as abandoned-for-now

Shelves: usa, fiction

I'm ashamed and embarrassed to admit it, but this is the second book in three years which I did not finish. Or could not.

Let me indulge in a bit of a heartfelt monologue of what I'm passionate about, but not hopefully not in an impish boast. Reading isn't a chore for me, it really isn't. Even if it's assigned reading for class or an impossibly thick pomo thing with multilingual historical references or a thousand page history of some obscure topic. On the contrary. I enjoy those. I savor those s I'm ashamed and embarrassed to admit it, but this is the second book in three years which I did not finish. Or could not.

Let me indulge in a bit of a heartfelt monologue of what I'm passionate about, but not hopefully not in an impish boast. Reading isn't a chore for me, it really isn't. Even if it's assigned reading for class or an impossibly thick pomo thing with multilingual historical references or a thousand page history of some obscure topic. On the contrary. I enjoy those. I savor those sorts of things. I seek them out. I feel bad if my reading isn't tough enough.

So what made me stop reading The Instructions?

The choice of subject material is not uninteresting, and is in fact, wildly original. The idea of a Messianic Jewish Che rising up in adolescent rebellion against his Schloss of a school is a delicious idea. I was first drawn in with his monologues, his scriptures, his war plans, and the dialogue with his father about faith and mysticism and the Sefirot. These early bits were fascinating.

But there's a long stretch between our narrator and his Masada. I was unwilling or unable to make the long journey.

After the first two hundred pages, however, the book become slowly more painful to read, and the time stretched relativistic, as if the mass of the book had become a black hole and it was distorting gravity and space-time and it was affecting my consciousness. Neither the kids nor their dialogue grabbed my attention. I dimly recalled the annoying petulant bratty man-children of Jonathan Safran Foer.

The second problem is that the book is over a thousand pages wrong, it does not contain a thousand pages of material.

This book is compared to DFW's because of its sheer size. However, DFW wrote something of interest or of thought or of sheer beauty of language on every page, and his efficiency of words is unparalleled — a strange thing to write for an author whose reputation was for the verbose.

Even though something was indeed printed on those pages, nothing had crossed the barrier between page and brain. Not description, not action, not dialogue, just space, where nothing was impressed onto my memory.

Now this is only my opinion, unburdened with anything like an objective fact or assertion. It only reflects my subjective isolate experience. Many other people could enjoy this by finding some connection I have missed. If there is something there, please tell me. It is easy to criticize and make book reviews, far easier than to write. If people are dissuaded from the task of writing big encyclopedic novels based on the opinions of mere critics, may Adonai save us. ...more

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Mar 13, 2012 Nostalgebraist rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-lit, favorites, unreliable-narrators-yesss

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, spoiler 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.

(view spoiler) ...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Paul Bryant added it

Shelves: abandoned, novels

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 ...more

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Mar 15, 2013 Nick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2012, read-in-2013, king-kong-vs, the-nerdface-book-club

This book kills me. (And no, not from its sheer size and weight—though it is one mammoth motherfucker.) Every single time. It is another of those first-books-should-not-be-this-fucking-good novels. Stuns me every time. Has left me, on rereads, thinking Why am I surprised at how good this is? I've read it before; I know how good it is.

You need to read this. Everyone needs to read this. Seriously. Read this.

י SLOKUM DIES FRIDAY י

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Dec 18, 2010 Jonfaith rated it it was amazing

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 p ...more

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Sep 03, 2012 MJ Nicholls marked it as sampled · review of another edition

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 ...more

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Feb 26, 2011 Ren rated it it was ok

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, babb ...more

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May 29, 2013 Sentimental Surrealist rated it really liked it

Shelves: doorstopper, collection

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.

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Apr 16, 2016 BlackOxford rated it really liked it

Shelves: jewish, american-fiction

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 ...more

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Jan 04, 2011 Mark rated it did not like it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. 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 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. ...more

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Aug 30, 2010 Cait Poytress rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, owned, ucked-fay-up-way, made-me-cry, floor-joist, read-in-2012

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 s ...more

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May 04, 2012 El rated it liked it

Shelves: 21st-centurylit, big-effing-books, peer-pressure

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 litera 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. ...more

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Oct 16, 2010 David rated it it was amazing

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 hand ...more

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Dec 13, 2010 Matthew rated it it was amazing

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 th 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. ...more

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Sep 02, 2010 Joseph Michael Owens rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: favorites

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 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. ...more

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Jul 05, 2011 Michael rated it it was amazing

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 t 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.

...more

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Mar 20, 2012 Chris Blocker rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Chris by: Joseph Michael Owens

Over the years I've learned that I have a great fondness for postmodernist leanings in literature. I've also learned that this fondness only goes so far. Stories which implement postmodernist techniques favor strongly with me; however, experiments of wordplay where the story, if there ever was one, gets lost grate on my nerves. Before I even opened the book I was expecting such a grating reaction with The Instructions. And when I started that first chapter, I knew this novel was going to be a hu Over the years I've learned that I have a great fondness for postmodernist leanings in literature. I've also learned that this fondness only goes so far. Stories which implement postmodernist techniques favor strongly with me; however, experiments of wordplay where the story, if there ever was one, gets lost grate on my nerves. Before I even opened the book I was expecting such a grating reaction with The Instructions. And when I started that first chapter, I knew this novel was going to be a huge test of my patience. One thousand and thirty pages of wordplay and witticisms. But, I'll admit, from the beginning it was more tolerable than your average Postmodernist novel. I didn't love it, but I knew I'd be able to make it through. But I really liked the story. And it only got better. And before long I came to appreciate these implausible ten-year old kids and their ridiculous speech. The story was far-fetched, but in an intriguing and fun way. Then, in those final three hundred pages, I didn't want to put it down.

I don't believe that The Instructions is for everyone. I know people who would hate it and why waste my time trying to convince them? But I also know there are people like myself who probably wouldn't give it a try if it weren't for those insisting they read it (people like Joseph Michael Owens). Had it not been for such insistence, I doubt I ever would've really given this tome more than a passing glance. But for all the heavy-laden postmodern books I've read, this has got to be my favorite. And what's interesting is that while it feels long, it doesn't feel that long. In fact, compared to a book such as The Crying of Lot 49, a novel 1/5 the size, The Instructions felt short.

So that's what I think of the book, but aside from my personal feelings I have to say this is quite an impressive work. Developing such an extensive novel while maintaining such a myriad of characters, layers, and richness of words is a feat to be marveled. It is the kind of work that I myself as a writer cannot understand how it was put together by another human. Adam Levin must either be a highly-functioning man with ADHD, a massive coffee and/or other stimulant user, or a robot gone haywire. Damn, some days I wish I was a robot. ...more

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Feb 22, 2011 switterbug (Betsey) rated it it was amazing

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 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.
...more

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Jan 08, 2011 Northpapers rated it really liked it

Adam Levin's The Instructions is a pretty book. Admittedly, I fell in love with it for surface reasons. I pulled it off the shelf upon noting its size, the simplicity of its design, the texture of its covers, the little McSweeney's chair on the spine. I ran the "opening paragraph" check next, and I read the following:

"There is damage. There was always damage and there will be more damage, but not always. Were there always to be more damage, damage would be an aspect of perfection."

I saw that thi ...more

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Feb 13, 2011 Greg Zimmerman rated it it was amazing

(Much like the very-long novel itself, I fully realize this very-long review won't appeal to most readers. For that, I make no apologies — brevity not being the soul of wit here, hopefully. But if you've heard of The Instructions or Adam Levin and are the least bit intrigued, I'd suggest you make at least a good skim of what follows. This is a novel you should read.)

Imagine the frustration: You may or may not be the Messiah, destined (or not) to lead your people to "perfect justice." But the wor ...more

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Feb 05, 2014 Alan Chen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

When I started this novel I had several misgivings and I didn't want to read it let alone like it but I was wrong: The Instructions was (insert superlative) awesome. My misgivings for the novel was due to it being compared to Infinite Jest (DFW is sacred for me), it had to do with religion (I'm atheist), the main character is a 10 year old boy and his adventures with his friends (too precious?). I didn't like the idea of reading another book that's considered to be the next big American novel th When I started this novel I had several misgivings and I didn't want to read it let alone like it but I was wrong: The Instructions was (insert superlative) awesome. My misgivings for the novel was due to it being compared to Infinite Jest (DFW is sacred for me), it had to do with religion (I'm atheist), the main character is a 10 year old boy and his adventures with his friends (too precious?). I didn't like the idea of reading another book that's considered to be the next big American novel that ends all other novels. I had just recently finished De la Pava's Naked Singularity and to say I found it disappointing is a huge understatement. I like my big novels to be about a variety of ideas and that it is focused on one religion was another lackluster point. Finally, I don't like children and the idea that a book is written from the perspective of little kids was dissuasive because I did not want to read a giant novel in the style of Lord of the Flies.
By the time I was 50 pages into the book I was sucked in. Sure the novel featured kids but it's not written for kids. Levin probably used kids because the last 200 pages of the novel would be too gruesome if they were adults. Moreover, qualities such as optimism, mutability of relationships, adaptability, etc are easier with kids. As for religion I found I gained a better understanding of the Jewish faith and while the novel may ostensibly about "Israelites" it deals with so many other issues regarding faith, relationship to god, goodness, friendship, authority etc.
The whole novel takes place in 4 days during that time we learn about Gurion, his friends, his psychiatrist mother who use to be a Mosad agent, his civil rights attorney father, abused best friend, red-headed gentile girlfriend who ends up converting, etc. etc. There are so many well fleshed out characters with interesting back stories that it's too much to talk about and it gives away too much as well. Different from other postmodern novels this book does have a plot and it ends satisfyingly. While Gurion's relationships with instructor's, school guards, rabbi's get documented we also see what leads up to the Gurionic war. He becomes a messiah like figure, he starts a war that is the "Arrangement" which is his school. He has tons of followers and by the end of the novel I find I'm one of his followers too. I'm effusive with praise for this novel and that is rare for me. I find that after finishing it I'm left with a slight heart palpitating feeling of wonderment and I continue to think about the characters, this is rare for me and a testament to Levin. Books that are considered literature are usually not "fun" to read in the traditional sense. Sure they provide insight into the human condition, delves into your range of emotions, and uncovers things about your own personality but it's rare that you enjoy reading them as you're doing so. Lethem is able to do these things and make it fun. I find myself skimming past the words because I wanted to read faster, comprehend more, and find out what happens faster. I read a lot of novels and it's rare that I enjoy one so much, I hope others give this book a chance even if they think it's outside their normal reading materials because I think you'll enjoy it too!

"WE DAMAGE WE" ...more

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Nov 12, 2010 McKenzie rated it it was amazing

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 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) ...more

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Jan 08, 2012 andrew rated it it was amazing

I did it! I DID IT! One of the two 1000+ page books I am planning to get through this year is finally just that - gotten through. I feel quite proud of myself and you should feel proud of me too. Okay, enough about me, though I want to make sure you know how great I am.

So this book is the greatest. Easily the most interesting thing I have ever read outside of Nabokov, and yes I said "ever", this is not something you just pick up and hop through. Let it get inside your head, and do not expect it ...more

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BBCode	[url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8380409-the-instructions?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1287702723l/8380409.jpg[/img][/url] [url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8380409-the-instructions?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Instructions by Adam Levin[/url]

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