The Instructions by Adam Levin (Epub)

Description

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. Ejected 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. Adam Levin has shaped a world driven equally by moral fervor and slapstick comedy?a novel that is muscular and verbose, troubling and empathetic, monumental, breakneck, romantic, and unforgettable.

User’s Reviews

“Young Adam Levin wowed me with this whip-smart, aching, hilarious novel, starring his own kind of post-modern wise child (a la Seymour Glass) and revolutionary. The ghost of DF Wallace would relish comparisons to this brave new talent. This year’s best debut by a country mile.”?Mary Karr”Evocative of David Foster Wallace? full of death-defying sentences, manic wit, exciting provocations and simple human warmth.”?Julia Holmes, Rolling Stone”A hysterical, heartfelt journey of self-discovery? A book that moves beyond completely transparent influences to reach its own distinct, new, great height.”?Foster Kamer, Village Voice”This is a life-consuming novel, one that demands to be read feverishly. When it is over, other fiction feels insufficient, the newspaper seems irrelevant.? If the ultimate message of modernism was unremitting pessimism? The Instructions has given the literary genre its long deferred conclusion: Indeed, a day?or four?can serve as a reminder that death looms large for anything living, but there is lot of life to be lived in the interim.”?Michael H. Miller, New York Observer”After The Instructions challenges, charms and betrays you, it might just seduce your soul.? The Instructions is disturbing and romantic and ultimately, heartbreaking, and its questions are not easily parsed, even by Gurion’s analytic mind. They are the nagging doubts of our own goodness and faith. But it’s worth sticking with this author’s debut: This is a wunderkind’s master class.? An incredible creation of fiction.”?Katie Moulton, St. Louis Post-Dispatch”A megapage masterpiece.”?Geoffrey Johnson, Chicago magazine”Levin’s mammoth, riotous, Talmudic, impossibly excessive yet brilliant, mesmerizing, warmhearted, and hilarious work of chutzpah takes place over four feverish days but encompasses the whole of Israel’s battle for existence and the Jewish quest for home and peace.”?Donna Seaman, Booklist”The Instructions is in fact a vital work of?no getting around it?American Jewish literature because it imagines that the genre is indeed through and asks what can be written in its place.”?Marissa Brostoff, Tablet magazine”Manic energy, ambition, erudition, interpolation of documents and sheer bulk.”?Elaine Rewolinski, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel”One of the year’s most engrossing novels.? His voice will haunt you long after you close the book.”?Largehearted Boy Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. THE INSTRUCTIONSBy Adam LevinMcSweeney’s RectangularsCopyright © 2010 Adam LevinAll right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-936365-16-6Contents1. Eliza June Watermark…………………………………………12. Guns and Inquisitions………………………………………..333. Damage……………………………………………………..734. First Scripture……………………………………………..1135. The Arrangement……………………………………………..1656. Dark Enough…………………………………………………2157. Signify…………………………………………………….2898. Vandal……………………………………………………..3399. Sophistry…………………………………………………..36710. Artful…………………………………………………….42111. Teachers…………………………………………………..45312. Deface…………………………………………………….529Translator’s Note………………………………………………57713. The Five…………………………………………………..58114. Death to The Jew……………………………………………63515. Tactical…………………………………………………..66316. Names……………………………………………………..68517. Scuffles…………………………………………………..71918. Commentary on Commentaries…………………………………..76119. We………………………………………………………..76920. Proper…………………………………………………….87121. The Verbosity Of Hope……………………………………….90322. Control……………………………………………………983Chapter One ELIZA JUNE WATERMARK Tuesday, November 14, 2006 2nd–3rd Period Benji Nakamook thought we should waterboard each other, me and him and Vincie Portite. We wouldn’t count the seconds to see who was bravest or whose lungs were deepest—this wasn’t for a contest. We’d each be held under til the moment the possibility of death became real to us, and in that moment, according to Benji, we’d have to draw one of the following conclusions: “My best friends are about to accidentally drown me!” or “My best friends are actually trying to drown me!” The point was to learn what it was we feared more: being misunderstood or being betrayed. “That is so fucken stupid,” Vincie Portite said. “No way I’d think you were trying to drown me.” “You don’t know what you’ll think,” Nakamook told him. “Right now you’re rational. Facing death, you won’t be. That’s how methods like waterboarding operate.” Benji’d been reading a book about torture. “This one guy,” he said, “Ali Al-Jahani, specifically stated that—” “Ali Al-Whatever whatever,” said Vincie. “I’ll do it if, one, you stop talking about that book—it’s getting fucken old—and two, if Gurion’s down. But it’s stupid.” It did seem stupid, but Benji wasn’t stupid, not even remotely, and I hated disappointing him. I said I was down. Vincie said, “Fuck.” Splashing on a kickfloat a couple feet away was Isadore Momo, a shy foreign chubnik who barely spoke English, but the rest of the class was over in the deep end. Benji reached out, tapped Momo on the ankle. “You’re wanted over there,” he said, pointing to the others. “By whom?” Momo said. “By me,” said Benji. “Sorry. I am sorry. Sorry,” said Momo. He got off the kickfloat and fled. Benji told us: “I’ll thrash before my death seems real. You’ll have to keep me under for a little while after that.” “How long’s a little while?” Vincie Portite said. “Decide when I’m under. If I know, this won’t work.” I clutched one shoulder, palmed the crown of his skull. Vincie clutched the other shoulder and the back of his neck. Benji exhaled all the breath in his body. He let his legs buckle. We plunged him. “How long then?” said Vincie. A thirty-count, I said. “How about a twenty?” A twenty then, I said. Benji started to thrash. I counted off twenty inside of my head, tried pulling him up, but he wasn’t coming up. He just kept thrashing. He was tilted toward Vincie, who was staring at the water. Vincie, I said. “Fuck,” Vincie said. He pulled Benji up. Benji sucked air. Vincie said, “You count fast. Did you do Mississippis? I was doing Mississippis—I only got to twelve. Gurion. Gurion.” In the deep-end, some kids had rhymed “Izzy” with “Jizzy.” I’d revolved to see who: Ronrico and the Janitor. Momo told them, “Izzy. I am Izzy, for Isadore. Isadore Momo. You may call me Izzy Momo.” “Jizzy!” said Ronrico. “Jizzy Homo!” said the Janitor. Momo just took it, leaning hard on his kickfloat. Benji cough-hiccuped, hands on his waist. So? I said to him. What was the conclusion? “Both,” Benji said. That doesn’t make sense, I said. Which one was first? “I said, ‘Both,'” Benji said. That doesn’t make sense. “You’ll see for yourself in a second,” he said. “No way,” Vincie said. “I’m going fucken next. Okay? Okay? I want to be done with this.” We held Vincie under and he started to thrash. We counted fifteen and we pulled him back up. “Both?” Benji said. “Neither,” gasped Vincie. His pupils were pinned. His flushed face trembled. “So what then?” said Benji. “Who—” Vincie said, but he choked on some air. He showed us his pointer, laid hands on my shoulders. “Who cares?” he said, catching up with his lungs. “I don’t even know. I feel fucken stupid. Dying is fucked. I don’t want to die.” Then it was my turn. I let all my breath out. My friends held me under. They had a firm hold that I couldn’t have broken, and the water got colder, and my chest drew tighter, and I thought I might drink, take little sips, that a series of sips imbibed at steady intervals could gradually lessen the pressure of the strangle, but before I’d even tested this chomsky hypothesis, air stung my face and fattened my chest. They’d pulled me back up before death seemed real. What happened? I said. “We waited and waited. You wouldn’t start thrashing.” “Vincie thought you passed out.” I didn’t, I said. Nakamook asked me, “You want to go again?” Not really, I said. If you think it’s that important, though— “Fuck ‘go again,'” Vincie Portite said. “I’m out. I’m done. You can drown him by yourself.” Benji said, “Vincie.” Vincie said, “Nakamook.” The whistle got blown. Free swim was over. Benji said, “Vincie,” and extended a fist. “What?” Vincie said. “Fine. Okay.” He made his own fist and banged it on Benji’s. I counted to three and we raced to the showers. * * * Were Isadore gay, I’d have probably hurt the Janitor for calling him a homo, and were he my friend, I’d have certainly avenged him—even just for “Jizzy”—but Momo was neither gay nor my friend. I’d had plans to fight the Janitor since late the night before. I had never fought anyone without good reason, and I needed to learn what doing so felt like. I needed to see if it felt any different. I’d been fighting a lot since I got to Aptakisic, and I enjoyed it so much—maybe too much. Each fight was better, more fun than the last, and I worried I was thrilling on the damage alone, rather than the justice the damage was enacting. I worried that the people I’d been getting in fights with might as well have been anyone as far as the fun I had pummeling them went. The only way to find out was to get in a fight without justification. If the thrill was absent, or in some way different, all would be well, I’d cease to worry. If the thrill was the same, though … I didn’t know what, but I’d have to change something. So I’d picked a kid at random the night before—at least somewhat at random; I disliked the Janitor, he disliked me, we had Gym the same period—and decided I’d fight him in the locker-room. Benji and Vincie were still in the showers—I’d won the race—and though I wasn’t finished dressing, I saw it was time. If my friends got involved it could bance up the test, and I didn’t need a shirt to get in a fight. I buckled my belt and ran up on the Janitor. A couple steps short of him, I towel-snapped his neck. He whined and revolved. He said, “You’re B.D. and you smell like cigarettes, it’s nasty!” No thrill yet, but we weren’t really fighting. I snorted up a goozy and twetched it on his toes. “Towel!” he shouted. “Gimme a towel!” The Janitor dreaded all forms of dishygiene. He hopped on one leg. He threw wild punches. One caught my shoulder. Now it was a fight. I towel-snapped his eyes and he fell down sideways. Someone said, “Your towel, sir.” “No, please, a towel, really!” the Janitor pleaded. He blinked like a lizard. His breathing got labored. He stayed on his side on the floor by his basket and begged for a towel while other kids watched. The fight was over. No thrill at all. I returned to my locker to finish getting dressed. My shirt was all tangled but I tried to pull it on. That’s when Ronrico Asparagus attacked. He came from behind and charleyed my thigh-horse. I had to lean, but I didn’t get deadleg. You only get deadleg if you’re willing to kneel. “Fight!” yelled some kids. “Pee so pungent!” yelled some other ones. Twenty came together to form a writhing wall. I retreated four locker-lengths, struggling with my shirt. My head was through, and my shoulders were right, but the twisted sleeves were blocking the armholes. Asparagus charged and kicked my flank. I coughed, saw white. I slumped on the bench. The wall swelled and hollered, waving its fists. Kids in the back shoved up to the front. Kids in the front popped out and fell down. Asparagus posed, just outside kicking range. “See that?” he said to them. “See that?” he said. “Gurion Maccabee. Big fucken deal.” The wall got more dense, inched itself closer, squeezed itself tighter, popped out more kids. Teeth shone everywhere. My arms in their sleeves. “Sit back down,” Asparagus said to me. I snorted and twetched, hung gooze on his ear. It moved like a yo-yo. Asparagus lunged. I tagged his grill with my wrist while pivoting. The blow was glancing, but the pivot added torque; he landed on his tailbone, swiping at air. The air was sweaty. I limped to my locker and snatched off the padlock, jammed home the U and slid in my pointer and swear to the knuckles. The wall of kids: silent. Ronrico had his legs again. I told him, Be the hero. “Fucken,” he said. Spring so fast you blur. He vaulted the bench. I uppercut the sweetspot under his ribs, that charliest of horses where every nerve’s bundled. He stumbled forward folded, hugging himself, the scalp in his part agleam like the padlock, inviting me to fuse the two in imagistic deathblow. Instead I kicked his ankles, finishing his chapter. His leftward collapse on the wall of baskets clattered so loud it roused Mr. Desormie. Desormie didn’t mean anything in Italian. He taught Gym in shorts that his wang stretched the crotch of. “What’s all the noise?” said Mr. Desormie. “Who is responsible for this brand of nonsense?” The tip of his collar was curling toward the ceiling. “Why’s the Janitor balanced on one of his feet instead of both of his feet?” Desormie said. “And who made Asparagus wheeze and sway like a person that’s dying or fatally wounded?” “It was Gurion!” “Gurion!” “Gurion did it!” They ratted me out. I didn’t see who; I was staring at the collar. Desormie scratched his throat and told me, “Go nowhere.” I got on the bench to make an announcement: A kid who tells on another kid’s a dead kid. That was a line from Over the Edge, a childsploitation flick starring Matt Dillon. “Hey!” Desormie said to me. He wanted to punch my nose through my face but wouldn’t break rules. He crouched beside Ronrico. “Asparagus,” he said. “Hey, Asparagus,” he said. He hefted him onto the bench by the pits. Someone in the distance said, “Kids who tell are dead and dead!” Blake Acer, Shover President, ran from the bathroom, asking what happened. The Flunky whispered, “Gurion spit on the Janitor, then he whammed Asparagus deep in the solarplaces.” Someone near Acer said to someone behind him, “Maccabee pissed on Flunky Bregman’s little brougham. Ronrico’s xiphoid process is shattered.” The Janitor continued to ask for a towel. Desormie told him to act mature. Then the elephant sounds of lockers denting, the clicking of shock-numbed hand-bones getting shook. Someone said, “Gurion battled two guys at once.” “Like that?” said the guy who was punching the lockers. “Like that,” said the guy who the puncher showed off for. Back by the showers, Nakamook was shouting, “Gurion’s my boy! Do not play with us!” “Do not fucken play with us!” flaved Vincie, beside him. Snarly toplip, eyebrows tensed, I mock-aggressed with my face at Ronrico. He didn’t respond. Stunned? I said. He just held his chest. The gym teacher told me, “Cruisin for a bruisin.” I tried to break my fingers, to see if I could. It was something I’d try every couple of hours. I’d match up the tips of right and left and push. They wouldn’t ever break. I’d think: They can’t. This time was no different. I stepped off the bench and I leaned on my locker and waited for Desormie to take us to the Office. He waited for Ronrico’s wheezing to subside. The Janitor lay there, waiting for a towel. Everyone else in the locker-room verbalized. “Your knuckles are cut.” “It doesn’t even hurt.” “The Janitor’s toe’s broke.” “Gangrene set in yet?” “Do not play with us!” “No one fucken plays with us!” “Look at that latch. That’s blood on that latch.” “I didn’t even notice the blood til you said.” “Do not look at us.” “… not fucken look at us!” “Bleeding’s weird.” “I bet I could take him.” “No one here can take him. He’s from Chicago.” “He’s only, like, ten, though—I’m twelve.” “So’s Asparagus.” “Do not think of us. Do not talk of us. Do not try to be us.” “… much less try fucken being us.” “A sock full of flashlight batteries you’re saying.” “I haven’t bled in a really long time.” “Duracell mace.” “Except for hangnails.” “Blew out the ligaments with a special chi-punch.” “Then the bodyslam.” “Bam Slokum could take him.” “Totally beside the point.” “Full-nelson to suplex, closed with a sleeper-hold.” “Blonde Lonnie could take him.” “Blonde Lonnie couldn’t take him—he’s standing right there.” “Do it, Blonde Lonnie.” “Blonde Lonnie fakes deafness!” “An axe-kick to the shoulder to top off the evening.” No one was speaking to any one person. All of them were speaking to every single person. Everyone was going on record. I’d performed specific actions on Ronrico and the Janitor, but the hows and the whos didn’t matter to the rest of them. What mattered was something had messed up the arrangement. They wanted a part of that, so they tried to explain it, but didn’t know how, so they made things up, working together, though none of them knew it, like bouncing molecules forming gases. “Bleeding doesn’t hurt.” “If your face was bleeding, trust me it would hurt.” “And the Flunky’s not stepping up either, is he? And he’s the Janitor’s very own brother!” “A spring-loaded sap like Maholtz has.” “HCl in a two-dollar squirtgun.” “I’ve cut my lip—didn’t ever hurt.” “Boystar, too.” “Boystar! Tch.” “Co-Captain Baxter, then.” “I’ve never seen him fight.” “I’m saying your nose, getting punched in your nose.” “A punch in the nose would hurt cause the bone. It’s snapping the nosebone’s the pain, not the bleeding.” “Boystar and the Flunky and the Co-Captain together, then. Plus Bam Slokum. And Blonde Lonnie.” “There isn’t any nosebone.” “Five guys is cheap. Especially with Slokum.” “Tell it to my nosebone. He’s standing right here.” “A pointed fucking instrument.” “Slokum’s beside the point.” “Nose is all cartilage.” “Slokum’s the whole point. Slokum’s indestructible.” “What the fuck’s cartilage?” “He’s fucking immortal.” “He fucking jammed a screwdriver in dude’s fucking earhole!” Desormie yelled, “Quiet down!” at the ceiling. Vincie Portite yelled, “Quiet down!” at Desormie. Desormie yelled, “Quiet!” into the floor. To me, he said: “You’ve got trouble coming.” I should have said, Bring it. Instead I said, I know. Someone said, “A dead kid.” Nakamook shouted, “Ve vill crush you like zeh grape!” “Ve vucken vill crush!” Vincie Portite flaved. Asparagus coughed, then started breathing normal. Desormie said “Good” and sat the Janitor next to him. “The Office’ll send for you later,” he told them. “For now you go back to the Cage.” “Let’s go let’s move,” he said to me. After counting to seven, I hoisted my bag. On the way to the door, I looked over my shoulder and saw the Janitor eyeing the gooze that was still on his foot, eyeing a t-shirt laying on the bench, about to decide to wipe one with the other. The t-shirt belonged to Leevon Ray. Leevon was the only black kid at school, unless you count halfie Lost Tribesmen—I don’t—and he refused to speak, which is why he was Cage, but we’d sometimes trade snacks and play slapslap at lunch, so I knew we were friends, and to spread word through kids was no form of ratting, but it took me a second of sorting that out before I cued Leevon to safeguard his shirt. It took me a second because of the fight. My chemicals, after fights, often fired weird; during a fight, they were always reliable, tunneling my thinking so I could be simple, but after a fight the opposite happened and sometimes the tunnel would loop til it knotted and wouldn’t untangle until I noticed. (Continues…) Excerpted from THE INSTRUCTIONSby Adam Levin Copyright © 2010 by Adam Levin. Excerpted by permission of McSweeney’s Rectangulars. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. 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Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee is a ten-year-old Jewish scholar and possible messiah. He’s been expelled from numerous Jewish schools for violent behavior and general disobedience, and has a loyal following among his peers as a rabbi and potential messiah. He’s also the narrator of THE INSTRUCTIONS, a book “large enough to squash a Pekingese,” as one critic quipped. Coming in at three inches thick and just over three pounds, it’s a physical as well as a mental challenge to read. And now, having finished it over several months, I feel drained.THE INSTRUCTIONS is what Gurion calls his “Scripture,” with a capital “S,”which in 1031 pages he tells the tale of four days in November, 2006 leading up to the Gurionic War and the “11/17 Miracle.”As THE INSTRUCTIONS opens, Gurion has been placed in Aptakisic Junior High, Chicago, in their Cage, a special lockdown program for their most difficult and intransigent malcontents. Through Gurion’s verbosity, we experience the minutiae of his life over these four days: falling in love with gentile Eliza June Watermark, his best friend Benji Nakamook, hyperscoots, penny guns, the adversarial Main Hall Shovers, school counselor Call-Me-Sandy, WE DAMAGE WE, Eliyahu of Brooklyn, the game called The Electric Chair (called by others “I’m Ticking”), the Arrangement. It’s all there in THE INSTRUCTIONS.If you’ve read Wallace’s INFINITE JEST, you have some idea what you’re in for in Levin’s novel, though I must say, THE INSTRUCTIONS is much easier going, structured as it is linearly and from a single viewpoint. Thematically it’s a bit CLOCKWORK ORANGE, LORD OF THE FLIES, and INFINITE JEST rolled into one thick stew.In this exchange, Eliyahu is concerned, thinking the worst, when Gurion did not shown up for school one day, and it’s an example of the circuitous reasoning of Gurion’s self-appointed “scholars”:“… and so what else could I think? I thought maybe you were dead. What else was there to think?”That I stayed home with a cold? I said“Maybe,’ said Eliyahu, “and I did consider the possibility, but then I began to think of how you’d told me that you wouldn’t die. I thought: If I’m to believe that Gurion won’t die, it’s the same as believing that Gurion can’t die, and if Gurion can’t die, then is it so likely he can catch a cold? It didn’t seem so likely. It didn’t seem likely at all. It seems to me that if you can catch a cold, you can die. So I thought: Maybe he was mistaken when he said he wouldn’t die — maybe he would, in which case he could, which is to say he can, so he probably has a cold. So probably a cold, I thought, and thank God it is probably just a cold. And this was comforting for a moment, until the stress shifted, at which point I thought: If Gurion can have a cold, he can die, so it is not too outlandish to worry that he is dead. So I worried you were dead.” [383]The prose is wonderful, inventive, oftentimes hilarious. Still, it is long, can be ponderous at times, and it suffers a bit from the single viewpoint for such an extended time. Mostly lighthearted, despite the subject matter, the novel changes dramatically for the final 200-or-so pages in what comes as quite a shock. Even though it’s the long-awaited climax, it seems out of place, tacked on.It was great spending the last few months in the Cage with Gurion and his followers on the Side of Damage.

⭐ The physical weight of this novel is intimidating (if you purchased the paperback, like I did) but let that be encouragement and not a deterrent to begin reading The Instructions. The psychological weight with which I was left after finishing this book was even heavier than the mere 1000 pages.The main character is a ten-year-old boy named Gurion who narrates the story and his personality was immediately captivating. The attentive maintenance of this character through the book is what kept me up late nights reading. I was able to love him immediately, through his happiness and sadness; through his growth and stagnation–and all over the amazing short period of four days (timespan of the novel). It is a microscope of human emotion, yet–especially toward the end and looking out over “two-hill field”–the author represents a larger scope of human existence.Another thing that the author did to make the book great was use the epitome of the writer’s dogma “show versus tell” countless times throughout the novel. Page 825, for example (although this may be personal) discusses the phrase “point of no return” but that is exactly what that point represented for me in the book–the point where I simply needed to keep reading in order to find out what was going to happen next, the point of no return where I must read to the end of the book.Or take this quote, for another example (page 29-30), that shows so much about the character with little details:”I liked it when things went together like that. Not just timing things like the chop /flick/ knock-stopping, but space things, too. Like all the man-made products that fit into other man-made products that were not made by the same men or for the same reasons. Like how the sucking wand of my parents’ vacuum held seven D batteries stacked nub to divot, and my Artgum eraser, before I’d worn it down, sat flush in any slot of the ice -cube tray, and the ice-cube tray sat flush on the rack in the toaster oven, the oven itself between the wall and the sink-edge. I liked how the rubber stopper in the laundry-room washtub was good for corking certain Erlenmeyer flasks and that 5 mg. Ritalins could be stored in the screw-hollows on the handles of umbrellas.”This book is a great representative of the times. It is made with careful collage-construction that shows intelligence and beauty and the way destruction and “damage” will both destroy that intelligence and beauty but also let it live on. The pages of the book represent that paradox, the final and most remarkable example of the author’s ability to show the reader his ideas instead of telling us about them. And in an even broader sense, it represents a goal of literature (perhaps of the author himself)–to represent a truth and word to keep speaking after the writer has died.This is one of those books that made me feel like I had learned so much about the world. A feeling that is not unheard of when I read fiction, but this feeling is so heavy I do not want to pick up another book because I want to stay with it for a little while. In fact, it is almost like the moment described on page 980. I will not describe it here, because I do not want to extend anything too far beyond my review into these words, but it is just another great example of how the text can transcend into an emotional state.

⭐ This book is creative and original, but every character speaks exactly the same and it turns into an overly long rambling mess. Still, I had to finish and I’m not mad I did.

⭐ “The Instructions” by Adam Levin is a fictional book taking place over three days. This long book which tells a short story follows one very bright troublemaker in Junior High School.Supposedly a document written by Rabbi Gurion ben Judah Maccabee and “translated and retranslated from the Hebrew and the English” before being published the book consists of two sections: “The Side of Damage” and “The Gurionic War”.The book chronicles four days in the life of 10 year old Gurion, who has been expelled from several schools (including a Yeshiva) and is fated (or is it damned?) to a disciplinary program at Aptakisic Junior High, suburban Illinois. Gurion, who believes he is the Messiah and amazingly convinces others for it to be true, organizes riots, a militia and overthrows the school’s administration establishing a new Jewish holiday.”The Instructions” by Adam Levin was a hard book to read and to get into, not due to its length but due to the difficulty of getting into the mind of a brilliant ten year old. However, once I got around that hurdle I found that not only did I enjoy reading the book, but I enjoyed even more thinking about it afterwards.If I had to pinpoint the one thing which I found enjoyable is the great care Mr. Levin took in picking his symbols, words and their meanings. For example: the name of the protagonist Gurion Ben-Judah Maccabee. Gurion is a lion’s cub, a lion which is the symbol of the tribe of Judah (Judah being Gurion’s father) and Maccabee, a famed family who reasserted the Jewish religion as the Seleucid Empire.Gurion Maccabee believes that he is the Messiah. “The Instructions” is actually presented as Gurion’s sermons of truth to the destructive 2006 events which made him famous. Along the way the reader is a witness to Gurion’s brilliant young mind. Unlike other sermons though, this books brings the reader along to the journey of a young man who can basically justify any action he takes.Falling in love with Eliza June Watermark, a gentile classmate – no problem, he simply converts her.After all, if the Messiah can’t convert gentiles than who can?A boring detention assignment – no problem, scratch it out and write his own because the idiotic assignments are no match for Gurion’s intellectual superiority.As in many books which could qualify as instructions (The Zohar, The Talmud, etc.) there isn’t much plot or an ending, but a bunch of diatribes, lists, charts and doodles. Surprisingly/disturbingly, trudging through lengthy pages which seem to baffle all other characters in the book, Gurion’s scripture starts to make sense.Imagine Jeremy Piven’s Ari Gold reading the Passover song of Chad Gadya (One Little Goat) with commentary by Larry David & Jerry Seinfeld – and you get the brilliance of “The Instructions”. A guest “appearance” by Philip Roth though, in my opinion, takes the cake.My main problem with the book – I thought I was the Messiah…

⭐ This book won me over completely on page 12 with the sentence: “Desormie, ahead of me, hummed out a melody with lipfart percussion and aggressively dance-walked and thought it was strutting.” I’ve read the sentence now a couple dozen times, typed it out into Facebook statuses and emails, and every time it makes me just as happy.It was more than happiness I felt. Moments of this book left me giddy, bouncing in my seat as I turned the page.For a thousand-page book, it’s an easy read. The language, though rhythmical and brilliant, each sentence tuned precisely, is clear in its logical flow. The voice of Gurion, the narrator (more properly, the author of this “scripture”), is unique, a mix of middle school slang and scholarly, but it is always consistent and it only takes a short while to become accustomed to its rhythms, and more than accustomed, fall in love with them.It is a novel full of ideas, philosophies revealed through the little everyday interactions of middle schoolers, musings on the minutiae of the mundane. I marked with tabs probably fifty pages that I thought contained wisdom worth remembering (and several dozen more pages were marked for moments of linguistic inventiveness). For being a novel heavy on thought, though, reading it was never a burden. I’ve seldom had such pleasure in reading. When I did reread a passage, it wasn’t because I didn’t understand it the first time, but because I wanted to understand it better.The novel is tightly wound, which surprised for a book its length. There is very little extraneous material, and I was constantly amazed at how things from page one would prove relevant again several hundred pages later, how each strand of the story braided itself into the rope that carried the action toward the end of the book.I’ll admit, I bought this book partly out of interest in reading it, but also because I thought it would look totally awesome on my shelf. After reading it, though, and not denying the awesomeness of its shelf-presence, I can’t say enough about it as literature.The Instructions has certainly vaulted to near the top of my list of favorite books, as much as such a list means anything. I recommend it to everyone. More than that, I command you to read it. Do it. Do it now.

⭐ ‘Holy F-word.’ (i’m afraid of getting censured) but that was what I said seconds after I put this book down ‘Holy F-word’…and I am smart enough to avoid vulgarity, but this book blew my mind…I’ve been reading seriously since I was about 16, so I’ve been doing this for about 20 years, and I know how serious it is to say ‘This is the greatest book I’ve ever read’ but I am doing just that.I was hooked from the first paragraph, and this man…he writes scripture…this thing is truly profound, not just ‘about’ the profound, it is profound.i will tell you something too…there is a reason this is the greatest book I’ve ever read, because the author had the audacity, the balls, to try and write the greatest book ever written…not a lot of people actually do that, and of those that do, I only know one that has succeeded, Adam Levin.wow, you might be saying, this sounds like a friend of the author, or perhaps his wife…nope…but if he ever wants another friend, he made one with me…how many people do i know who have the guts to do what he did with this novel. when you write scripture, expect followers…wow!i’m going to go on, because that is what i am inspired to do, i am inspired to sing praises, and so i am going to sing…as an aside, the comparisons to D.F.W. are annoying and made by people who understand neither. I’ve read some D.F.W., and i’m impressed, as anybody should be, by someone who is working so hard to do so…Adam Levin a horse of a different color (whatever that means)…Adam Levin stands alone here with this magnificent work. i’ve never read a 1000 pages with the constant feeling of wanting it NOT to end, of feeling so cared for. The comparisons are made simply because he has great skill, and great skill is wonderful, but here is the difference, Adam Levin has put all his chips on the table, he is way more risky than anybody i’ve ever encountered. It might be inappropriate, i’m not smart enough to know, but if Nietzsche were alive today, and a bit more cheerful, perhaps he would be able to write such a novel, but i can’t think of anybody else…f-word all that…read this today, and if you don’t like it, it’s because you’ve never known what it is like to feel omnipotent, and that is important, that is valuable information.this is written to liberate the spirit…is that too romantic? i don’t think so, this is one of our ‘lost values’, as Martin Luther King said, the artist as liberator, rather than artist as smarty-pants…Levin takes on the role of literary savior, and manages to achieve…and let me be clear, all the criticisms of ‘first-novel glitches’, these are fallacious in the extreme…this is not a ‘first novel’, it is a NEW novel, it is a new form…what Adam Levin liberates is language itself, he has done damage against the seemingly inevitable enslavement to the machine, by finding, not just a crack in the nature of language, through which we might take one extra breath of fresh air, but has found a whole valley toward which we can move, but one surrounded on all sides by the paradoxical risk of leaving old arrangements behind…now i’m saying too much…but oh lord, i am so happy, so grateful for this book…i’ve never sung praises like this, and its 2012, what a great year to read The Instructions.

⭐ Imagine the frustration: You may or may not be the Messiah, destined (or not) to lead your people to “perfect justice.” But the world is imperfect and so is the god who rules it.* So what do you do? If you’re Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee, the 10-year-old protagonist of Adam Levin’s debut novel, The Instructions, you lead a rag-tag group of pre-teens self-dubbed the Side of Damage in a holy war against “the Arrangement” — the jocks and teachers at their suburban Chicago junior high school — after which, you deliver your scripture.**The Instructions, all 1,030 pages of it, captures four days of this struggle. And it’s one of the more inventive, exhausting, entertaining, beguiling, hilarious and just awesome (technical reviewer term) novels I’ve read in a long time. But instead of doing what I just did — stringing together a list of unsupported adjectives and leaving you to trust me that they’re true — let me instead make the case why The Instructions is each. Hopefully, what emerges here is a more complete picture of this huge novel than a boring, run-of-the-mill book review could provide.1. Inventive — Building a novel around a messiah (false or otherwise) is nothing new, but when that maybe-messiah is a 10-year-old “Israelite, Chicago born” who agonizes over whether or not he is the Messiah, and then decides he really wants to be after he falls in love with 12-year old June*** well, kudos for creativity. The Instructions is actually Gurion’s scripture, written and published seven years after the events of 11/17/06, the fourth of the four days over which the novel takes place. But to tell his story and give us the best possible understanding of his university, Gurion uses a number of storytelling strategies: He gives us emails from former teachers (Gurion’s been kicked out of several Chicago-area schools for fighting, including an incident where he threw a stapler at the headmaster), reports by his social worker in his new delinquent-youth program at Aptakisic Junior High in Dearbrook Park, Illinois, and backstory on how his parents met and fell in love. What’s more, Gurion lets us read his ISS (in-school suspension) assignments, where he explains such playground concepts as “snat” and “face,” the history of “slapslap,” and shows us how to make a pennygun — a weapon created with a balloon and the top of a plastic soda bottle, and his soldiers’ weapon of choice. The effect of all these different strategies and style is a much better relationship with Gurion than a strict first-person narrative could’ve provided.2. Exhausting — Besides the fact that this wrist-cramping novel weighs about 3 pounds, which is exhausting in and of itself, Levin’s characters are extremely, um, thorough. They dissect everything logically and talk to each other in long, polished paragraphs. But these conversations aren’t so much digressions as they are scrutinies under magnification to the nth degree — of words, ideas, arguments. They read as logical syllogisms (if, if, if, then) and if you’re not in the right mood to be reading them, they can drive you mad, or cause you to doze off — which can be hazardous when you’re holding a heavy book. As one example, Gurion spends three pages debunking the Jewish superstition that if a pregnant woman steps on nail-clippings, she’ll miscarry. That one in particular is a lot of fun to read, but not all of them are. And, so, parts of the novel are exhausting..3. Entertaining — You don’t pick up a 1,030-page novel and expect that the story alone will keep you reading — unless the name on the front is Stephen King or Tom Clancy. Levin’s prose is magnificent — as entertaining in spots as it is exhausting in others. Did I mention Philip Roth has a cameo? As does a Smashing Pumpkins song. That was fun. Plus, characters have names like Boystar, the Janitor, and My Main Man Scott Mookus. Now, to address the 600-lb gorilla — comparisons to David Foster Wallace: Yes, they are appropriate. And never is this more clear as we’re thinking along with a character as s/he spells out an argument. That ability to allow his readers to see into his brain as he wrote was Wallace’s gift, and it’s Levin’s as well. And it’s infinitely entertaining to read prose written that way. But as amazing as it is that Levin keeps you interested in such a small universe over such a short period of time, the novel picks up some pretty amazing speed after the halfway point. I read about the last 300 pages in what seemed like five minutes.4. Beguiling — Levin’s most astonishing trick in this novel is that he quietly winks at his readers, and allows them to be okay with a 10-year-old thinking, acting, and arguing like a scholarly grown-up. He knows it’s not realistic, you know it’s not realistic, so you just go with it. If you don’t, you’ll probably stop reading on page 2. Beyond the messiah stuff, the real question of the novel and thus the real challenge for the reader is to understand Gurion’s overarching life philosophy. It’s not an easy question at all. Gurion is the son of a civil rights lawyer father, presumably far to the left ideologically, who defends anti-Semites and a psychologist mother who is a former member of the Israeli Defense Force, presumably far to the right ideologically. But Gurion’s own ideology is harder to pinpoint. His own outlook emerges slowly, piece-by-piece over time, and you really have to pay close attention to get it. The one thing that’s clear is that Gurion is frustrated and that leads to violence and damage. What’s less clear is why. Does Gurion believe the ends justifies the means? Is damage wrought in the pursuit of higher good acceptable damage?5. Hilarious — Ranging from slapstick to subtle to sarcastic, Levin brings the funny — it’s one of the many carrots that keeps you reading, and willing to forgive the exhausting arguments and logic. Here’s one (of hundreds) example: Gurion’s teacher tells him to “Mind the cheese doodles, Maccabee.” Gurion responds: “The mind Maccabee, cheese doodles” and then explains why he likes that joke.**** Another: Gurion explains, when Boystar is injured, that Boystar’s mother is upset because “she was shot in the son.” Part of the fun of the novel, too, is how badly Gurion’s followers misinterpret how they’re supposed to be following him.***** But Gurion, because he’s in love, and because he hopes he’s the messiah, goes with it and concocts a scheme so fantastical, you can’t help but laugh a little.6. Just Awesome — This is my catch-all, which basically just gives me an excuse to gush. I’m not Jewish, so I’m sure there was much inside-joke-wise I missed. Even so, I loved this book! It’s a book I couldn’t wait to finish work or showering or eating lunch to get back to. Again, it’s really too bad this novel won’t find a larger readership (probably much like this review, which is running at a ratio higher than one word of review per page of book reviewed.) The thousand-plus pages and relative unknownness of its author (though, hopefully that’ll change soon) will scare most readers away. But I encourage you whole-heartedly to carve out a few weeks and take it down.Footnotes(These footnotes are intended to give you an idea of Levin’s style, while attempting to mimic part of it.)*”Hashem is not perfect, I said, and I’ve never said He was perfect. I said, he’s not all-powerful, either.”**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 said, I used to think I wanted to be a scholar, then a soldier — but now, whenever I’m near you, i start to think I’ve been confusing means with ends. I think I wanted to be the messiah all along and I didn’t know it. I mean, I knew I wished the messiah would come, and a lot of times I wish I was the messiah, but the wishing — it wasn’t wanting; there’s a difference, I think…. What I’m saying is I want to be the me messiah, now. Or at least I want to bring him. Whenever I’m near you, I do. And I think that all along I thought that being a scholar or a soldier would help me become the messiah, or bring him, but–“****”I liked that joke. I used the exact same words that Botha had used but the words meant nothing the way I put them in order, and they sounded like they meant something since I said the sentences in the same way he’d said the originals, and with the same rhythm, and that demonstrated that English words were meaningless by themselves, that they were just lung- and mouth-sounds unless they were in the correct order, which was a paradox because the correctness of the order of a string of words depended on what the words meant, but if correct order was what gave words their meanings, then how could their meanings determine the correctness of the order? No one knew, and no one else thought the joke was funny, either.”*****SLOKUM DIES FRIDAY; WE DAMAGE WE

⭐ amazing. 1000 pages. a quarter way thru. incredible

⭐ If you like The Instructions, I highly recommend Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle. Likewise, if you enjoyed Beatty yo

⭐ This novel is one of the best debuts I’ve ever read, and one of my favorite reads altogether. You can taste the influence of those who came before him, but Levin’s voice is his own (and much more accessible (though no less exciting and intelligent) than the works of the most bandied about comparison, David Foster Wallace (my favorite author). where Wallace presents a brick wall in need of brick by brick deconstruction, Levin gives you the chalk to draw a doorknob, knock three times, and stand back as the door opens, welcoming you inside). Levin is a new voice – a successor and pioneer all in the same – who, with this debut, demands to be heard. I suggest you listen.

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