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A review by joelkarpowitz
The Instructions by Adam Levin
5.0
I'm not entirely sure whether The Instructions is one of the best novels of the 21st century, or the most self-indulgent, or the least edited, or all three. I am sure that it's a fascinating, at times infuriating, at times disheartening, often hilarious, and ultimately ambiguous novel that I will continue to think about for days, if not weeks.
Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee is ten years old, a child prodigy, a disturbed boy, and just might be the Messiah. The Instructions, his book of scripture, spans four days (and a thousand pages), but it also spans years, and centuries, and millennia. In multi-page digressions he expounds on his own history, his family's history, Philip Roth, the Torah, Judaism, love, the nature of God, and more. The degree to which those digressions are enjoyable varies, but it is clear that author Adam Levin wants Gurion's ramblings to mimic (and at times mock) the minutia-loving exactitude of Talmudic scholarship. After all, Gurion thinks he is writing scripture in narrating this explanation of a junior high uprising, so every detail matters to him. At times it works well, and at times I really wish his editor had reined him in a little bit.
Gurion himself is both a fascinating and an exasperating character. The novel--as all works that ask you to take faith seriously do--requires the suspension of disbelief, both for a few seemingly supernatural occurrences and for Gurion's ability to contemplate, analyze, and dissect everything going on around him in incredible detail and in exhausting length. And if one honest-to-God prodigy isn't enough, as the novel goes on more and more of the characters seem to exercise these same tendencies, which is explained through Gurion's impact on those around him, but at times simply becomes an excuse not to filter, cut, or edit anything anyone is thinking. Multiple characters speak in multi-page soliloquies and monologues, and while often these are illuminating and entertaining, just as often they are overly long and weigh down the text. In mixing the junior high mindset of 10 and 12 year olds with the scholarly detail of yeshiva studies, Levin occasionally finds great success and comedy. But he also occasionally allows his characters and their speeches to wear out their welcome.
Ultimately--as Levin himself points out late in the novel--it is the ambiguity of the work which makes it most memorable: Is Gurion a heroic prophet--even the Messiah--or is he a disturbed young man whose violence, magnetic personalty, and ego all make for a lethal combination? Is he both? Is he more? Is he less? Does it even matter? At what cost salvation? Is (as he asks so often) someone like Gurion "bad for the Jews" or is he fulfilling his potential as a Messiah (or as a potential Messiah) or both? Is the casualness with which Gurion approaches death and violence a metaphor for Israelite strength or of Gurion's lack of affect and psychological damage? Is the control he exudes over those around him a sign of a great man who arises once a generation or is it the makings of a cult leader. Does the Gurionic war mean anything? Is Gurion's scripture accurate? Or is this all a world out of control?
The whimper of the novel's final few pages disheartened me after the bang leading up to it, and in the end I'm not positive how effective the novel is in the end, but the fascinating process of reading the book was one I quite enjoyed (even if it seemed to take forever at times). I would suggest that one's pleasure in this book would in part come from how interested one is in Judaism and how familiar one is with the tropes of Jewish fiction, and I have no doubt that were I more familiar with those tropes I would find much more to comment on here. For now, my casual reading of Roth and Potok and a few other writers will have to stand in for greater knowledge. But after all, I knew far less of whaling when I undertook Moby Dick than I did Judaism, so perhaps that criticism isn't really a criticism at all.
Ultimately, this is a really good 1000 page novel that I think could have been a great 600 page novel. Either way, I'm interested to see what else Levin will produce.
Grade: A-
Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee is ten years old, a child prodigy, a disturbed boy, and just might be the Messiah. The Instructions, his book of scripture, spans four days (and a thousand pages), but it also spans years, and centuries, and millennia. In multi-page digressions he expounds on his own history, his family's history, Philip Roth, the Torah, Judaism, love, the nature of God, and more. The degree to which those digressions are enjoyable varies, but it is clear that author Adam Levin wants Gurion's ramblings to mimic (and at times mock) the minutia-loving exactitude of Talmudic scholarship. After all, Gurion thinks he is writing scripture in narrating this explanation of a junior high uprising, so every detail matters to him. At times it works well, and at times I really wish his editor had reined him in a little bit.
Gurion himself is both a fascinating and an exasperating character. The novel--as all works that ask you to take faith seriously do--requires the suspension of disbelief, both for a few seemingly supernatural occurrences and for Gurion's ability to contemplate, analyze, and dissect everything going on around him in incredible detail and in exhausting length. And if one honest-to-God prodigy isn't enough, as the novel goes on more and more of the characters seem to exercise these same tendencies, which is explained through Gurion's impact on those around him, but at times simply becomes an excuse not to filter, cut, or edit anything anyone is thinking. Multiple characters speak in multi-page soliloquies and monologues, and while often these are illuminating and entertaining, just as often they are overly long and weigh down the text. In mixing the junior high mindset of 10 and 12 year olds with the scholarly detail of yeshiva studies, Levin occasionally finds great success and comedy. But he also occasionally allows his characters and their speeches to wear out their welcome.
Ultimately--as Levin himself points out late in the novel--it is the ambiguity of the work which makes it most memorable: Is Gurion a heroic prophet--even the Messiah--or is he a disturbed young man whose violence, magnetic personalty, and ego all make for a lethal combination? Is he both? Is he more? Is he less? Does it even matter? At what cost salvation? Is (as he asks so often) someone like Gurion "bad for the Jews" or is he fulfilling his potential as a Messiah (or as a potential Messiah) or both? Is the casualness with which Gurion approaches death and violence a metaphor for Israelite strength or of Gurion's lack of affect and psychological damage? Is the control he exudes over those around him a sign of a great man who arises once a generation or is it the makings of a cult leader. Does the Gurionic war mean anything? Is Gurion's scripture accurate? Or is this all a world out of control?
The whimper of the novel's final few pages disheartened me after the bang leading up to it, and in the end I'm not positive how effective the novel is in the end, but the fascinating process of reading the book was one I quite enjoyed (even if it seemed to take forever at times). I would suggest that one's pleasure in this book would in part come from how interested one is in Judaism and how familiar one is with the tropes of Jewish fiction, and I have no doubt that were I more familiar with those tropes I would find much more to comment on here. For now, my casual reading of Roth and Potok and a few other writers will have to stand in for greater knowledge. But after all, I knew far less of whaling when I undertook Moby Dick than I did Judaism, so perhaps that criticism isn't really a criticism at all.
Ultimately, this is a really good 1000 page novel that I think could have been a great 600 page novel. Either way, I'm interested to see what else Levin will produce.
Grade: A-