Okay, one more post: I will never stop being ticked off that the second result you get when you Google “The Instructions” is Joshua Cohen’s awful review in the NYT, one of the worst book reviews I’ve ever read (and I’ve read a lot of book reviews)

Not only is it poorly written, not only does it miss the point

But Cohen uses it to hawk a book he wrote, as though presenting it as some sort of superior alternative to the one under review

How tacky can you fucking get

(Note: Please do not read this review unless you have read the book – not only does it suck, it also contains MASSIVE SPOILERS)

little yud and the child slave rebellion

I just finished The Instructions for the 2nd time

This is a pretty meaningless title because it doesn’t usually stay fixed for very long, but right now I’d say it’s my favorite book – by the criterion that it’s the best marriage of “apparently objective writerly skill” and “how do you know exactly where all of my personal buttons are.”  (We Have Always Lived In The Castle was the same way, but, well, it was a lot shorter)

What I still almost can’t believe is that it was a first novel – usually first novels aren’t that good but you say “well this shows promise and it’s a first novel after all.”  But Adam Levin not only wrote a first novel that didn’t require that excuse, he wrote a first novel that was [makes Eric Wareheim “head exploding” gesture]

(I know these fanboying posts are probably not interesting to a lot of you – this is probably the last of them for now)

One of the things I like about The Instructions is that it depicts psychologically abnormal characters in a school setting in a way that rings very true to me.

Most of the central group of characters have psychiatric disorders of some kind, but this isn’t highlighted at first.  In fact, it only becomes fully clear (I think?) when, about a third of the way through the book, you get to read a therapist’s report about the characters in question.  The report is very jarring to read, because up until that point the characters have been depicted in a very positive light, as larger-than-life, slightly cartoonish, even kind of mythic/heroic figures, and the psychiatric report just calmly lists their disorders and uses phrases like “a very troubled boy” and mentions that the teachers have started privately referring to this social group as “Spooky and the Spastics” – which is jarring not just because it’s hostile and dismissive, but because it’s so hostile and dismissive toward characters who have been portrayed so radiantly up until that point, and it’s momentarily hard to line the two up in your mind

But actually it makes a lot of sense.  If you’re in a cutthroat adolescent social environment and people are going to view you as different, there are strong incentives for you to find a positive way to spin that difference.  If equality is off the table, then that leaves inferiority and superiority, and the latter is sure preferable to the former.  The incentives point toward trying to frame your friends as the kinds of “others” that adolescents like – folk heroes, inspired class clowns, mad geniuses.  And even if this self-presentation is entirely artifice at first, one’s self-presentation often ends up shaping one’s own view of oneself.

That is, what I described as the “radiant,” “larger-than-life” portrayal of these characters rings very true to me as the way these characters would actually see themselves (and, to some extent, be seen by others) in an actual middle school.  It feels refreshing to me compared to the kind of portrayal I’m more used to seeing, where a writer introduces a mental illness right at the beginning in a very obvious way, and then proceeds to develop the character to show they’re not just “defined by their illness” or whatever.  That’s fine as far as it goes (I guess?), but doesn’t necessarily correspond very well to the way someone would see the illness internally.  "I’m different but I’m not defined by it" isn’t necessarily the best story to tell in a given social environment, especially in a very judgmental one.  At best it has you fighting for a legitimacy that everyone else takes for granted, and at worst, well … 

(I don’t know how much sense this makes – in any case it’s an attempt to gloss the more basic feeling that the book rings true to me because it reminds me of the way I’ve viewed my friend groups at various points in the past)

There are things in The Instructions I still have no idea what to make of, like the fact that, among so many other things, it appears to be some sort of Obama allegory?

Like, OK, one of the final chapters is called “The Verbosity of Hope.”  That’s clearly a reference, but it wouldn’t, by itself, make the story an allegory.  But the main character is mixed-race and promises radical change, so OK, maybe … 

And then – I didn’t make this connection until just now, on my second reading – in the chapter called The Verbosity of Hope the main character comes into conflict with an incidental character who has a fake Texan accent

This isn’t really what the book is “about,” it’s just there, for some reason???  It’s what it would be like if that infamous “Eridan’s arc is an allegory for the Obama administration” post was actually credible (yet still just as off-the-wall)

I’m in the last ¼ of The Instructions now, and while I won’t deny that the second-to-last ¼ has its dull moments, I’m now back to my usual involuntary response pattern to reading The Instructions while alone, which is occasional hysterical cackling combined with occasionally saying things like “oh my god I love this book” in a weird falsetto

On that note, reading about the extremely modern and abstract and trans-material and ethically sophisticated God of Francis Spufford while also reading about the Adonai of Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee is quite a trip, let me tell you

I read the last 250 pages of The Instructions the day before [S] Cascade came out, during a week in which I had unwittingly started drinking coffee with way more caffeine than I was used to

I could not handle all of the feels

That was a somewhat different Rob in a lot of ways.  I’m not sure what changed, and whatever it was it was mostly for the better, but late 2011 Rob had his moments

suggestions

I know I’ve been talking about it quite a bit lately – I am nothing if not repetitive – but The Instructions is really a wonderful book

I guess I feel especially inclined to recommend this particular book to people because it has a lot of traits that add up to a figurative “don’t read me” sticker taped to its back

• really really long
• compared on the back cover to Philip Roth, who a lot of people dislike
• cutesy precocious kid narrator
• meta?  difficult?  pretentious?

when in fact this is all pretty misleading

• it looks physically gigantic because it was printed in an odd format, but its word count is not really all that large (i.e. it’s just a normal 1000-page book, which is nothing compared to Game of Thrones or Harry Potter)
• bears very little resemblance to Philip Roth, except in that it’s about modern Judaism and Philip Roth is mentioned in the story (which is probably what brought the comparison to mind)
• OK, you do have to be able to deal with a cutesy precocious kid narrator and that is a dealbreaker for some people, but this book has a really really good one, trust me
• there’s some metafictional stuff going on but the book is relatively easy to read, has an involving plot and fun characters and humor and does not feel at all like the dreary PoMo tome you might be expecting from the marketing

And, all of that aside, it’s probably the best example overall example of a story that is relevant to my interests while also being (as far as I am any judge of such things) objectively well-crafted.  It’s just really damn good, and if you’ve found this tumblr at all interesting, I think there’s a good chance you’d like this book.  It’s about the kind of stuff I am about.

(P.S. if you’re looking up info about the book, I recommend trying to avoid spoilers, and in particular I recommend NOT reading the New York Times review.  It’s both full of spoilers and also a bad and tacky review in general)

Every major character in The Instructions is just so goddamn adorable

I guess I should be thankful this book doesn’t have a tumblr fandom, because that would be bad for all the usual reasons and because it really could, if you know what I mean