I took a hiatus from my reviewing hiatus to write about Adam Levin’s The Instructions for B&N Review. The book runs a little over a thousand pages and, by the end, I would gladly have signed on for another thousand. Here’s an excerpt: Adam Levin’s dark, funny, and deeply provocative first novel, The Instructions, comprises the scriptures of one Gurion . . .
“[O]ne of the great failings of literary theory has been that the writing is not only impersonal, it also seeks mightily to be free of contradictions.” –Amitava Kumar
Mark Twain “is akin not only to Swift as a satirist, but also to Tolstoy and Dickens in his feelings for — and against — humanity, and to Chaucer and Shakespeare in his stature.”
The C.I.A. is suing a former agent over his exposé, Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture. He talks with Gregory Levey at The New Yorker.
Like the narrator of his new novel, The Instructions, Adam Levin “wanted to be the Jewish Messiah” as a kid. “I could beat up everyone in my grade,” he says. (Via.)