The Instructions by Adam Levin
Same with name you give to the holiday. Last Day of School Day, Day of Damage, Yom Nezek—I prefer the Hebrew, but call it what you want.
And whether or not I think I’m the messiah, or the potential messiah, or ever thought I was one or thought I was both and now think I’m neither—that’s minutiae, too.
Whether I daven, and where I daven, if I don’t just stand here—at six-foot-three and one-buck-ninety or six-foot-six and two-bucks-thirty or five-foot-nine and thirteen stones—in my digitally tricked-out nine-by-nine cell. What I’ll do when they release me in 2017. Whether or not I’ll join the IDF. Whether or not I’ll go into hiding. Whether or not I’ll attend yeshiva. Whether or not I’ll open a yeshiva. Whether or not I’ll lead my own army or enter Shin Bet or run for office for Shas or Labor or start my own party. None of it matters. You don’t need to know it. It is all minutiae. Quit with the minutiae. Become the wise son. Isn’t that what you want? That should be what you want.
Become the wise son and instruct your simple brothers: “The Temple is not descending from the sky. The Side of Damage was good and the underdog is good. Fear Adonai and look after June.”
And instruct those brothers who don’t know how to ask yet: “The Temple never would have descended from the sky. The Side of Damage was complicated, Adonai is fearsome, and anyone can tell his own underdog story. Be wary of underdogs. Look after June.”
Recognize your wicked brothers are beyond all instruction, that that’s why they’re wicked, but keep your eyes sleepy and instruct them nonetheless: “Stay away from our brothers and leave June alone.”
He thought we should fucken waterboard each other. How can you protect somebody like that?
You’ll know when the Gurionic War is over. Every day is Yom Nezek except for Shabbat. Observe Yom Nezek. Celebrate and celebrate. Adonai is damaged. Look after June. I led the Side of Damage before I led you. Doubt your underdog story no less than any other. I’m an Israeli, Chicago born. There will be more damage, I’m the end of the Jews, and the Temple will never descend from the sky.
Damage, damage, and damage, the end.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you, Lanny and Atara Levin, for pretty much everything, especially the sisters.
Thank you, Rachel and Paula Levin, for always showing up, all funny and kind, and for allowing me to be your older brother all these years.
Thank you, Leslie Lockett, for always being Leslie Lockett, for every last thing your being her entails.
Thank you, Susan Golomb, for your acts of agency.
Thank you, Summer Literary Seminars, for the white nights and boat rides.
Thank you, Sid Feldman, for introducing me, way back when, to the work of Philip Roth and Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, and for then, not so way-back-when at all, inviting me over for home-cooked meals—scores of home-cooked meals—to which I couldn’t bring wine or dessert or even a sixpack, and for never making me feel like a shnorer. You too, Renee Feldman.
Thank you, Adam Novy, Arthur Flowers, Christopher Kennedy, Daniel Torday, Eric Rosenblum, Rachael Rosenblum, Jeff Parker, Kathryn TeBordo, Mary Gaitskill, Mary Karr, Mikhail Iossel, Phil LaMarche, Sophie Caird, and Thomas Yagoda, for your counsel and encouragement and hospitality.
Thank you, Christian TeBordo, for reading this book before anyone else, before it was even a tenth of this book, and then when it was more than ten tenths of this book, for keeping me sane for the past nine years, and for never turning down a single invitation to go outside in the cold and smoke.
Thank you, Salvador Plascencia, for your early reads and provisions of sanity, and for coming out to smoke even though you never smoked, except for once or twice, for three or four drags, or maybe five or six, on a snowy porch, late in the night, which was thrilling and weird and made me feel strangely guilty, and Christian too, I bet.
Thank you, George Saunders, for teaching the unteachable, and for letting me into the Syracuse University Creative Writing Program, where I met half the people named on this page.
And thank you, Eli Horowitz, for keeping the faith, for doing this right, for being the kind of reader and editor the doomsayers tell us no longer exists.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam Levin’s stories have appeared in Tin House, McSweeney’s, and Esquire. Winner of the 2003 Summer Literary Seminars Fiction Contest and the 2004 Joyce Carol Oates Fiction Prize, Levin holds an MA in Clinical Social Work from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. His collection of short stories, Hot Pink, will be published by McSweeney’s Books in 2011. He lives in Chicago, where he teaches Creative Writing at Roosevelt University and the School of the Art Institute. The Instructions is his first novel.
Footnotes
** The blossoming Gurionic oral tradition has been making far too much of this. That a touch to my head could cause me to explode is significant enough a fact to mention, but it isn’t a fact that anyone should dwell on. I only dwell on it here for the benefit of a certain kind of well-intended scholar who would otherwise waste his patience and energy awaiting revelation of an origin story explaining the fact, or, even worse, fruitlessly searching The Instructionsfor evidence supporting any of those “theories” about the fact’s “meaning” that the oral tradition has lately put forth. To clarify further:
1. There is no untold backstory that explains why I would become dangerous when touched on the head. No head-striking abuser haunted my past. I’d never suffered anykind of trauma to my head. I’d never inflicted a serious head-trauma, let alone one that I later regretted, nor had I witnessed such a trauma inflicted on anybody else, much less someone close to me. I’d never been forced to perform fellatio. I’d never seen anyone receive fellatio. No one had or would ever use my head or any other of my bodyparts against my will for any sexual purpose.
2. It is true that my head, like anyone else’s, contains my brain, and that my brain, like anyone’s, generates thoughts that, if unexpressed, cannot be accessed by anyone—including Adonai—but me. The idea, however, that my head-touch-triggered danger would arise because I wanted to protect my “one true sanctum” from “invaders” is patently false. I’d been exploding from head-touches since before I could remember; since the day I was born, according to my mother; since before I could make the (silly) leaps in symbology necessary to conclude that protecting my braincase = guarding my unexpressed thoughts; since before I even knew that I hada brain.
3. There is no genetic or biological link between my mother’s “ocular neuroses” and my head-touch explosions. As my Story of Stories(p. 115) faithfully reports, my mother learned to guard her eyes zealously; she wasn’t born doing it.
And so, in sum: As a rule I’d get dangerous when my head got touched, and as a rule I’d use my right hand to hold a glass of water. The former fact bears mention because it is peculiar and because it has potentiated important events and decisions I’ve made, whereas the latter fact doesn’t bear mention (except to make this rhetorical point), for it isn’t peculiar and it hasn’t potentiated anything important. Both facts, however, are simple facts, in that they owe to chance, neurology, or the whim of Adonai, depending on the flavor of your reductive urges. Simple facts, good scholar, aren’t worthy of your disquisitions, not with so many complex ones at hand.Click to return.
** Though a seventh-grader at the time, Emmanuel (along with Samuel Diamond, also a seventh-grader) had been in Rabbi Salt’s eighth-grade Torah Study for nearly three years by then = they both had scholarly talent to burn, and Emmanuel almost definitely wouldn’t have asked such a basic question if he didn’t think the other students would benefit from hearing it addressed.Click to return.
*** “The Cage is an ever-available island of physical and emotional safety. If, for any reason, you wish to spend the Lunch-Recess period in the Cage, you may. It is your right and privilege to do so. If you would like to exercise this right, but you are in need of hot lunch, you will be permitted a ten-minute window at the st
**** Bonnie Wilkes, PsyD, convinced Brodsky to apply the modified STEP System and consider the five periods Benji spent cooling out in her office on Tuesday his first ISS.Click to return.
***** I.e., I was #35, then Egon and Mia Marsh disappeared; Renee Feldbons, Jerry Throop, and Ansul Entsry arrived a week later, all the same day, bringing the tally to thirty-six; #37, Remus “Chunkstyle” Heany, came a couple weeks after that; and Forrest Kennilworth, who arrived in mid October, was #38.Click to return.
******Because both of my faithful translators have convinced me that there are scholars out there who will be made confused by my decision to include a “somewhat intricate” ten-page history of the Main Hall Shovers at this point in the scripture, and because there is, unfortunately or not, no better point in the scripture to include said history, I’ve elected to provide this cumbersome footnote (all eighteen footnotes to the scripture proper, are, I should mention—as long as I’m embracing cumbersome explaininess—after-market parts that owe their inclusion to similar advice from my translators, to whom I owe much, and to whom you owe much, and to whom, above all, we’ll owe even more just as soon as I’m finished here, for they’ll be the ones to field your questions in my stead) in which I will, following the colon, state something I’d have hoped would be obvious to everyone, but apparently isn’t: Without knowing the history of the Main Hall Shovers and their scarves, scholars of today (ca. 2013) will not be able to fully comprehend the mechanics of the Damage Proper, nor will scholars of tomorrow (e.g., ca. 4013) be able to understand the Gurionic War’s larger context. Furthermore, I want to assure you that if you feel a little lost, it’s not because you missed something, but rather because I haven’t gotten to it yet. So now I’ll start getting to it, and finish later when I’m finished. You willunderstand.Click to return.
******** As per the assignment, all five sessions were recorded on mini-cassette and are available at your request.Click to return.
******** Is it so weird to see your actions and motives discussed in an academic paper, Bonnie? It was definitely weird for me to write about you, knowing that you’d be reading what I wrote—not to say that I take issue with your (from what I’ve been told) highly uncommon policy of reading everything your interns write about their clients, not at all. That is to say that if the paper at hand does shed any light on Gurion that may prove useful to you, I’ll be proud. Either way, I hope we’ll have time to process all of the weirdnesses in our next supervision session. (Btw, for obvious reasons [like formality and relevance to the assignment at hand], this footnote does not appear in the version of the paper that I handed in to Professor Lakey—It may be the case, as you sometimes seem to be telling me in veiled ways during supervision, that I’m a little too permissive or forgiving sometimes and that I have a convoluted and tangent-ridden explanation-style, but I’m definitely not some kind of flake or weirdo who’d include a footnote addressed to you in a paper being read by one of my professors. Anyway, jIH muSHa’ Daj tlhej Hoch wIj tIq [that’s, “Have a good weekend,” in Klingon. {JK!—not JK that it’s Klingon, but JK that I’d think Klingon was appropriate.}])Click to return.
******** Am I right, Bonnie?… supervision on Monday.Click to return.
******** That said, I am determined, despite the length of the quotation, to stay within Assignment 3’s 15–18 page-limit, since, judging from certain comments you’ve penned onto Assignments 1 and 2, it seems you’d rather have us, or at least me (lol! Professor Lakey, lol!), err on the side of saying too little, rather than saying too much, which is, I think, totally understandable, and so, to that end, I have cut out my own contributions to the discussion (again, if you want, you can listen to the audio tape), and replaced them with ellipses.Click to return.
********I do not mean to imply, by describing it, that you, Professor Lakey, are unfamiliar with the term codeswitching. Quite the contrary—it’s that, seeing as you have a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of California at Santa Cruz (’93), I’m sure you’re more than familiar with the term, and, being that you’re my favorite professor (and believe me: I’m not grade-grubbing when I say so—I’m not a grade-grubber), who I respect in so many ways, I become fairly nervous when writing papers for your class and only hope to convince you that I know what codeswitching is. And what’s worse is that I realize how overcompensatory I’m coming off right now, like I’m even maybe trying to hide something, and probably I am, but I don’t know what it is, if not the aforementioned nervousness, which, on one hand, seems reasonable (to be nervous seems reasonable), but on the other hand seems dubious (that this feeling I have which arises from the copious amount of respect I have for you is merely nervousness seems dubious), and so maybe you, who are as well-renowned (as you know) as a clinician as an academic could provide me with some insight into what the root of this nervousness might be some time outside of class. I wouldn’t dream of asking you to do so—help me with my dubious nervousness re: you—during your office hours, which I respect as your time to meet with students in an academic way, but maybe at some other time, outside of school. If you can spare the time.Click to return.
********Despite their having the same name, the fictional Jewish writer Zuckerman of My Life as a Manis not the same Zuckerman as the fictional Jewish writer Zuckerman of Roth’s “Zuckerman Novels” (e.g. The Ghost Writer, American Pastoral, The Human Stain).Click to return.
******** Roth’s response to my letter, in its entirety:
Dear Lioncub, Son of Judah the Mallet,
Whereas the praise you’ve showered on my work is deeply flattering, your reading of Operation Shylockeerily incisive, and the section of your letter in which you mimic recent so-called Jewish wunderkind authors both terrifically cruel and on point, your insistence that you are a grade-schooler—despite being mildly entertaining at first—quickly grew as tiresome as your pseudonym. Normally, I wouldn’t mention it—normally, I don’t respond to fan letters at all—but because you strike me as a serious writer of slapstick (I did a Kosmo Kramer–worthy spit-take while reading the part of the letter in which the junior rabbis on the playground debate whether hanging the Natalie Portman poster would violate the second commandment; specifically the section of that dialogue in which Rabbi Samuel claims the poster would be kosher if only the mole on Portman’s cheek—“This mole a dark half-centimeter of flesh which, in failing to be dissonant with the rest of her face, commands the viewer’s acknowledgment that Natalie Portman is perfect”—weren’t showing, and Rabbi Emmanuel responds tangentially, however talmudically, that the mole is not a mole but a birthmark, “for a mole is a squinty animal in the light of day, and one cannot both squint and wink at once; surely you will not insist, Samuel, that Ms. Portman’s birthmark fails to wink at us in the light of day.”), and because you seemed, as well, to be soliciting my advice, I thought I would offer you some: You don’t need this conceit that you’re a nine-year-old. Nor the pseudonym. Your jokes and insights the both would come across better if instead of writing from the unconvincing POV of a boy-genius whose name suggests a messianic fate, you wrote from your current POV: that of
Best of luck to you. If ever I write you again, it will be after I’ve read your first book. Of course I won’t know its author is you because I don’t know your real name, but I am certain that once you publish a book, someone will get it into my hands. Til then, I have my own novels to complete, and thus no time for pen-palliness. I trust you understand.
Nearly Yours,
Philip Roth
Click to return.
******** Actually, by the end of my second week at Schechter, my reputation as a scholar was beginning to spread, and a lot of kids had started making friends with me; at the time we devised the plan, however, only the kids in my Torah Study liked me.Click to return.
********Realcellies, these, of which there weren’t so many at Schechter. (Cellies were still expensive, the technology was as yet mostly frowned upon for kids, and controlling-parent-friendly call-plans didn’t exist. This was still two whole years before New Traditions in Safety Industries—maker of the kid-hostile Nojack phone—had even been venture-capitalized.)Click to return.
******** For most intents and purposes, Blonde Lonnie might as well have been Co-Captain Baxter—both were blonde and both were tall, both were bullies and A-team starters, both of their mouths seemed to sneer in repose—which accounts for why Reuters would so often miscaption those stills from the videos of the Damage Proper in which both would shortly appear, but Blonde Lonnie hadn’t picked on Eliyahu of Brooklyn whereas Co-Captain Baxter had knocked off his hat, and so, for Eliyahu, to whom that meant a lot at the time, and thus for those scholars of coming generations whose commentaries’ focus will be Eliyhau, distinctions between the two blondes need be made.Click to return.