Adam Levin - The Instructions

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.

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.

** 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 Instructions for 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 any kind 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 had a 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 start of the Lunch-Recess period (regardless of what grade you are in) in which to purchase hot lunch in the cafeteria and return with it to the Cage. Simply tell the lunch monitor that you are taking advantage of the Hot Lunch Caveat, and he or she will escort you to the front of the serving line so that you may receive your hot lunch in a timely fashion. NOTE: IF YOU REQUIRE HOT LUNCH BUT YOUR CAFETERIA PRIVILEGES HAVE BEEN SUSPENDED, YOU WILL BE GRANTED THE SAME TEN-MINUTE WINDOW AS DESCRIBED ABOVE IN WHICH TO GET YOUR HOT LUNCH AND RETURN WITH IT TO THE CAGE. IN SUCH CASES, YOU MUST IDENTIFY YOURSELFTO THE LUNCH MONITOR, WHO WILL HAVE BEEN INFORMED THAT YOUR CAFETERIA PRIVILEGES HAVE BEEN SUSPENDED, AND YOU WILL, AS WHEN ELECTING TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE HOT LUNCH CAVEAT, BE ESCORTED TO THE FRONT OF THE CAFETERIA LINE BY HIM OR HER.” From under subheading 5 (“The Hot Lunch Caveat”) in “Chapter 2: Lunch” on p. 21 of Safety and Conduct Manual for the Cage . Click to return.

**** 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 will understand. Click to return.