Best of 2010

The Instructions
by David Levin (pub. by McSweeney’s)

Reading this book closely--no "scanning"--will make you smarter. I wish I'd had it for students when I taught philosophy. Really.

I started actively regretting the fact that it would end before I had read 30 pages, and there were at that point another 1000 pages to go.

To say it is a Jewish novel would be like saying Faulkner's are Southern books--true, but still...
Yet, a Yiddish/Hebrew glossary has been a help.

I am only in the middle, at around page 500, and will not say yet that it is the great book I expect it to seem still at the end. But, even if it ended now, I would feel as rewarded as I just did at the end of "Super Sad True Love Story".

It is complex but every bit of it is understandable by paying attention. Though not for people who don't like thinking through every possibility, and certainly not expressed in the language of any 10 year old we have ever met, the thoughts are those of a 10 year old, as close as I can remember, and the "big boy" expression is what is necessary to keep my sense of humor engaged.

If David Foster Wallace had a clear and single plot--if James Joyce had cared to be perfectly understood--but what we do have is this rewarding book. I believe it will be a classic if it does not fall apart in the second half.