Jeremy

Adam Levin is a wry, and clever, and - perhaps most importantly - fun author. That is the easiest takeaway one can have upon completion of his thousand page debut novel, The Instructions. It is almost glaringly clever, buzzing neon signs of cleverness that leave afterimages floating behind your eyelids as you speed your way towards his next clever sentence, clever passage, clever chapter. In the context of The Instructions, this elevates the material rather well, it being the story of not just a singular gifted child, but a group of gifted children and their endless socratic debates over playground politics and religious zeaolatry.

The style fits the content, a pitch perfect recreation of that cloying way a precocious child will flaunt his rhetorical talents for your praise. I am all too familiar with it as a formerly state-recognized gifted child myself. However, this voice that Levin nails so well does tend to get grating in the back half of such a massive work, does tend to feel a little one-note at times. I really did struggle between pages 600 and 800 to decipher how many Gurion-isms were actually Levin-isms and whether I was being too charitable with my (to that point unchallenged) assumption that the whole of The Instructions was an excercise in a character with verbosity-as-avoidance syndrome. I do think Levin mostly sticks the landing in that regard, but for those lengthy passages where the book ceased to be as fun as I knew it could be, and instead seemed more trapped in its character's meandering proselytizing, I had to knock down my rating a bit.

I also don't really understand the comparisons with Infinite Jest. I know from reading one of his interviews that Levin would agree with me there. The Instructions is much more narrow in scope, much more focused in voice. It's really a one-mode work, which makes its ability to hold attention for over a thousand pages all the more impressive. The only comparison I'd really make between the two (other than their status as doorstoppers) is that the politics of both seem to have grown more vital and contemporary as they've aged, at least in my opinion.

When the pot boils, the scum comes to the surface.

That is my main takeaway from The Winds of War. I've read a few of Herman Wouk's novels now and, like the rest, this one is another incredibly compelling drama detailing the conflicts and relationships between a well-drawn cast of characters. In this case it's a military family, the Henry's, and how they orbit the days of World War II.

While the characters and the situations they found themselves in kept me turning the pages, it was the setting and cultural attitudes which left me thinking about the book long after I closed the cover. Wouk's exploration of the larger social attitudes which allowed Nazism to flourish in Germany, as well as the indifference displayed by many Americans, made this book feel almost vital in this moment.

It is all too easy to draw parallels between the mass unrest which allowed facism to take hold in the early 20th century and the modern shift in the West towards ideaologies of bigotry. When speaking on the duology as a whole, Wouk noted that Winds of War was the prologue, setting the stage for the story he really wanted to tell in War and Remembrance, which covers America's experience upon entering the Second World War. Reading today, this first volume isn't prologue but prophecy, and a damning condemnation of how American exceptionalism has made many blind to the mainstream fascism which has taken root in the West today.

Here's how the stories in this collection broke down for me:

Little Heir Friedman: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Joker: ⭐⭐⭐

The Road to the Churchyard: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (really 3.5 but I'm being generous)

Gladius Dei: ⭐⭐⭐

Tristan: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Tonio Kroger: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Death in Venice: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I don’t typically read essay collections, but this was worth the hype. Didion weaves an affecting tapestry of an America that had only just begun to realize its capacity for decline.

The titular essay reminded me a lot of Inherent Vice by Pynchon, although it was written contemporary to the period it covers, as opposed to Pynchon’s retroactive examination. It makes Didion’s ability to tinge it with irony and nostalgia all the more impressive.

The Moon and Sixpence is a beautifully written novel about the personal cost of being an artist. W. Somerset Maugham has a very clear focus for this slim volume, intent on exploring what feels like an age old question - should we seperate the art from the personal life of the artist? It's a topic that has become increasingly relevant in the current era of online activism, accountability, and cancellation. Maugham makes his feelings clear from the novel's first chapter, suggesting that not only are the artist's personal failings a worthwhile sacrifice to make for their art, but indeed it's those failings that allow an artist to ascend from merely great to infamous.

I enjoyed a lot of the drama to be found in the novel, especially in the first 60% or so. The characters posed interesting dilemmas. There was tragedy, and comedy, and an unnamed narrator watching to relay each of painter Charles Strickland's sordid affairs to readers. However, just past the midpoint, I began to struggle with a dilemma of my own. Not as worthy of an entire novel like Maugham's, maybe, but a prickly one which, nonetheless, began to actively diminish the novel's hold on me. Am I capable of appreciating this novel, despite the language and ideas contained within that have aged horifically? Now, I'm no stranger to disagreeable social attitudes in books from before my time. It goes with the territory. However, for such a short text, Maugham has managed to pack in a lot to make the modern reader cringe.

I don't have a good answer to the question this novel gave me. I can't lie, however, and say the endless stream of misogyny and slurs in the book's back half didn't lower my esteem for it, nor that that fact isn't reflected in my rating. Maybe you will have a better stomach for these facets than me, and I don't begrudge any reader the experience. There's a good story to be had in these pages. However, for me personally, The Moon and Sixpence started out as a palette cleanser and transformed into an excercise in finding the line where a book begins to actively spoil in my hands. Despite that, I have a feeling this won't be my last book by Maugham (the prose really is that good), and it may not even be my final reading of The Moon and Sixpence. In fact, that may be the strongest endorsement of Maugham's thesis - the art above all else - that I can give.