“A Lot of Things Have Happened”
by Adam Levin
from the December 27, 2021 issue of The New Yorker
I really disliked Adam Levin’s “Kid Positive,” the only thing of his I’ve read, when it was published in The New Yorker last year. But I’m willing to give “A Lot of Things Have Happened” a go, particularly since some of the comments showed I may have just missed the wavelength.
That said, I’m not entirely sure the opening entices me . . .
As Sara bunched up her nightshirt, she clocked a disturbance. Some movement or sound. Scraping? Paddling? Exhalations? It happened so fast, she said, she couldn’t be sure, but a rat in the toilet, submerged to the neck, was definitely trying to scale the bowl, and the next thing she knew she was standing in the bathtub, hollering for Darren.
Next thing Darren knew, he was brandishing a plunger and yelling at the rat, hoping to scare it back down the toilet.
Do I want to read the rest of this over Christmas? Probably not! But I will refrain from additional preconceived notions. I would love to hear what you think when you read it! Please comment below!
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I much prefer Levin’s writing when he’s puncturing cliches instead of inhabiting them. Autofiction in late 2021…um, I think the apropos phrase is “played out.” The Harry Crews reference works better than The Godfather, The Sopranos, or Orwell ones, but the Levin character’s smug blend of superiority and look-how-effeminate-castrated-and-egalitarian-I-can-be virtue signaling at not being macho (it’s basically anti-racism applied to gender, although he makes sure to throw some actual self-shaming-white-guy anti-racism candy to the PC/cancel/woke crowd, ie: the Kenosha “shootings”) are everything that Crews and his fiction were aligned against.
The Instructions is a bold venture and a fine sprawl of a novel with excellent character development, whimsy, and imagination, though one that falls short of its Infiinte Jesty aspirations. And previous New Yorker efforts are not trash (this one is, unfortunately, at least trash adjacent). Anyone here read Bubble Gum? It looked like bloated Gary Shteyngart, but I would be willing to be convinced otherwise. I just think he needs to get away from being brainwashed by the “stay in your lane” POV that is poison to real, uncompromised art. Come on, Levin, you have real talent, put down the plastic handheld mirror of solipsism you’re preening in; you’re better than this.
Read only part of this story, got turned off for the reasons described so eloquently in the previous commenters comment. What a comment! Go off, king!
I don’t know if it’s just me but this story seems to lack substance. Seemed like the writer didn’t have much to say and strung a few vignettes together. I enjoyed the section about the creative writing workshop but it was a brief episode.