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Let me be succinct (a quality which totally escapes Adam Levin): this is not a great book. Those reviewers who are writing "I'm 2 chapters in and it's amazing!" should heed warning - it dazzles in the beginning and fades out like a muffled fart. I damn my own literary hubris for blindly believing that The Instructions would ultimately reveal itself as the messiah of contemporary fiction. Instead, I am embarrassed to admit that I have spent nearly two months pushing through this constipated, babbling ramble, always hoping that I was just on the edge of 'getting it'. There are mere moments of humor and wit that shine through like sullied gems, only to have a 1,000 pages of plotless turd heaped on top. The characters are only half-realized caricatures - all dialogue and no action. This is especially disappointing when it comes to Gurion, the main character, narrator and 'author' of The Instructions - so much of Gurion's inner dialogue devolves into nonsensical doublespeak and semantic debates, which ultimately makes him wholly unlikeable as a protagonist. I found the footnotes (one of my favorite things about DFW's Infinite Jest) to be a stylistic filler, much like the arbitrary maps and diagrams that peppered the pages. I hated that I found myself skimming over portions of the text, but the alternative - reading every floundering sentence on the page - was unbearable. Not enough can be said for the simple gravity of well-placed prose, but in The Instructions it is totally lacking. I can't recommend this self-important treatise to anyone but my most masochistic enemies.
The book explicitly states a desire to risk "predicting" future trends, so that readers of the future could easily judge his theories for their pragmatic worth. Fifteen years after publication, confirmation of this book's concepts can be found in both the macro environment of world events and the microcosm of the thoughtful reader's own web of social interactions: with parents, coworkers, peers and children. The book's thesis is that American history follows a near-century long cycle of four generational archetypes: secular builders, spiritual seekers, pragmatic rebels and refined curators. The living examples of these types are the G.I. generation who fought in WWII, the Boomers, Generation "X", and the "silent generation"-- born too late to fight with the GIs and too early to uh... frolic... with the Boomers. The book takes us on an tour of American history, highlighting the interplay between the historical forces shaping each generation in their youth, and how each generation makes their stamp on history as adults. It's a compelling argument, in that he illustrates how that generation's impact sets the stage for the generations following, perpetuating the cycle. The story is well-told and insightful; I am no scholar of history, but there is an intensely believable intellectual honesty. A significant deviation in the pattern appears at the time of the Civil War, but rather than shoehorn the facts to fit their pattern, the authors concede the disruption, analyze the situation, and present an explanation that rings true; indeed, that echoes into the present day. Here are just two simple predictions from the book (written in 1990-91, published in '92): American presidential leadership "skipping over" the Silent generation, from the "greatest generation" GIs to the Boomer generation (Bush I to Clinton). A "secular crisis" in the first decade of the millennium -- and the potentially disastrous results if that happened too early in the decade, when crusading Boomers were in charge, but pragmatic (yes, I said pragmatic) Xers were not yet influential enough to effect the implementation of policy. Written before the Internet, before the Clinton presidency, before "Generation X" was even named (Douglas Coupland's book came out contemporaneously, so the authors call Xers "13ers", acknowledging that their culturally accepted name will likely be different) "Generations: A History of America's Future, 1584-2069" should be read by anyone looking for an insightful, well researched sociological study with a futurist slant. Deep without resorting to cryptic conspiracy theory, Strauss & Howe's work is a page-turning read which could improve both our political decisions and our family relations.