Chicago’s great, gridded expanse can largely be laid to the vision of architect and planner Daniel Burnham, who said “make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” Chicago’s literary history is fractious with schemes and schemers who thought big even when they were small men: remember Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago” imagining the city “laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth.” Of all the literary salvos of late, the largest is certainly the 1,030-page breadth of 33-year-old Chicagoan Adam Levin’s first novel, “The Instructions.” While it portrays a messianic 10-year-old who makes battle with the world, the nine-years-in-the-writing epic looks like it could serve as a weapon in itself, a rose red or powder blue slab that announces, make no small reading plans; do not read while barefoot. (Roberto Bolano’s vast “2666” is a mere 912 pages.)
