Daniel Barban Levin

This was a tough book to read, and is a tough book to write about. In the 2010s, Daniel Barban Levin spent a few years caught up in a cult-like group set up by the father of one of his fellow students at Sarah Lawrence College. The leader, a man called Larry Ray, claimed to be a defence intelligence operative with deep insight into the human psyche, but was in reality a manipulative conman who carried out a long campaign of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse against the circle of people he gathered around him. A number of the incidents Levin describes were so awful that I had to step away from the book for a while. There are certainly more graphic accounts of life in a cult out there, but Levin's recreations of Ray's narcissistic monologues made my skin crawl.

I'm glad that Levin eventually got away from the group and was able to rebuild his life, but I do have reservations about the book. Part of that comes down to its structure—there are parts that meander and that aren't as revealing as the author I think believes them to be. The bigger issue though—and it makes me feel terrible to write this—is that I found myself questioning aspects of Levin's narrative. To be clear, I'm not at all doubting that the group Ray led was as abusive as Levin states.

However, I didn't entirely buy how Levin presented himself to the reader. A couple of scenes had a whiff of BS to them: particularly one scene where he goes to meet with a former professor, who gushes about how Levin's dissertation reminded her of D.H. Lawrence, how she hasn't been able to stop thinking about his work, and how an essay he'd written as a first-year student had been so brilliant that it had made her reconsider her decision to retire because of it. If that meeting ever happened, I am deeply suspicious that it played out in the way that Levin presents it here.… (mer)

Poet Daniel Barban Levin shares an intense tale of belonging to a makeshift cult in this affecting memoir. As a young man, the author felt as though he was sinking as he struggled to find his way at elite Sarah Lawrence College. He fell in with a ragtag group of friends, oddly led by Larry, the formerly incarcerated father of one of them. Larry, who often made grandiose claims about his psychological acumen and importance to the U.S. military, promised that trusting him would give the friends the “clarity” they sought, but his methods involved mental, physical and sexual abuse. Finally, Levin found his way out of Larry’s and the group’s controlling clutches.

This book is hard to read, but worthwhile.… (mer)