Search for Identity
Motherless Brooklyn traces Lionel's journey from being an orphan to becoming a member of the Minna men, then transforming into an independent detective, and finally working as a legitimate car-service employee. In many ways, the novel is a classic bildungsroman—a narrative that delves into the formative years of a person, emphasizing the search for self-identity, truth, and sexual maturity. A key theme is Lionel's pursuit to discover his own identity and prove himself as a true detective. His various verbal tics on his name—such as Liable Guesscog, Laughing Gassrog, Confessdog, Freakshow, Valiant Daffodil, Alibi Diffident, Final Escrow, and Ironic Pissclaim—symbolize different aspects of his character.
Lionel's quest to find Frank's killer parallels his journey to understand himself. Only by avenging Frank's death can Lionel fully become an independent individual and a true detective. At the story's outset, Lionel notes that "the distance between me and me was enormous," but by solving Frank's murder and narrating his tale, he manages to narrow this gap. A crucial part of Lionel's self-discovery involves his attempts to connect with others, initially represented by his habit of carrying other people's cell phones and beepers. The story evolves from Lionel casually responding to others' calls and messages to successfully forming his own social connections, beginning with Kimmery and eventually with Julia and the other Minna men.
Language and Communication
Lionel's tendency to play with words or experience Tourette's outbursts is closely connected to his emotional states. This is particularly clear in the scene where Minna dies, which features a series of jokes increasingly mixed with Lionel's Tourette's symptoms as his distress intensifies. "Guy walks into the ambulance ramp stabs you in the goddamn emergency gut says I need an immediate stab in the garbage in the goddamn walk-in ambulance says just a minute looks in the back says I think I've got a stab in the goddamn walk-in immediate ambuloaf ambulamp octoloaf oafulope." Essentially, Lionel's unique way of speaking expresses emotions in ways that conventional language cannot. The punchline "I'm a frayed knot . . . I'm afrayed . . . we don't serve string" connects his humor—a form of communication with Frank—to Lionel's emotions. In this context, Tourette's serves as a way to express feelings that might otherwise remain unspoken, enabling a connection with others.
Deception and Truth
Indeed, nearly all the main characters are on similar journeys: Lionel, Julia, Gerard, and Kimmery are each exploring their identities and their roles in the world. None of these protagonists are what they seem: the Minna men are not truly a car service, Julia isn't genuinely a tough-talking woman, Gerard is not a real Roshi, and the Buddhists are actually involved in laundering money. In fact, the Minna men aren't a legitimate detective agency either; they undertake various tasks for Frank Minna without understanding their purpose or who they are working for. Even when the car service disguise is stripped away, another layer of deception is revealed. As a result, the story is both a mystery where characters are not as they appear and a quest where they seek to discover their true selves.
By uncovering the real nature of others—like Gerard, Julia, and the giant—Lionel learns about his own identity. Although Lionel doesn't find out about his "true" identity concerning his biological parents, he comes to a deeper understanding; he realizes that truth is complex and layered, made up of stories, or what Frank calls "wheels within wheels." Essentially, truth is a series of lies or narratives, much like how Lionel's "true" name is a collection of variations caused by his Tourette's syndrome. In the end, Lionel grasps that all identities are somewhat...
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constructed; however, he begins to distance himself from the identity Frank created for him as "Freakshow" and a Minna man, symbolizing his journey toward self-discovery.
Order and Chaos
The novel follows Lionel on his path to becoming what he only pretends to be: initially a detective, and later, a car-service worker. A key theme intertwined with Lionel's journey to become a genuine detective is the pursuit of order. The Minna men have specific roles and routines when they work together, creating a structured world through rhythm, language, habits, and more. Indeed, Motherless Brooklyn explores various social structures, ranging from the patterned behavior of the Minna men to the Zen practices Kimmery introduces to Lionel. The storyline revolves around the Minna men's attempts to restore the order of their disrupted world following Frank's death. All the characters endeavor to re-establish order in a world that has descended into chaos. Detection is a primary tool for restoring this order—it's not only what detectives achieve in mysteries but also what mystery novels provide for their readers.
Although Tourette's syndrome represents chaos and a lack of control, it also signifies the urge to impose order on the world. Essentially, Tourette's serves as a metaphor for the novel's theme of restoring order, symbolizing detection and resolution. As Lionel expresses, Tourette's is a method of identifying and correcting disorder: "The words rush out of the cornucopia of my brain to course over the surface of the world, tickling reality like fingers on piano keys. . . . They mean no harm. They placate, interpret, massage. Everywhere they're smoothing down imperfections, putting hairs in place, putting ducks in a row, replacing divots." Lionel describes his Tourette's as "just one big lifetime of tag, really. The world appoints me it, again and again. So I tag back." While this compulsion to verbalize, count, and touch interrupts Lionel's ability to work undercover as a detective, his obsessive-compulsive traits ensure he never misses a detail, making him an exceptional detective. The constant "wheels within wheels" of Lionel's mind are always in motion. His ability to perceive numerous variations of events, personalities, and words is what makes him a skilled detective; his ever-active mind makes him an ideal investigator: "Conspiracies are a version of Tourette's syndrome, the making and tracing of unexpected connections."
Consciousness and Duality
Another important theme in Motherless Brooklyn is the mystery of consciousness. Tourette's syndrome provides a unique lens through which to explore this puzzle, as it vividly demonstrates the mind's dual nature. Essrog refers to his "Tourette's brain" as though it operates independently, emphasizing this duality. When another character tells Lionel, "You're speaking without thinking," it underscores the separation between the subconscious, the conscious, and the spoken word. Lionel's tics serve as a bridge connecting the layers of the repressed, the thought, and the expression. In this way, Tourette's serves as a metaphor for the human experience—the duality between our public and private selves, described by Frank Minna as the "wheels within wheels" of our minds. For the Buddhists in the novel, achieving "One Mind" involves transcending the duality of consciousness. However, for Lionel, it is sex that merges these two aspects of his identity and overcomes his Tourette's: "Sexual excitement stills my Tourette's brain . . . by setting up a deeper attentiveness in me, a finer vibration, which gathers and encompasses my urgent chaos, enlists it in a greater cause, like a chorus of voices somehow drawing a shriek into harmony. I'm still myself and still in myself, a rare and precious combination."
Narration and Storytelling
In Motherless Brooklyn, Tourette's serves as a metaphor for both investigation and narration. In classic detective tales, the detective often narrates the story, intertwining the acts of solving mysteries and storytelling. Tourette's represents both the pinnacle of narration and its opposite—it embodies chaos while striving to understand the world. It can be seen as the ultimate condition for a narrator or writer: an urge to rearrange words and language, continuously seeking metaphors to describe experiences. Essentially, if Tourette's symbolizes narration, it also involves reading and writing. Lionel sees himself as a reader of the world, stating, "My mouth won't quit, though mostly I whisper or subvocalize like I'm reading aloud." By engaging with Lionel's language, readers become Tourettic, suggesting that all reading is a Tourettic act, as both involve repeating words in patterns and a dual mental process. A reader constructs the narrative just as a detective pieces together a mystery.
In Motherless Brooklyn, if everything is Tourettic, then Tourette's becomes all-encompassing. It serves as a metaphor for metaphorization itself, a wheel within a wheel. Viewing Tourette's as a metaphor for metaphors is, in itself, a tic, a symptom of Tourette's. As Lionel explains:
Have you noticed yet that I relate everything to my Tourette's? Yes, you guessed it, it's a tic. Counting is a symptom, but counting symptoms is also a symptom, a tic plus ultra. I've got meta-Tourette's. As I think about ticcing, my mind races, thoughts reaching to touch every possible symptom. Touching touching. Counting counting. Thinking thinking. Mentioning mentioning Tourette's. It's like talking about telephones over the telephone, or mailing letters describing the location of various mailboxes. Or like a tugboater whose favorite story is about actual tugboats.
