Lionel Essrog, the protagonist of Motherless Brooklyn, suffers from Tourette’s syndrome—and his endless verbal tics and echolalia (repetitions of others’ spoken words) often take the form of wordplay, puns, and a steady stream of seemingly unassociated verbalizations. Through Lionel, Lethem explores the ways in which language shapes one’s understanding of the world—and the ways in which it can further one’s sense of isolation and unknowability. Lionel’s struggle to be heard, seen, and known is an ironic one: with his loud verbal tics and physical compulsions, he is hyper-visible and hard to ignore even on the busy streets of New York City. Yet the loudness and strangeness of his presence often make people discount what he says or avoid him entirely. Ultimately, though, Lethem suggests that language—no matter how it is expressed—is a way of making the world more knowable, comprehensible, and bearable to live within.
Lethem frames Lionel’s obsession with language as inextricable not only from his Tourette’s, but also from his identity as a self-proclaimed detective. When it comes to Tourette’s and detective work alike, language is Lionel’s way of investigating, interpreting, and understanding the chaotic, mysterious world around him. Lionel’s “Tourettic compulsions for counting, processing, and inspection” have been a defining force within his life since his childhood at St. Vincent’s orphanage in Brooklyn. As Lionel struggled to find the “language of [him]self” throughout his youth, he found release in his mentor and father figure Frank Minna’s encouragement—Minna, amused rather than off-put by Lionel’s verbal tics, which have all his life taken the form of repetitive and often obscene wordplay, encouraged Lionel to let his utterances flow rather than keep language “bubbled inside.” Lionel’s brain has always “sizzled with language,” and when he’s not performing tics, he can feel the compulsion toward wordplay welling within him like water straining to burst forth from a dam. Lionel uses language both to self-soothe his own irresistible compulsions and to try to understand the world around him. By playing around with words, syllables, and sounds, Lionel investigates the world and considers the linguistic meanings behind even ordinary words, names, and phrases, drawing connections between unlikely and disparate things. Lionel is able to investigate the world in this way—and though all the Minna Men consider themselves detectives in the making, Lionel is the only one who uses language to experience and understand the world around him.
Even when Lionel feels that his Tourette’s gets in the way of his ability to exist normally in the world, Lethem demonstrates how Lionel’s Tourettic speech actually allows him to express himself better—and thus make himself knowable in new ways to those who might initially struggle to understand him. For example, in a conversation with the Yorkville Zendo (or Buddhist study center) student Kimmery midway through the novel, Lionel tells Kimmery that he is “con-worried.” The word “con” slips out because Lionel, who is attracted to Kimmery, is struggling to monitor and control his tics in order to better communicate with her and make himself appear normal or even attractive to her. After uttering the word “con-worried,” Lionel fears Tourette’s has “mangl[ed his] speech again”—but Kimmery smiles, asking if Lionel conceives of “con-worried” as a way of expressing confusion and worry at the same time. She adopts the world herself, attempting to soothe Lionel by urging him not to be too “conworried.” This anecdote demonstrates how Lionel’s unique grasp of language—which often seems like the opposite of a grasp to him—actually works both ways. Lionel is better able to understand, interpret, and participate in the world because of his endless reinventions of language—but even speech that he fears he has mangled or corrupted actually allows those around him to understand him better. Language, Lethem suggests, is one of the greatest points of connections available—and just as it allows Lionel to feel more a part of the world, it allows those who want to get to know Lionel to feel more a part of his unique experience of it.
Lionel’s unique yet complicated relationship to language elevates Motherless Brooklyn from simple detective story or noir parody to a deeper investigation into the ways in which one can, through careful attention to the intricacies of language, create a deeper relationship with the chaos of the world. Lionel knows that just as his Tourettic tics are out of his control, so too are the actions of others and the changing tides of the world around him. Through language, Lionel seeks to find meaning in the world and to grasp its confusing, unpredictable shifts.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Language, Communication, and Understanding ThemeTracker
Language, Communication, and Understanding Quotes in Motherless Brooklyn
Food really mellows me out.
I gritted my teeth while my brain went 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.
“Oafyoulope!” I screamed, tears in my eyes.
With Minna's encouragement I freed myself to ape the rhythm of his overheard dialogues, his complaints and endearments, his for-the-sake-of arguments. And Minna loved my effect on his clients and associates, the way I'd unnerve them, disrupt some schmooze with an utterance, a head jerk, a husky "Eatmebailey!" I was his special effect, a running joke embodied.
Music had never made much of an impression on me until the day in 1986 when, sitting in the passenger seat of Minna's Cadillac, I first heard the single "Kiss" squirting its manic way out of the car radio. […] It so pulsed with Tourettic energies that I could surrender to its tormented, squeaky beat and let my syndrome live outside my brain for once, live in the air instead.
(in Tourette dreams you shed your tics)
(or your tics shed you)
(and you go with them, astonished to leave yourself behind)
"What's to be good at?" I said.
"You have no idea. Breathing for starters. And thinking, except it's not supposed to be thinking.”
"Thinking about not thinking?"
"Not thinking about it. One Mind, they call it.”
The woman on the line did it all by rote, and so did I: billing information, name of deceased, dates, survivors, until we got to the part where I gave out a line or two about who Minna was supposed to have been.
"Beloved something," said the woman, not unkindly. "It's usually Beloved something."
Beloved Father Figure?
"Or something about his contributions to the community," she suggested.
“Just say detective," I told her.
"I've got Tourette's," I said.
"Yeah, well, threats don't work with me.”
"Tourette's," I said.
I can't own a cat because my behaviors drive them insane. I know because I tried. I had a cat, gray and slim, half the size of Kimmery's, named Hen for the chirping and cooing sounds she made… […] She enjoyed my attentions at first, my somewhat excessive fondling. […] But from the very first Hen was disconcerted by my head-jerks and utterances and especially by my barking. She'd tum her head to see what Id jumped at, to see what I was fishing for in the air with my hand. Hen recognized those behaviors—they were supposed to be hers. She never felt free to relax.
On second thought, there is a vaguely Tourettic aspect to the New York City subway, especially late at night-that dance of attention, of stray gazes, in which every rider must engage. And there's a lot of stuff you shouldn't touch in the subway, particularly in a certain order: this pole and then your lips, for instance. And the tunnel walls are layered, like those of my brain, with expulsive and incoherent language—
"Roshi says this thing about guilt," she said after a minute. “That it's selfish, just a way to avoid taking care of yourself. Or thinking about yourself. I guess that's sort of two different things. I can't remember."
"Please don't quote Gerard Minna to me on the subject of guilt," I said. "That's a little hard to swallow under the present circumstances.”
“Will you take my order, Julia?"
"Why don't you go away, Lionel? Please.” It was pitying and bitter and desperate at once. She wanted to spare us both. I had to know from what.
"I want to try some uni. Some—orphan ocean ice cream!—some urchin eggs. See what all the fuss is about."
Is guilt a species of Tourette's? Maybe. It has a touchy quality, I think, a hint of sweaty fingers. Guilt wants to cover all the bases, be everywhere at once, reach into the past to tweak, neaten, and repair. Guilt like Tourettic utterance flows uselessly, inelegantly from one helpless human to another, contemptuous of perimeters, doomed to be mistaken or refused on delivery. Guilt, like Tourette's, tries again, learns nothing.
I needed her to see that we were the same, disappointed lovers of Frank Minna, abandoned children.
In detective stories things are always, always the detective casting his exhausted, caustic gaze over the corrupted permanence of everything and thrilling you with his sweetly savage generalizations. This or that runs deep or true to form, is invariable, exemplary. Oh sure. Seen it before will see it again. Trust me on this one. Assertions and generalizations are, of course, a version of Tourette's. A way of touching the world, handling it, covering it with confirming language.
That was me, Lionel. hurtling through those subterranean tunnels, visiting the labyrinth that runs under the world, which everyone pretends is not there. You can go back to pretending if you like. I know I will, though the Minna brothers are a part of me, deep in my grain, deeper than mere behavior, deeper even than regret, Frank because he gave me my life and Gerard because, though I hardly knew him, I took his away. I'll pretend I never rode that train, but I did.
Ullman? Never met the guy. Just like Bailey. They were just guys I never happened to meet. To the both of them and to you I say: Put an egg in your shoe, and beat it. Make like a tree, and leave. Tell your story walking.
