It reminds us of the duality of human consciousness, how we all make war with our own gibbering interior monologues, because the brain has a mind, if you will, of its own. Lionel describes it as something outside himself, like an invisible friend. In Motherless Brooklyn, Tourette's is a microcosm of the human condition. At points, Lethem's conception of Lionel's syndrome is brilliantly vivid. Lethem found it natural to place his obsessively twitchy protagonist within a crime-novel plot.The effect is gleefully absurd, even if the formulaic gumshoe plot pales next to the twinkle-toed narrative footwork. It's as if Benjy from Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury had escaped on to the pages of Raymond Chandler. Through Lionel - nickname Freakshow - he explores the relationship between what makes us tic and what makes us tick. Author Jonathan Lethem.has created, from what sounds like a ludicrous gimmick, one of fiction's most memorable narrators.
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