Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

“Context is everything. Dress me up and see. I’m a carnival barker, an auctioneer, a downtown performance artist, a speaker in tongues, a senator drunk on filibuster. I’ve got Tourette’s. My mouth won’t quit, though mostly I whisper or subvocalize like I’m reading aloud, my Adam’s apple bobbing, jaw muscle beating like a miniature heart under my cheek, the noise suppressed, the words escaping silently, mere ghosts of themselves, husks empty of breath and tone. (If I were a Dick Tracy villain, I’d have to be Mumbles.)”


The opening lines of Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem.

The opening section of the novel runs on in this breathless fashion for about a page, enacting the compulsive articulation that it describes and that characterizes the narrator, the Tourette’s-afflicted Lionel Essrog. Most of the novel is narrated in a straightforward first-person style, but it is bracketed, and occasionally punctuated, by these passages of direct address to the reader. The switch between the two modes is perhaps nowhere so pleasurably jarring as at the end of this opening section. Lethem spends a page making us feel the internal buildup of pressure that results in one of Lionel’s explosive exclamations; then when it comes, it is followed by a section break and we are immediately plunged into the familiar territory of private investigator novels, with Lionel and his partner on a stakeout. The fact that the partner responds casually to the outburst that climaxed the opening section neatly bridges the two.

Lionel’s initial presentation of his condition aligns neatly with the form of the novel in which he appears, a detective story: both are concerned with sense-making. Lionel asserts that behavior is understood, or becomes understandable, in context, and he offers a series of roles or situations in which his compulsive verbal ticcing would require no particular explanation. Likewise, the detective in a novel solves a crime by understanding the context in which it occurred: what were the histories and relationships of victim and suspects, what circumstances influenced their behavior, who benefited from the crime.

On the other hand, Lionel exhibits a degree of passivity somewhat odd for a detective, one that has perhaps been shaped by his experience of living with Tourette’s. He does not insert himself into the different contexts he conjures but rather invites the reader to dress him up. When he says that his mouth won’t quit, the implication that it has a degree of agency over which he has no control is not figure of speech but an accurate portrayal of his experience. Even when he casts himself in a famous detective comic strip, his role is forced on him by his condition.

The shock that opens the novel and sets the story in motion, however, is enough to jolt Lionel from his passivity and force him to assume the active stance of the investigator. And for the rest of the book, his Tourette’s-informed worldview becomes as much of a resource as a handicap.

Atlantis: Three Tales by Samuel R. Delany

I. Skyscrapers—that’s what he was most eager to see. But before entering the city the train dropped between earthen walls tangled with winter trees, sometimes becoming out the window, for a hundred feet or more, concrete.

II. The tallest building in the world was in New York—the Woolworth Building. Most people knew that; but he knew, counting basements and sub-basements, the Woolworth had exactly sixty stories—and not many people knew that.

III. Bring such information out at the right time, and people said: “What a smart boy!” which made up a little for the guilt he felt over his school grades: they’d been bad enough to silence Papa—

IV. recently elected bishop—and make Mama cry. Finally they’d decided to let him leave (clearly school was doing him no good) and come north to stay with his brother. Sam’s toes felt sticky in his socks.

V. Last night, he’d decided not to take his shoes off, afraid his feet might smell. This morning, however, though he’d already gone into the little bathroom with its metal walls to wash his face and hands,

VI. nothing about him felt fresh. Stretching, he arched his back, pulled his fists against his chest; the noblet of flesh on the left side—one male, milkless teat—caught a thread or fold in his shirt,

pulling till it cut.

The opening lines, but for the epigraphs, of “Atlantis: Model 1924” by Samuel R. Delany (found in the collection Atlantis: Three Tales). One of my favorite stories by one of my favorite writers. (And really, one should not disregard the epigraphs in Delany, even though I have done so here.)

I confess I have never understood the rationale for numbering the initial bits of text. It used to put me in mind of those philosophical works where each paragraph is individually numbered.

But these aren’t separate paragraphs; indeed, this text would seem to constitute a single paragraph if the numbers were removed. The first two seem more or less self-contained; that is, they start and end with the beginnings and ends of sentences. But any sense of internal unity seems to break down as the sections progress. While the first section stands alone fairly readily, the thought of the second continues straight on into the third, which in turn ends without completing its sentence. In the fourth, the turn from Sam’s parents to his toes seems rather abrupt, though the thought thus introduced then continues on not just into the next section, but even beyond to the last. And then that lovely phrase “pulling till it cut” abruptly cuts the numbered sequence altogether and signals the start of a more straightforward form of narrative (though it won’t last).

The numbering does finally reappear at the end of the story, a single section VII that encompasses a portion, though neither the beginning nor the end, of the story’s lyrical last sentence.

But even as all that is going on, the numbering and the broken sentences and all those dashes, what a terrific bit of prose it is, what an economical bit of storytelling. In this brief section, Delany has established the situation of the story: a young man from the country arriving for the first time in the city; he’s suggested a historical time frame: prior to the construction of the Empire State Building (reinforcing the “1924” of the title); he’s sketched the family dynamics that have produced this situation; he has manifested the physicality of his character; and he has conveyed that immature mixture of excitement and uncertainty and growing worldliness that will make Sam so interesting.

I’m insistent on its status as terrific prose because I’ve now decided that the numbering and the dashes, etc. suggest that the section is also a form of poetry. Those sections are stanzas. It’s formal poetry, too: each stanza is thirty-six words, something I’d never realized until I sat down to copy them out. And if that’s the case, they do serve to establish a lyricism that seems to me characteristic of the story as a whole; they suggest an experience that is both mundane and heightened.

Litany of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe

“Enlightenment came to Patera Silk on the ball court; nothing could ever be the same again.”

The opening line of Litany of the Long Sun (the first half of The Book of the Long Sun) by Gene Wolfe.

I’ve often heard writers wonder where they should start their story (and I’ve seen many stories that were started in the wrong place). There could be no question of that here: if your character is going to experience enlightenment, where else could you start but at that moment? And notice the “could”—not “would”—after the semicolon. How could anything be the same?

The line immediately teaches the reader an important lesson about reading this book, and that is, that it means what it says. If the book says “enlightenment,” it doesn’t mean “insight” or “understanding” or that some puzzle that had been nagging the character was suddenly clear, at least not in the quotidian sense. It means enlightenment, full-blown, head-on revelation. The first paragraph continues:

“When he talked about it afterward, whispering to himself in the silent hours of the night as was his custom—and once when he told Maytera Marble, who was also Maytera Rose—he said that it was as though someone who had always been behind him and standing (as it were) at both his shoulders had, after so many years of pregnant silence, begun to whisper into both his ears.”

The lesson about the text meaning what it says comes in handy in trying to puzzle out that bit about Maytera Marble also being Maytera Rose, though on this point, as on so many others, the book will take its time about making such obscure meanings clear. That literalness on the text’s part contrasts with Patera Silk’s use of the image of a person standing behind him to describe his experience of the enlightenment. The idea that the whispering is heard in both his ears also suggests the manner in which such an experience must be overwhelming and perhaps bewildering.

At this point, given the repetition of “Maytera” and the forms of the names, the reader also begins to guess that Maytera, and perhaps also by extension Patera, are not names but titles. And the very concept of enlightenment has already created the sense or expectation of some sort of religious context, which the notion of titles would also reinforce.

The paragraph concludes:

“The bigger boys had scored again, Patera Silk recalled, and Horn was reaching for an easy catch when those voices began and all that had been hidden was displayed.”

We are grounded again in the circumstances of his enlightenment experience, which, we’re reminded, occurred on a ball court. We may not know what the game is, but the references to scoring and an easy catch are clear.

And that last phrase: “and all that had been hidden was displayed.” What reader could resist such a promise?

Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris.

“When my mother died she left the farm to my brother, Cassis, the fortune in the wine cellar to my sister, Reine-Claude, and to me, the youngest, her album and a two-liter jar containing a single black Périgord truffle, large as a tennis ball, suspended in sunflower oil, that, when uncorked, still releases the rich dank perfume of the forest floor. A fairly unequal distribution of riches, but then Mother was a force of nature, bestowing her favors as she pleased, leaving no insight as to the workings of her peculiar logic.

“And as Cassis always said, I was the favorite.”

The opening lines of Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris.

Perhaps there is some sort of lesson here for me as a reader: here’s an opening whose style and strategy I generally find very appealing, but which in this case doesn’t work for me—and that response was characteristic of my experience of the entire book.

We’ve got a strong narrative voice that dives right into its tale; we’ve got hints of complicated family relationships and longstanding tensions; we’ve got an indication of another strong character, Mother, in the offing; we’ve got the odd and potentially charming detail of the truffle; and we’ve got the inversion in which an album and a fungus become the appropriate legacy for the favorite child while the less-favored must make do with property and a valuable wine collection.

Really, this is the kind of thing that should be catnip for me.

And yet, it instead had the effect of making me wary, putting me on my guard. It strikes me as being a bit too pat, too facile; it seems to be trying too hard to seduce me. And so it inspires resistance. Perhaps this was the response that the author hoped to inspire; after all, much of the novel is concerned with both resistance (the narrator’s against the authority of her mother) and the Resistance (of occupied France during World War II). But I doubt it.

As I say, my response to the novel as a whole was much the same. It features elements that I found appealing, especially a refreshingly astringent narrator and an unsentimental view of childhood. Yet overall I didn’t find it as engaging as I’d hoped I would. The foreshadowing is laid on rather thick, and the dark whimsicality is clunky rather than creepily charming. The book alternates between two narratives, one historical and the other contemporary, and its need to withhold information about the historical tale for purposes of climactic revelation is handled rather ham-fistedly, with the narrator petulantly complaining that she must tell the story in her own way.

All in all, a book by which I felt more manipulated than engaged.

Blindness by José Saramago

“The amber light came on. Two of the cars ahead accelerated before the red light appeared. At the pedestrian crossing the sign of a green man lit up. The people who were waiting began to cross the road, stepping on the white stripes painted on the black surface of the asphalt, there is nothing less like a zebra, however, that is what it is called.”

The opening lines of Blindness by José Saramago, as translated by Giovanni Pontiero.

Can one imagine anything more orderly and regular than the flow of traffic at a controlled intersection? Think of the time-lapsed films we’ve all seen, the metronomic stop-go, stop-go of the traffic even more evident when accelerated, pulsing regularly as the day and night advance around it. What better opening could there be for a novel about the breakdown of human organizations and systems?

The first light shown is amber—the caution light. As the novel will show, there will always be some people who will try to take advantage of these transitional periods; rather than exercise caution, rather than abide by the agreed-upon rules, they will rush ahead to try and “get theirs.” By constantly trying to push the limits for their own advantage, these selfish beings may overwhelm a system that is based on agreement and cooperation.

But here at the beginning, at least, the regulatory system is robust enough to handle the work required of it, and the pedestrians cross in their turn when the signal to do so appears. All these regulatory signals, by the by, being visual cues, so that when the titular blindness strikes a few moments later, the long breakdown of system and order will begin.

But first the novel pauses, as it will often do, for a brief aside about language, remarking the oddness of referring to crosswalks as “zebras,” but then simply declaring it part of the order of things and moving on, reminding us that in language everything is called what it is because “that is what it is called.” Language is the great and perhaps original example of an order imposed arbitrarily on the world by humans, functioning in a particular way simply because we all agree it will do so. Green means go, red means stop, and white stripes mark road crossings only because we all agree that it is so.

(And where does “zebra” come from, anyway? Is there any language or culture that truly refers to crosswalks as zebras? As an American, I am unfamiliar with the term. Is it a Portuguese thing? A European thing? Or did the author create it out of whole cloth?)

And then in the next paragraph, the long, slow unraveling of the social order begins.