Novels No. 9 (LL327)

 

Jonathan Lethem. Motherless Brooklyn. 1999. NYC: Vintage Books/Random House, 2000.

One of my "fillers," not sure how it came to my attention (note the publishing date); but so worth it. Lionel Essrog has lived with Tourette's syndrome all his life. He's worked for minor crook Frank Minna a lot of that time: first for L & L Movers, and then for L & L Car Hire, which is not a car hire but a detective agency. Frank may be the one person in the world who loves Lionel, enjoying his spontaneous outbursts and treating (insulting) him like a regular guy. Lionel himself is smart, articulating a catalogue of his own tics that render warmth and humour to his relations with fellow orphans and self-taught detectives—Gilbert, Tony, and Danny.

We quickly adapt to Lionel's unruly tics, his excited utterances ‒ their rhythm or odd relevance ‒ often funny as he laughs at or struggles with himself. In his speech, they are punctuated by italics. Certain situations, he recognizes, can either trigger them or calm him down. Lionel finds himself learning Zen upon meeting Kimmerly, who has a calming effect.

When Frank dies on Lionel's watch, the Minna Men are in grieving disarray; no one knows where his brother Gerard is. They expect Loomis the sanitation inspector (aka "garbage cop") to provide a pipeline into the police investigation. But Lionel is determined to find his mentor's killer himself. Although Frank kept some of his dealings private, Lionel can't help suspecting the shadowy, elderly, sinister duo that Frank always deferred to: Matricardi and Rockaforte. Tony takes charge of the agency and the hunt for a killer, or so he thinks; Lionel doesn't trust him. M & R caution Lionel to cooperate with Tony, giving him the surreptitious mission of finding Julia, Frank's missing wife.

Though Lionel tries to conduct himself like a noir sleuth, the story is half-wacky or endearing in turns; as he says himself, it's an "echolalia salad." In the film (2019) based on the book, Ed Norton plays Lionel. Seems like great casting to me. I hope to find it somewhere.

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. (1)

▪ For me, counting and touching things and repeating words are all the same activity. Tourette's is just one big lifetime of tag, really. (5)

▪ "We're—Detectapush! Octaphone!—we're a detective agency. We're going to catch whoever did this." (101)

▪ "He shouldn't get in my way. Essway! Wrongway!" I winced, hating to tic now, in front of them. (174)

▪ "Lionel Essrog" ... "Unreliable Chessgrub," I corrected. My throat pulsed with ticcishness. (229).

▪ Insomnia is a variant of Tourette's—the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has turned away, touching it everywhere, refusing to settle, to join the collective nod. (246)

Lionel

▪ Together we pulled Minna up from the bottom of the Dumpster. Minna stayed curled around his wounded middle. (24)

▪ At moments like this I was reminded of the figure we Minna Men cut, oversize, undereducated, vibrant with hostility even with tear streaks all over our beefy faces. (35)

▪ It was more like a museum diorama of Old Brooklyn than a contemporary room. Seated in two of the plush chairs were two old men, dressed in matching brown suits. (61)

▪ "It wasn't us, Julia," I said. "We just didn't manage to keep him alive." (100)

▪ "Who'd you think? Gilbert! They got him up on killing some guy name Ullman." (119)

▪ The garbage cop laughed. "Jesus, Lionel, you crack me up. You never quit with that routine." (123)

▪ "Someone else may be involved in this somehow. Two of them, actually—Monstercookie and Antifriendly—uh, Matricardi and Rockaforte." (235)

▪ I was alone now, no Minna, no Men, my own boss on this stakeout with who-knew-what riding on its outcome. (247)

Frank Minna

▪ "You know what I want out of you, Freakshow? Tell me a joke. You got one you been saving, you must." (25)

▪ Minna's weird views filtered down through the jokes he told and liked to hear, and those he cut short within a line or two of their telling. We learned to negotiate the labyrinth of his prejudices blind, and blindly. (67)

▪ He loved talk but despised explanations. An endearment was flat unless folded into an insult. (69)

▪ "All right, Frank," said Gerard, turning his back to the fence. "Motherless Brooklyn appreciates your support. I think we better get on the road." (81)

▪ "I'm long over my disappointment that Frank liked to surround himself with a cavalcade of clowns." (185)

Ron Corbett. Ragged Lake. Toronto: ECW Press, 2017.

Another "filler." The tale is set on the Northern Divide in Canada, where rivers decide to flow north or south. Fictitious place names stand in for real cities and towns, a bit confusing geographically; "Springfield" is presumably a main city on the Saint Lawrence River. Detective Frank Yakubuski ("Yak") with Springfield's Major Crimes is called to a depressed lumber area way north, taking cops Dennis Buckham and Matt Downey with him. Because: murder victims were reported in an isolated lake cabin. Hours by snowmobile and GPS navigation bring them to the cabin for a preliminary view; a young girl has also been shotgunned, as well as a man and a woman. This is very rough, currently snowbound country.

Mattamy Lodge is in Ragged Lake, the nearest hamlet, now almost abandoned with its deteriorating former pulp and paper mill. There, the police set up headquarters; tracks indicate the murderer had gone there from the cabin. Yakubuski sequesters everyone in the building, staff and patrons—who comprise the entire hamlet population—but a killer is not evident. The dead couple are identified as Guillaume Roy and Lucy Whiteduck who stuck closely to their isolated location. Yak will soon read Lucy's diary that implies who their killer might be. In checking the nearby survival school for possible inhabitants, the police are attacked with gunfire and explosions when they approach. More mayhem, when unexpected new arrivals threaten everyone's survival. Reinforcements are caught in a snowstorm.

It's probably a "guy's book," with its details of the pulp and paper industry, logging, and fishing opportunities, but strong depictions of the northern landscape and the enduring presence of the Cree are beguiling with eccentric loners and native voices. Lucy's sub-story is realistically grim but touching. Yet another story lurks beneath, that only the killer knows. Corbett has produced previous Yakabuski books, I learn. I wonder why "cue" is used for "queue" more than once. Yak, the big military-trained cop himself, is not totally defined for me.

Yak and others

▪ From a distance, the rigger said, the cabin looked like a Christmas tree about to keel over. (2)

▪ When they entered the bar, nine people turned to look at them. Nine expectant sets of eyes — a few with the unfocused look of people who had been sitting there too long. (36)

▪ "We spent a night there and the next morning continued on to Sarajevo. Guillaume was in the company that stayed behind to secure the building and start burying the dead." (76)

▪ "Prettiest girl I ever saw at Five Mile. Her father was Johnny Whiteduck." (95)

▪ "Cuff him to the back of your sled, Donnie, and let's head back to the Mattamy." (154)

▪ "It's never mattered to me," said Guillaume. "And that's no bullshit, Lucy. It's never mattered." (217)

Lucy's diary

▪ I think I knew, even in those first few months, that I was kidding myself about starting a new life simply by avoiding the Silver Dollar, going to meetings, getting a new job, and pretending I was a new person. (107-8)

▪ Those are the two most common AA personality types. Awkward earnest or hopped-up desperate. (112)

▪ Running would have been like putting a target on my back. (116-7)

▪ We do not need all the money the government sends and we try to overspend, so no one will think we have money stashed in the cabin. (197)

▪ I go to visit her from time to time and have told Guillaume about her, this old Cree woman living high on a bluff overlooking Ragged Lake, although I have not told him the whole story. (199)

▪ But if he didn't come looking for me, what in the world would bring someone like Tommy Bangles to Ragged Lake? Tommy hates the outdoors. (212)

▪ The men Tommy is drinking with might already be thinking I am an unresolved problem. (214)

Faith or confidence?

"What about religion? Isn't that a way to complete a person in a good way?"

"You should have gone to university, Lucy. Have you ever considered it?"

"Please, Dr. Mackenzie, I'm serious."

"Well, yes, religion would be a way to complete a person in a good way. You're right about that. And it is a natural desire to want to belong, to have companionship and shared beliefs. But for the addict, this natural desire is twisted and out of balance."

"It becomes an obsession."

"Yes, that would be a good way of describing it."

"Every saint was obsessed."

"Lucy, where are you going with this?"

"It is the reason I stay with Guillaume. Why I need him. You must see it."

"I'm not sure I do."

"You just said it. Saints are like addicts. Drug-zonked crazy addicts, but we don't call them drug-zonked crazy addicts. We call them saints. That's because they know what they're doing."

"I'm still not following."

"If I know what I'm doing I can't be an addict. Self-awareness changes addiction into something else. Something good." (122)