Motherless Brooklyn Magnificent! Says I, loudly .mp3 (3.11 MB)
Mr. Jonathan Lethem
Vintage, 2000http://www.jonathanlethem.com/
I Have Never Enjoyed Being Cursed At This Much Before
If this link was clicked in hopes that a typical Critical Mick review would come banging off the wall, I'm sorry to disappoint you. Mr. Jonathan Lethem wrote Motherless Brooklyn with innovation enough for the both of us.
Yes, Mr. As in Mr. Sinatra. Mr. President. The reserved mark of deep respect.
The best novels are character studies, and Motherless Brooklyn excels. Over 336 pages, the novel tours the life of Lionel Essrog. The young orphan and three mates find a father figure in a rowdy, connected neighborhood tough named Frank Minna. Years later, the boys have grown into the Minna Men of Frank's unlicensed private detective agency. Then Lionel and Gilbert lose the car they're tailing. Frank gets knifed and dumped. Then joking, secretive Frank Minna passes away, whispering to Lionel a mysterious riddle. Damn! How tough guys can hurt.
What makes this tour unique is that it's told from the first-person perspective of a Tourette's syndrome sufferer. Our narrator is a man driven by compulsions, prone to cursing, touching, tapping. One compulsion is to tie everything to his condition, to describe his world in Tourette's terms. Shouting, counting, knocking. He also has a strange affinity to The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.
Despite that, Lionel is one perceptive, insightful, and -yes- articulate human freakshow. He reveals how that glyph is pronounced. Man, does he nail it.
OK, enough of this sensitive hooey. Mr. Lethem writes crime at its best. Car chases, mob bosses, big guys pistol-whipping each other, beautiful dames, detectives with deep stubble and Styrofoam coffee cups. Who can Lionel trust? That question keeps the pages turning. Who killed Frank Minna? Can a barking, jerking cripple of a man uncover the truth? Can he get the girl? And who's this Bailey who's haunting the book?
Motherless Brooklyn.
Mr. Lethem matches Lawrence Block's skill at painting New York. You can taste the food, then feel indigestion's burn. Two hundred and eight years from now, if people want to know what it felt like to walk the boroughs in the 1990's, they'll pick up Motherless Brooklyn.
For the early 21st century, they'll pick up its sequel. I hope there will be a sequel. The characters are introduced with force enough to leap vividly across the years and carry a series.
Critical Mick says: Five Papaya Czar miniature hotdogs out of five. With mustard.
According to imdb.com, Edward Norton's long-delayed screen adaptation of Motherless Brooklyn is finally shooting. This is one flick that will either bomb or become classic. How can a film take you so far inside a character's head? Eddie's a talented chucklehead, though. The kid's got vision. I'll plunk down nine bucks to see if he makes Lionel Essrog's worldview come through.
Sequel! Sequel! Sequel! Eat Me Bailey!
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