Motherless Brooklyn

by Jonathan Lethem

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.

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

Tourette’s teaches you what people will ignore and forget, teaches you to see the reality-knitting mechanism people employ to tuck away the intolerable, the incongruous, the disruptive—it teaches you this because you’re the one lobbing the intolerable, incongruous, and disruptive their way.

Gowanus Canal (the only body of water in the world, Minna would crack each and every time we drove over it, that was 90 percent guns),

My life story to this point: The teacher looked at me like I was crazy. The social-services worker looked at me like I was crazy. The boy looked at me like I was crazy and then hit me. The girl looked at me like I was crazy. The woman looked at me like I was crazy. The black homicide detective looked at me like I was crazy.

Guilt, like Tourette’s, tries again, learns nothing.