I just wanted to quote, “Context is everything” (1) because I like that sentiment. It’s particularly useful when you’re aware of your own contexts, and can play up/down certain aspects of yourself in a given situation. And I think that’s something Lionel “Freakshow” Essrog is able to do, more so later on.
I also liked that we discussed the passage on page 37, regarding Lionel’s foray into various mediums (books and TV) to find “signs of [his] odd dawning self.” Although he “failed to find the language of [himself],” it was Minna who brought him the language, “Minna and Court Street that let [Lionel] speak.”
For the first quoted part, I relate the idea of “representation in media” to Lionel’s Tourette’s (or rather, “lack of representation”). I think it’s natural to want to find someone/something to relate to, although that is particularly hard when one’s experience is not made visible or apparent; thus, there is an apparent failure to find a “language” to create/encompass one’s identity. However, it’s great when the right people/situation are found, as they can then enable that seemingly isolated person to “speak.” I liked reading how accepting Minna was of Lionel, and how this was elaborated on on page 57: “Now Court Street and Minna had begun to draw me out. With Minna’s encouragement I freed myself to ape the rhythm of his overheard dialogues, his complaints and endearments, his for-the-sake-of arguments. And Minna loved my effect on his clients and associates, the way I’d unnerve them, disrupt some schmooze with an utterance, a head jerk, a husky ‘Eatmebaily!‘ I was his special effect, a running joke embodied.”
Also, on a somewhat random note, I wonder how the fictitious Lionel would have fancied Monk (the TV series) and how his younger self might have reacted upon watching an episode, because all I could think about when reading this book was the fictitious, OCD, so-phobic-yet-so-endearing detective Adrian Monk. Or maybe if Lionel were able to watch Diagnosis Murder or Murder, She Wrote and see how gleaning seemingly random things enabled odd-yet-productive ways of ng? (Note: I might have the TV-viewing habits of someone twice my age like watching detective TV shows).
Michael,
That first line drew me in as well. Context definitely IS everything! A lot of trouble and misunderstanding can come from not having context. In connection to something like tourette’s, context is important. Had I been looking for a new book and came across Motherless Brooklyn in one of aisles, flipped to a random page and read “eatmeoreo” or “unclebailey blackman! Baramum bat-a-potamus!” without context, I’m sure I would have just put the book back.
I am a bit confused about your comment “when you are aware of your own contexts”. To me, context is related to the way people perceive something with the information they have at hand or the surrounding of that situation. How would one be aware of their “own” contexts? This raises an interesting question for me and I will keep it in the back of my mind as I continue reading.