“Motherless Brooklyn” by Jonathan Lethem (post 4): Protagonist does not recognize himself in mirror and has “no control in my personal experiment of self”

In this chapter’s first paragraph, before the protagonist gets down to the day’s practical matters, he reflects on not recognizing himself in the mirror (a symptom of multiple personality; search “mirror” and “mirrors” in this blog) and the two-way communication between personalities in his head:

“There are days when I get up in the morning and…I don’t even recognize my own toothbrush in the mirror…and I don’t know whether this is a symptom of Tourette’s or not. I’ve never seen it described in the literature. Here’s the strangeness…then: no control in my personal experiment of self…Personalityness. There’s a lot of traffic in my head, and it’s two-way” (1, p. 131).

He implies that this novel is an “experiment of self” in which he is trying to understand his “personalityness” and its two-way traffic in his head. Since he does not call it multiple personality, he apparently has not thought of it in those terms.

1. Jonathan Lethem. Motherless Brooklyn. New York, Doubleday, 1999.