44 pages • 1 hour read
Motherless Brooklyn
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Bad Cookies”
It is the morning after Frank’s murder. Half-asleep, Lionel, in a moment of honest reflection in front of his bathroom mirror, assures himself that he is indeed now a real detective on a real case: “I’d woken to the realization that I was Minna’s successor and avenger, that the city shone with clues” (132). He decides he will start with his only lead: the Yorkville Zendo.
The doorman is no help and suspects Lionel is a cop. When the girl Lionel saw during the stakeout arrives, Lionel approaches her. She introduces herself as Kimmery. She works at the Zendo, she tells him, and invites him inside. She explains the purpose of the meditation center and particularly the importance the facility’s founder, a mysterious American-born Zen teacher known only by his title: Roshi. Lionel inquires about the giant but gets nothing. The girl is nothing like Julia—Kimmery is quiet, sweet, retiring, studious—and Lionel finds her fascinating.
As Lionel departs the Zendo, two men suddenly come up behind him and brusquely hustle him into a waiting rental car. In the car are two other men. They are dressed like doormen in the same blue suit and sunglasses that still have the price tags on them. The quartet is clearly not experienced in the art of kidnapping and intimidation: their job, they claim, is to warn Lionel to stay away from the Zendo. Lionel is unimpressed and actually takes a phone call during the drive. It is Loomis with Ullman’s address on Park Avenue. Lionel turns the tables on his four kidnappers and asks them the name of the giant. Frustrated, one of them admits, “We’re no good at this. […] This isn’t what we do. We’re men of peace” (152). They pull over and simply cut out, abandoning Lionel in the car.
Ever on the case, Lionel rummages through the glove compartment and finds the vehicle’s rental agreement. The car has been rented for six months by the Fujisaki Corporation, which Lionel has never heard. As Lionel heads up to Park Avenue, he phones L&L. Tony answers. But, because of what Julia admitted, Lionel is not sure he can trust Tony and reveals little of what he has learned. Tony insists that Lionel come to the office, but Lionel declines. When Lionel gets to the Park Avenue complex, he poses as a delivery man looking for Fujisaki Corporation. He gets nowhere with the doorman and heads back to the street. After calling Loomis to see whether Fujisaki rings any bells with him, Lionel gets an unexpected call from Matricardi and Rockaforte telling him they need to speak with him, now.
Chapter 4 Analysis
This chapter marks our introduction to Kimmery. Against Lionel’s chaotic investigation into the mystery of Frank’s death, Kimmery introduces into the novel a clean principle of calm. She is a student of Buddhism and the tour she provides Lionel is the novel’s first suggestion that we are to take seriously the philosophy and vision of Buddhism: Motherless Brooklyn may be more than a murder mystery, and Lionel needs more than discovering Frank Minna’s killer to find authentic peace. Unlike Julia, Kimmery calms Lionel and even inspires him to be heroic. Lionel reluctantly leaves Kimmery, whom he wants to protect, in the Zendo, which he believes may be the operating center of the criminal enterprise responsible for Frank’s killing. It is for Lionel a first: a tender moment in which he reaches outside himself.
Because she is a student of Buddhism herself, Kimmery understands that Lionel must transcend the confines of his own chaotic head to find peace. This chapter introduces he novel’s first koan: a story about how Oreo cookies are made. Unlike a Christian parable or a children’s fable, a Buddhist koan is a teaching tool, a story impossible to understand and told to frustrate the mind, to create a sense of paradox and inexplicability. Meditating on the koan allows the student to transcend the limits of the mind and to experience a liberating illumination.
Kimmery offers Lionel Oreos. She tells the story of Oreo cookies, a story that has nothing to do with Lionel’s ongoing investigation. She tells him that two plants produce Oreos, each with head bakers who propose different ideas about product quality. Thus, there are good Oreos and bad Oreos all brought together at a separate shipping plant and then boxed together. However, few recognize the difference between good and bad Oreos, so they are essentially the same. Even as Lionel stuffs his face with Oreos, he resists the story, certain he could tell the difference, missing the point of the koan. In a panic, Lionel drops the Oreo and says that he needs to “put some distance between myself and the cookies” (143). He is not ready, we understand, for enlightenment. Lionel leaves the calm of the Zendo and returns to the world of duplicity, secrets, mystery, and confusion. Offered a strategy for living within that world, accepting it and himself as they are, he declines.
Unlock all 44 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Jonathan Lethem
