Rating: 
Summary: Coming of Age: Superheroes and Yokings
Review: Lethem has been called many things: a postmodernist, a wildly inventive novelist, a master of mixing and matching genres. These statements have all been true, in one way or another. Now Mr. Lethem proves he may one day write the great American novel, and is off to a fantastic start with "The Fortress of Solitude", a novel which owes as much to Dickens as to Lethem's hero, Dick.
Lethem presents the novel in three parts: Underberg, a third person account of Brooklyn, beginning in the 70s, Liner Notes, the jacket of an album written by the protagonist, Dylan Ebdus, and The Prisonaires, a first person narrative by Dylan, who is returning home to finally come to terms with his past.
The strongest storytelling is found in part one. Through the omnipotent, unbiased narrator, the reader is given a perfect painting of time and place, as well as some of the finest drawn characters Lethem has ever created. You can hear the music, see the clothes, and even smell the smells. The creations of Abraham Ebdus, an artist who is working on a film that may never be completed while designing sci-fi paperback book covers for money, and Barret Rude, Jr., a singer who has locked himself away in addiction, are truly masterful. The air of melancholy and fractured dreams is tangible and wonderfully moving.
Many critics were flabbergasted by Lethem's audacity to have his two protagonists acquire super powers from a ring given to them by a homeless man. These critics are missing the point. This subplot of every day people dealing with extraordinary gifts is completely woven into the thematic structure of the entire dramatic engine---we human beings, by the very nature of being human, are limited by our very humanity, despite our best intentions.
What is perhaps more audacious than this tricky literary feat, is Lethem's head-on, and often blunt manner in dealing with race. Dylan, the only white boy in his neighborhood, is the target for countless "yokings", and other tortures, though his best friend, Mingus Rude, who happens to be black, does his best to protect him. There is a telling moment in part three where an adult Mingus recalls his participation in a yoking, how he was responsible for the "mean" face. Dylan counters by wondering when exactly a black boy learns he's scary.
In short, Lethem gives us a startling portrait of human beings with tremendous flaws, who are redeemed by moments of grace. We forgive them, because their struggles to make it day by day mirror our own.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written and compelling
Review: Lethem is a captivating writer and he does a great job of bringing you into the experience of a white kid growing up in a mostly black neighborhood during the 1970s.
"Fortress of Solitude" is an insightful work, bittersweet in many ways, as it removes the veneer of race relations in the post-civil rights movement, to reveal the harsher realities that some had to endure.
I would recommend this book both as a fine literary experience as well as a socialogical masterpiece. It is well worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful and compelling characters
Review: Like the finest of authors, Jonathan Lethem cracks a hole through time and space to deliver the reader back several decades to a small neighborhood in Brooklyn that has long since vanished in a cloud of gentrification. As someone of a similar age to his main character and having been raised in Brooklyn, I could not help but find his descriptions evocative. As in his previous works, Lethem uses a powerful combination of imagery and finely crafted characters to carry us through his story. Dylan the protagonist and his small world of Dean Street seem so real one could reach out and touch them. Mingus Rude, Dylan's friend and neighbor, offers a powerful foil and often breaks your heart. Indeed, Mingus will linger in my mind for some time as one of the great supporting characters of any novel I've read.
Two things in particular stand out in this work. The first, Lethem's ability to use small details to draw deep lessons will be familiar to readers of his previous work. An example I particularly liked is Dylan's artist father who paints movies, one frame at a time, creating master works that take days to complete seconds. Another great success, Lethem's use of magic akin to the works of the great Latin American authors of the 20th Century deserves particular note and praise. To his credit, the author succeeds where few before him have, folding this concept seamlessly into an American milieu.
If I offer any complaint on the book, it must be Lethem's apparent difficulty ending this magnificent novel. In a work where I hungered for closure, I found myself with none. This may well have been part of the lesson Lethem wished to communicate, but if it was, it was painful to learn.
Rating:
Summary: Very Solid-thoughtful
Review: This book was great. I know I've gained some street credibility since I read it. As a matter of fact I just did my first "yoke" yesterday. Awesome!!!!
Rating:
Summary: A definite Must-Read!
Review: This is the story of the long and difficult friendship between two boys: Dylan Ebdus, a white kid brought to the projects by a fierce Brooklyn mother determined to have her child grow up in the streets, as she did; and Mingus Rude, the black son of an almost-famous and mostly-forgotten soul singer, transplanted from the suburbs as part of an ugly divorce. Dylan, floundering for acceptance among the black and Puerto Rican neighborhood kids, swiftly finds an ally and protector in Mingus, though why Mingus accepts the burden isn't clear - for a burden is precisely what Dylan is, a helpless and vulnerable thing, a conspicuous pink blotch in a sea of brown. Nevertheless, their relationship continues through childhood to adolescence and adulthood, wobbling precariously from disco's death through the advent of hip-hop, the roots of tagging and "style wars," urban deterioration and the introduction of crack cocaine, and the inescapable truth of their differing color. Lethem has proved himself a gifted and inventive writer, with books under his belt like Gun, With Occasional Music (a futuristic sci-fi/noir featuring a hard-boiled detective in a world of human-animal hybrids) and Motherless Brooklyn (a darkly comic mystery with a Tourettic protagonist), but Solitude is breathtaking. Its rapid-fire prose, full of sharply rendered description, astonishes and delights, wheeling from limited omniscience to directly (and accusatorially) addressing the reader, vividly evoking the mental agility and glib tongue needed to survive on the streets. Lethem himself is a Brooklyn boy, and his familiarity with, and affection for, the streets shines through clearly in every sentence. Likewise, the characters are achingly realistic and intensely sympathetic, defined and hobbled by their setting. Both boys struggle to cope with absent mothers and distant fathers (one absorbed in an eternally unfinished art project, the other steadily diminishing from a cocaine addiction); both negotiate the volatile territory of their respective races and its inevitable implications on their friendship, their personalities, and their prospects for the future. Never condescending or judgmental, Lethem takes pains to show us his characters as people; if they find themselves in stereotypical situations, well, it's because these things really happen in the projects. Mingus and Dylan may not be completely likable all the time, but they are always realistic and astonishingly convincing. The only flaw lies in a rather puzzling device that appears intermittently through the book. In a terrifying and bewildering series of encounters, Dylan meets and receives a magic ring from a raving, homeless alcoholic who claims it allows him to fly; with the help of the ring, Dylan and Mingus (fueled by a love of comics) create a superhero who keeps watch over the mean streets of Brooklyn. At first, I understood this to be symbolic, a vaguely embarrassing return to make-believe by teens who aren't ready to accept the disappointing fact of reality, but the ring returns, and plays a fairly central role in the ending that only makes literal sense if it's actually magical. It's a confusing and unnecessary device, one of Lethem's few missteps, but isn't enough to substantially dampen enjoyment (though it does require some suspension of disbelief). A masterly and deeply moving tale of friends, families, and the evolution of hip-hop and street culture, The Fortress of Solitude is one of the year's few must-reads, and an impressive addition to Jonathan Lethem's ouev. The only other title I strongly recommend -- the only other one that comes to mind -- is THE LOSERS' CLUB by Richard Perez
|
