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From Publishers Weekly
If there still remains any doubt, this novel confirms Lethem's status as the poet of Brooklyn and of motherless boys. Projected through the prism of race relations, black music and pop art, Lethem's stunning, disturbing and authoritatively observed narrative covers three decades of turbulent events on Dean Street, Brooklyn. When Abraham and Rachel Ebdus arrive there in the early 1970s, they are among the first whites to venture into a mainly black neighborhood that is just beginning to be called Boerum Hill. Abraham is a painter who abandons his craft to construct tiny, virtually indistinguishable movie frames in which nothing happens. Ex-hippie Rachel, a misguided liberal who will soon abandon her family, insists on sending their son, Dylan, to public school, where he stands out like a white flag. Desperately lonely, regularly attacked and abused by the black kids ("yoked," in the parlance), Dylan is saved by his unlikely friendship with his neighbor Mingus Rude, the son of a once-famous black singer, Barnett Rude Jr., who is now into cocaine and rage at the world. The story of Dylan and Mingus, both motherless boys, is one of loyalty and betrayal, and eventually different paths in life. Dylan will become a music journalist, and Mingus, for all his intelligence, kindness, verbal virtuosity and courage, will wind up behind bars. Meanwhile, the plot manages to encompass pop music from punk rock to rap, avant-garde art, graffiti, drug use, gentrification, the New York prison system-and to sing a vibrant, sometimes heartbreaking ballad of Brooklyn throughout. Lethem seems to have devoured the '70s, '80s and '90s-inhaled them whole-and he reproduces them faithfully on the page, in prose as supple as silk and as bright, explosive and illuminating as fireworks. Scary and funny and seriously surreal, the novel hurtles on a trajectory that feels inevitable. By the time Dylan begins to break out of the fortress of solitude that has been his life, readers have shared his pain and understood his dreams.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
Dylan Ebdus is a white kid on a black-and-brown street. As he struggles through public school in 1970s Brooklyn, he is "yoked"--put in a headlock--and frisked for change on a daily basis. Testing into a good Manhattan school, he steps into a long-lasting role: vulnerable among street kids, he's street-smart compared to his new, privileged pals, and loathes himself as a poseur with both crowds. When he finds a ring that grants the power of flight, he's afraid to use it, but his black friend, Mingus, is not. They try their hand at crime fighting, but like many teenage endeavors, the project fizzles out. Lethem is a tremendous writer, and in the first half he uses magnificent language to capture the complexity of a child's worldview. When he jump-cuts to Dylan's adulthood, however, his switch to a more conventional narrative style is disappointing. The story regains momentum when Dylan rediscovers the ring and a new power it offers, then returns to his old street and ponders a sacrifice: whether to give the ring to the boy who yoked him the most. Lethem explores many avenues: the origins of gentrification, the development of soul music, the genealogy of graffiti, the seeds of the crack epidemic. The different concepts converge in the closing pages, but this often-excellent novel labors under the weight of its ambition. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Like a Bob Dylan Song,
This review is from: The Fortress of Solitude (Paperback)
Like a Bob Dylan song, "Fortress of Solitude" is a poetic and biting commentary on the human condition without resorting to being flowery, angry, or political. It is simply a fantastic book about coming of age in the face of adversity. The reviewer who made the comparison to "My Fractured Life" by Rikki Lee Travolta raises a valid point. There is the struggle for identity, the fallen idol, the inherent sense of tragedy, and the spanning of time. There is also the incredible subtle undertones of the main characters of both books being fascinated with superheroes because they represent a pain-free life that contrasts the brutal reality they - the hurt child inside - have struggled to live through. Many writers have tried to capture that kind of fascination but fall into the fantasy world the heroes represent as opposed to keeping that world distanced and maintaining a true sense of reality to the writing. "The Fortress of Solitude" and "My Fractured Life" are the only two books I've read that manage to fully maintain that divide and cement the integrity of the reality of the story.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Each Sentence a Paragraph - In a Good Way,
By
This review is from: The Fortress of Solitude (Paperback)
This is my first Lethem though he has been on my list for some time. What prompted me was reading a re-release of A.J. Davis' A Meaningful Life and finding that Lethem wrote the introduction. He reveals an interesting connection with Davis leading me to believe that the characters Abraham Ebdus and Barrett Rude Junior were partially influenced by him. But enough of my theories. In short, the book was a great read and my only complaint is with the speed in which I read it. I plan to revisit it in a few years and slow my pace. Each sentence is a paragraph, each paragraph a chapter, and each chapter a book - in a good way.The residential resurgence of Brooklyn in the early seventies provides a tremendous backdrop for characters who try to live within its complexity and reality. Lethem and I are roughly the same age and though I grew up in a very white neighborhood in Canada, I connected with the influence of comic books (I thought I was cool when I read more Marvel than DC), the trauma of witnessing my first physical fight and wondering if I was really there or if I had formed the memory from the resulting stories, the impact of music on one's life, the linguistic expressions understood only within a few blocks, and the dull shock of returning to the neighborhood years later and mentally cataloguing what has changed and what has remained seemingly constant. The book is a cultural history of three decades, a hipster biography of rich characters, and a jarring remembrance of growing up. It is honest and engrossing. Lethem lets us know that the world is a complex place regardless of how big your world is. His rifts on the comic book worlds are an analogy for our own - messy and disjointed. So Mr. Lethem, in my neighborhood in Winnipeg in the seventies, if things were good they were "Ten bears". If things were really good they were "Ten bears up a tree". Your book is the latter.
2.0 out of 5 stars
All that talent, but no plot,
By
This review is from: The Fortress of Solitude (Paperback)
This was the first time I read Jonathan Lethem, and for the first 20 or 30 pages I was undergoing a sense of shock regarding what a tremendously talented writer he is. His descriptive power is wonderful, and he paints his New York setting with great depth and compassion, but...this book is unreadable. After 140 pages, with still no plot in sight, and a unredemtively boring main character, I'm giving up. To this point, Lethem has been painting Dylan's life and world for us - Dylan's mom leaving the house, Dylan getting beat up routinely at school, Mingus Rude trying to show Dylan the ropes of life on the street. Fine and dandy, but there's no plot here, and despite how much we know about Dylan's life, we still hardly know anything about Dylan. He hardly ever says or thinks or does anything... he just drifts, and he has yet to become a character I care enough about to see how things turn out for him. I hope to read Lethem again, I hope his talents are matched with some taut plotting to make a truly engrossing read, but it did not happen in this book.
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