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The Fortress of Solitude

3.87 of 5 stars 3.87 · rating details · 11,256 ratings · 1,010 reviews

The Fortress of Solitude is the story of Dylan Ebdus growing up white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. It's a neighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along with games of stoopball. In that world, Dylan has one friend, a black teenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude.

As Lethem follows the knitting and unraveling of their friendship, he cr...more

Paperback, 509 pages

Published January 6th 2005 by Faber and Faber (first published September 16th 2003)

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Aug 28, 2010 Caris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010

I feel that it would be wise to make a distinction here. The first half of the book gets five stars. The second half, including the American Psycho-esque “Liner Notes,” gets three, tops.

I found myself in disbelief as I progressed through the second half of the book. When I started, I was in love. Lethem had created his meaningful, heartfelt work that, I feel, would resonate with almost anyone. In the second half, though, it degraded. And quickly. Rather than focus on the character study as he ha...more I feel that it would be wise to make a distinction here. The first half of the book gets five stars. The second half, including the American Psycho-esque “Liner Notes,” gets three, tops.

I found myself in disbelief as I progressed through the second half of the book. When I started, I was in love. Lethem had created his meaningful, heartfelt work that, I feel, would resonate with almost anyone. In the second half, though, it degraded. And quickly. Rather than focus on the character study as he had done, Lethem decided to go for an event driven plot that frequently shifts perspective. This was a mistake, as the reader spends a significant amount of time acclimating to Dylan and his internal monologue. We learn about all of the other characters through Dylan’s eyes, but later, are expected to act as though that treatment established each player well enough to stand on his/her own.

Dylan’s childhood was wonderful to read about. A lone white kid growing up in a black neighborhood, his everyday life should be a nightmare, but isn’t. Rather than succumbing to the endless yoking and petty theft, Dylan keeps his head up. He finds friends and interests, losing himself in the lives of his buddy Mingus and various comic book characters. His methods of coping with his environment are amusing, so much so that I started to forget how hard his life really was. Moving beyond his ingenious methods of protecting his comic investments against theft on the way home, his reactions to interpersonal relationships are staggering. It seems that in the midst of all of this violence and anger, he learned to simply accept things for what they are. When he walks down the street, someone is going to steal his money. Mingus is his friend, but will not protect him from the other kids. He doesn’t even experience any real anger at his mother’s behavior, which he really, really should have. This attitude is what kept me engaged in the plot. Truth be told, each day was strikingly similar to the previous one. The subtle differences, those things that pushed this poor kid just a little further, tested his outlook and proved that he understood the world in a way that others could not.

It is that childhood attitude that makes the second half so implausible. Dylan grows up. He becomes a music journalist. He’s a casual drug user who thinks nothing of his infidelity. He’s essentially cut ties with his past, but remains obsessed with it at the same time. Mingus is always on his mind, though, for the most part, the reflections are an intellectual exercise. They have nothing at all to do with Mingus and exist only as a chain to interlock the two halves of the book. Insert the aforementioned changes in point of view and we’ve got ourselves a poorly constructed ending. I cannot express how disappointed I was at this point. I was introduced to the thoughts of all of these peripheral characters (who I only cared about through Dylan’s eyes), and, essentially, a new Dylan. New Dylan sucks. Everything about him is abrasive, from his boring life to his narcissistic obsessions. Everything is about making good with himself, though it’s everyone else he left behind.

And I wasn’t going to address it, but there’s an element of fantasy that worms its way through the book. I didn’t care for it. Its initial presence wasn’t too bad (it was a nice complement to Dylan’s helplessness), but as it gathered up the focus for the final act, it just got stupid. I don’t mind a little bit of strange, but I do expect it to be integrated into the story. This was like ketchup on an ice cream sundae.

That said, I enjoyed the book as a whole. I look forward to reading the final draft.(less)

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Sep 22, 2007 Garth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"First, a confession: I approached Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude with high expectations--not impossibly high, but perhaps high enough to bias my reaction to the novel. I first learned that a new Lethem book was forthcoming from a contributor’s note in Harper’s, where Lethem this spring published a wonderful essay on the nearly forgotten critic Edward Dahlberg. I added “The Fortress of Solitude-September” to the weird little list I keep of titles to look out for. Then, toward the end...more "First, a confession: I approached Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude with high expectations--not impossibly high, but perhaps high enough to bias my reaction to the novel. I first learned that a new Lethem book was forthcoming from a contributor’s note in Harper’s, where Lethem this spring published a wonderful essay on the nearly forgotten critic Edward Dahlberg. I added “The Fortress of Solitude-September” to the weird little list I keep of titles to look out for. Then, toward the end of summer, an excerpt appeared in the New Yorker. I was so taken with what I read of “View from a Headlock” that I stopped halfway through, hoping to save some of the piece’s surprises for when the novel itself was published. I extended my self-imposed media blackout to reviews, as well—no mean feat for an inveterate book-review browser.

This may all seem a little much for a novelist whose last book, the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Motherless Brooklyn, I didn’t even like that much. But I got the impression from his recent nonfiction that, in The Fortress of Solitude, Lethem would be swinging for the fences.
In recent years, a number of American white guys have abandoned the comfortable climes of the modest triumph and the minor setback—where most novelists eventually settle—and lit out for the territory where the magnum opus roams—where the ground is littered with the bones of pretenders. I’m thinking here of DeLillo, Chabon, Franzen, Roth, Eugenides, Gass, Cormac McCarthy, Russell Banks (one might also include Richard Powers, David Foster Wallace, and even Thomas Pynchon in this list). This has not been a wholly welcome development: the fin de siecle trend toward big-ass books of balls-out ambition has distracted some writers from their own best tendencies, and from the point-of-view of women and writers of color, the whole thing may call to mind a pissing contest, for which Tom Wolfe’s unconvincing polemics may be to blame. But while the degree of success has varied from author to author, the peculiar resurgence of the Great American Novel—on the brink of extinction by the early 1970s—has made being a reader in America in recent years a bracing, invigorating experience.

In order to write these long, sweeping novels, each of the authors I’ve mentioned, seems to have drawn on his own history and passions in a way he hadn’t before. In particular, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Middlesex, and The Corrections raised the stakes on their authors’ careers, so that Chabon and Eugenides and Franzen will either be remembered as big-time novelists or as big, overhyped failure. Now, I sensed, it was Lethem’s turn. Motherless Brooklyn had proven his abilities as a stylist and his “sense of place” (to borrow from Eudora Welty), but had ultimately failed to move me. The Fortress of Solitude would reveal just what Lethem was capable of.

In a way, I was right. The novel, equal parts memoir, comic book, and meditation on race, traces the friendship of its white protagonist, Dylan Edbus, and his black best friend and idol, Mingus Rude, through 25 years of history. There are moments, in particular those set in Lethem’s exquisitely felt Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, when the author indeed seems to summon all the energies of mind and heart and hand to create an utterly convincing emotional reality. Just as often, however, Lethem lapses, offering scenes that feel overplotted, overwritten, and underwhelming. It seems to me that the source of much of the novel’s unevenness lies an unresolved tension that has often been debated over on The Millions, one we might call “the trouble with realism.”...

You can read my complete review at hace.blogspot.com(less)

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Aug 08, 2007 Rachel rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I finally finished this thing. It's pretty good, but the first half is so much better than the second half. There is some real magic amidst the nostalgia in Lethem's story of growing up in Brooklyn in the '70s. But the whole beginning seems like it's leading up to some great climax, and that climax never comes. As the main character grows up (an exaggeration for the emotionally underdeveloped thirtysomething he is by the end), he becomes a wanky, self-absorbed snob-rock geek, which may have been...more

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Oct 23, 2007 Dennis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Midway through:
Fortress has been sitting on my shelf for over a year. A recent trip (just returned) to NYC, Manhattan, and a dip of the toe into Brooklyn (DUMBO and W'Burg mostly) helped elevate this book to the top of the list. Hours of plane time from the left to right coast and back again makes for some serious reading time. Indeed, Fortress has thus far lived up to it's reputation, both among GoodReaders and the Lit World in general.

Finished: The second half was in fact better then the firs...more

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Jul 24, 2007 Tom Holme rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: pretentious idiots

Fuck you and your MacArthur prize! You should use the money to pay us for reading your drivel!!

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Apr 07, 2010 Patrick Sprunger rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Someone looking for something different

Shelves: favorites, fiction

I half expected to find that Jonathan Lethem is one of those authors that readers either love or hate, but was surprised by how mad the people who hate him are. Personally, I fall into the former camp - those who love Mr. Lethem's work. Let me explain why.

Jonathan Lethem creates the most absurd scenarios possible and then crafts ingenious narratives around them. To describe a book like Fortress of Solitude to someone not already familiar with Mr. Lethem's work requires a lot of qualification. To...more I half expected to find that Jonathan Lethem is one of those authors that readers either love or hate, but was surprised by how mad the people who hate him are. Personally, I fall into the former camp - those who love Mr. Lethem's work. Let me explain why.

Jonathan Lethem creates the most absurd scenarios possible and then crafts ingenious narratives around them. To describe a book like Fortress of Solitude to someone not already familiar with Mr. Lethem's work requires a lot of qualification. To do so with some of his other stories, his short stories in particular, can be almost embarrassing... There's this white kid and black kid and they come across a homeless man with a magic ring. They get the ring and use it to blaze graffiti on tall buildings in an urban turf rite. Bootsy Collins stops by to chat on occasion... It sounds hideously stupid.

But it's not. I imagine Mr. Lethem's process is this: 1. Come up with something absolutely bonkers, like magic rings (Fortress of Solitude, this book) or a former child star colluding with a mutant crustacean to take over the world (a different Lethem story, "Interview with the Crab") or exo-suits that give normal people the physical attributes of great NBA players of yesteryear ("Vanilla Dunk"). 2. Make it interesting. I imagine guiding characters like Dylan Ebdus, Mingus Rude, and Aaron X. Doily through a meaningful narrative is a tremendous challenge. I imagine a man who's up to such a challenge derives a great deal of satisfaction from it.

It's like being the world's greatest dungeon master: instant pariah status. What I find strange, though, is that Jonathan Lethem is essentially a contemporary of Neil Gaiman. And while folks love Mr. Gaiman because of his command of mythology, fascination with nightmare states, and melodious English accent, they seem to hate Jonathan Lethem. We live in a time where otherwise healthy adults devour young adult fiction. You'd think Jonathan Lethem's work would be right up the mainstream's alley. Only it would be better, because it's not for kids. (less)

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Dec 16, 2010 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Lethem Fans, Brooklyn Fans, Bennington College alums

Shelves: kindle

Well, I finished it yesterday. And it took a great deal. I'm not quite sure how I feel, but I will be changing my rating from 5 to lower. Sadly.

I absolutely admire Lethem's writing and eagerly read his works. Sadly, I was left with a great number of thoughts after Fortress, some of which were not all too positive.

First, Part I was excellent. EXCELLENT. I absolutely loved it. The details were rich, the story poignant, the vantage point incredible. He started a theme here, that reappeared in Part...more Well, I finished it yesterday. And it took a great deal. I'm not quite sure how I feel, but I will be changing my rating from 5 to lower. Sadly.

I absolutely admire Lethem's writing and eagerly read his works. Sadly, I was left with a great number of thoughts after Fortress, some of which were not all too positive.

First, Part I was excellent. EXCELLENT. I absolutely loved it. The details were rich, the story poignant, the vantage point incredible. He started a theme here, that reappeared in Part III that I absolutely loved: the idea that we remember things from our childhood summers as if they happened every day but maybe it only happened a few times. It was a sad but accurate portrayal. Sure, we all know the things we DID do every day, but there are those other grand memories we convince ourselves our summers were made of. But weren't.

I felt that Part I should have ended earlier (with Dylan dancing on the couch and talking about the end of the 70's and how much time he was spending in Manhattan... there's a line about not calling Mingus back and the price of growing up -- my favorite part) and I hated Part II. I'm not sure why.

Part III was not impressive to me, either. I was annoyed by Dylan and didn't like him as much as I had. Even when he was being a complete snit it Part I I still rooted for him. In Part III I wanted to choke him and scream, "GROW UP!" And I get that that was part of the theme. Sadly, I thought it wasn't done well.

The thing that kept me reading Part III was the presence of Bennington College. I'm not quite sure why he called it "Camden College" since it was SO Bennington (down to "The End of the World" the president who caused to many changes, the clever misnomers of student housing). Because I have a relationship with Bennington College I kept going. I honestly don't know if I would have made it through otherwise.

Part III did have some parts that really got to me, especially when Dylan went to visit Mingus. But all in all it was kind of disappointing and I think the book went on for too long.

But I still love Lethem.(less)

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Jun 21, 2007 Ben rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Lethem seems, as Jonathan Franzen reportedly was while writing The Corrections, to have been trying to write The Great American Novel when he wrote this book. The result was a pretty jumbled, sprawling, and overreaching attempt to shoehorn race, gentrification, obscure pop cultural obsessions, and magic realism (via superhero comic book characters and allusions) into a novel. The settings and descriptions often felt very research-derived, as if Lethem boldly ignored the whole "write what you kno...more Lethem seems, as Jonathan Franzen reportedly was while writing The Corrections, to have been trying to write The Great American Novel when he wrote this book. The result was a pretty jumbled, sprawling, and overreaching attempt to shoehorn race, gentrification, obscure pop cultural obsessions, and magic realism (via superhero comic book characters and allusions) into a novel. The settings and descriptions often felt very research-derived, as if Lethem boldly ignored the whole "write what you know" thing and used second-hand accounts as source material. All of the accounts of block parties, breakdancing battles, and throwing up graffiti pieces on subway trains felt like hip-hop history lessons copied verbatim from Rap Attack or Can't Stop Won't Stop. Not that they were, to anyone's knowledge, but they were so present that they felt like sheer pedantry, sometimes to the detriment of stronger characters or more focused story arcs.
On the other hand, there were some very clever moments, such as the descriptions of the allegorical P-Funk band that visits Mingus Rude's house (Called the Funk Mob, complete with lamé pants, silver platform boots, star-shaped sunglasses, and Swiss Alps of cocaine) for whom a character, Barrett Rude, laid down a legendary few moments of music as a session player. Also the device of using Rhino-style boxed set liner notes as a way to outline the history of a group, complete with a male member who became a hairdresser and died of "pneumonia," is pretty brilliant, especially if you're the type who actually reads liner notes.
Perhaps Fortress would make a better movie than novel. And that's by no means a putdown. The very last scene, in which the main character is being driven home through a Vermont snowstorm by his father after being kicked out of "Camden" College (aka Bennington- Brett Easton Ellis or Donna Tartt, anyone?) sets the mood with Brian Eno's Another Green World album playing in the car. Isn't that what they do in the movies? In prose form, somehow that felt like a cheap use of already too-facile cinematic mood-setting shorthand. In fiction, I feel like you can't use music to set ambience and create atmosphere in the way Lethem intended. I mean, what if a reader has never heard the music you're referencing when it's a central aspect of the vibe you're trying to invoke? This last criticism is pretty minor and trifling, I know, but it bothered me a lot for some reason. Call me picky.(less)

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Jun 08, 2009 Clark rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: abandoned

What a shit storm. This is one of the more plodding books I have engaged in my time as a reader. It ranks up there with one of the only other books I have abandoned, Updike's Rabbit, Run. Updike and Lethem also hold the distinction of being some of the worst writers of prose I have encountered. My god, I hate the way they write.

Not recommended.

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May 14, 2012 Jeremy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Coming of age. Sprawling. Draws comparisons to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Pretentious. Went downhill after the first part.

I can almost guarantee you will see some combination of those statements in any given review, so it makes sense to put them in mine, too. Which doesn't mean I agree with them.

Let's start with coming of age. What does that even mean? If a story follows one character from childhood to adult it is called coming of age? And if so, that particular element makes i...more Coming of age. Sprawling. Draws comparisons to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Pretentious. Went downhill after the first part.

I can almost guarantee you will see some combination of those statements in any given review, so it makes sense to put them in mine, too. Which doesn't mean I agree with them.

Let's start with coming of age. What does that even mean? If a story follows one character from childhood to adult it is called coming of age? And if so, that particular element makes it worth reading or not? Not for me. You could say he starts to get his shit together in the last few chapters so it is almost a story of how a character is on the brink of maturity. While I was reading I was not so sure about the switch from third person to first person, but now that I reflect upon it, I think it did allow for some perception on the matter of maturity. Dylan hides nothing of his nature - that he is trying to throw things into his "friends" faces, that he cannot have a productive relationship. As if at some point later in life while he is writing this autobiographical piece he is recognizing his character flaws and how much his attempts to bury his past have led to these flaws. As readers we are not coming to these conclusions that he is a sort of scumbag to everyone in his life - he is telling us that is the case! What we don't know is how much he changes because the story ends, but we do get indications that he is going to start taking some ownership of his past.

Sprawling. Again - what does that really mean in the context of this book? Def: Spread out over a large area in an untidy way. Is that true? I would submit that this narrative is very well put together. It may seem untidy because we are seeing Dylan's life in brief flashes and then we are always fast forwarding to the next flash. But those flashes are the important events that lead to the character that Dylan becomes and explain the actions that he takes. While some would be frustrated that this magical ring is in the story and that it is once a focal point and then not and then brought back again and then put away again. I think this is done very well. As a reader, as a former comic book fan I wanted to see him attempting to fight crime and wanted to see this become the main story. And yet when the story went in an entirely different direction I was glad he didn't take it there. Without saying too much about the plot, the ring affects in so many ways - just not the ways you expect it to. It has great power, but it is more indirect in how it impacts the characters lives.

Draws comparisons to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. True. I could not help but think of the similarities. But the stories were really not even close to being the same. I will leave it there.

Pretentious. I get tired of the overuse of this word in reviews. As in, "I did not particularly like this book or the way it was written and therefore the author is pretentious". Give me a break. Lethem had a story to tell and he told it. In what way was he trying to show how great he was any more or less than any other author or artist? Was it because he covered the issues of race, drug use/abuse and some homosexual behavior? One reviewer states that he is tired of books covering race issues and coming to no new conclusions. So nobody should write about race issues anymore? This is the first I have read about a white person trying to grow up in a black neighborhood. Why is that not important or at least of the same importance of any other story that involves adolescence and race issues. And if you read carefully, when you discover what Mingus went through in trying to protect Dylan and others, I think you find that in this case it was more about bullying than race and that is what Dylan ends up finding out.

Went downhill after the first part. I couldn't disagree more. Or maybe it is a matter of semantics for me. Because I did like the first part better. But I also like how he handled the second part and it goes back to the self discoveries made by Dylan. Many readers didn't like the character. I guess I am not reading to like or dislike a character. I am putting their lives into the context of my own and others that I know and trying to make relevant use of it. It works for me to read about a character that I wouldn't necessarily want to be buddies with. For what it is worth (and as I said in the coming of age portion) there is evidence to me that Dylan is becoming a better person.

Overall, I just really like how this story was told. There were times when I wanted to know more or not be abruptly shuttled forward, but could usually see where Lethem was going with it and usually somewhat surprised by the turns it took. As per usual while many readers suggest there are too many pages I am wanting more. The strangest and more unbelievable things to me was not the magical realism of the ring. It was actually the drug use. Especially the cocaine. I wasn't very old in the 80s so maybe that is why it doesn't seem realistic to me that EVERYWHERE Dylan went somebody was offering him a line or maybe that at some point it was the company he chose to keep and the portions that Lethem chose to share with us. Because he was certainly no "casual" user in parts of the story. It is hard to put into context how I feel about this, but it seems perhaps over the top that virtually every character in the book was snorting when given the opportunity. It seems that it would generally be a little bit more hidden and covert and a lesser percentage of people would be interested in partaking. Maybe I am naive just because it was not my lifestyle.

To bring this back on track, I ask Lethem to ignore the naysayers. Keep on writing the way you are brother!

(less)

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Jun 12, 2008 Colin Miller rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, favorite-of-this-author, book-club-picks

Storytelling has changed.

It used to be that stories unfolded slowly, sometimes even lethargically, until rising to the climactic finish. Think about the classics you like—most likely: slow start, strong finish. These days, stories begin at a rapid pace, but seem to lose momentum by the end. When I think about recent popular titles, even ones I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, this disappointment is usually present. Maybe it’s the immediacy of the modern-day culture, but it’s rare to find an ending up to...more

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Jan 10, 2008 Christina Stind rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008, fiction

Dylan moves into black Brooklyn and does his best to survive while being picked on for being the only white kid. He befriends Mingus, the black kid who comes to rule the street and the two remains friends throughout.
I loved the story of growing up in Brooklyn and how graffiti, drugs etc was all part of daily life - nothing big. It is a bit scary, however, how everybody seem to have their roles cut out for them - and it seems clear from the start who ends up in jail and who ends up as a middleage...more

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Nov 13, 2008 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I don't know where to begin with this one. I thought the first hundred pages or so kind of meandered and dragged, but then I was completely pulled into the story of two boys -- each with an absent mother and an inattentive, artistic father -- growing up on the same street in pre-gentrification Brooklyn. They're joined by their love of comics, graffiti, and each other, but intractably separated by race. Also, there's a magic ring that gives them superpowers sometimes. Then the story stops abruptl...more

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Aug 08, 2010 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really liked the first part of the book. It is a really beautiful depiction, very real and emotionally charged. Very vivid. I like how the ring is so underplayed, just mixed in like it belongs there. Very different from what I expected. Challenged my expectations of what I thought was coming from the ring. I fell away in the second part, though. It felt like a lot of epilogue. I wasn't sure what it was trying to do or why. Much of what happened in the second part seemed already disclosed from...more

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Jan 23, 2011 Asher G rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was amazing. I'm not even exaggerating, it was probably the best book I've ever read. Jonathan Lethem is really good at getting inside of peoples minds, and looking at their life on a larger scale. I love the character of Dylan Ebdus, an adult who has spent his whole life sad and obsessed with his childhood (really I'm just simplifying because it's a lot more interesting and complicated than that). I love the way Jonathan Lethem moves through time, which i can't explain without spoilin...more

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May 19, 2007 Logan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

A fantastic coming-of-age tale set in mid-to-late 1970s Brooklyn. Two motherless boys grow up next door to one another: Mingus Rude, son of an R&B singer, and Dylan Ebdus, son of a University Professor, grow up together on their block following first their passion for comic books (the title is drawn from the name of Superman's secret base in the Arctic) and later their love of graffiti and hip-hop. First and foremost a tale of friendship's makings and falling apart, Lethem also adds a health...more

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Sep 15, 2007 Shaun rated it 5 of 5 stars

Phenomenal. A brilliant character study, with an engagingly intertwining story, and just a hint of magical realism. In fact the quotient of magical realism doesn't even become revealed as magical until towards the final quarter of the book. (Of course, I may be biased - I live near where the book takes place, so I thoroughly enjoyed the descriptions of places I know well, as they were in the 70s. When a scene takes place in the Walt Whitman Projects, and you can turn around and see this obscure...more

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May 21, 2013 Paige added it

i found this 2011 review from my old goodreads account:

I have so many mixed feelings about this book.

The entire time I was reading I couldn't stop thinking about how much I hate Jonathan Lethem. He definitely doesn't believe in humanity, and I'm not sure if he actually intimately knows any black or hispanic people. A lot of the characters were kind of caricatures of hood legends that we've all seen before on Law and Order or Crooklyn.

It's racially messy, and most of the messiness stems from it...more i found this 2011 review from my old goodreads account:

I have so many mixed feelings about this book.

The entire time I was reading I couldn't stop thinking about how much I hate Jonathan Lethem. He definitely doesn't believe in humanity, and I'm not sure if he actually intimately knows any black or hispanic people. A lot of the characters were kind of caricatures of hood legends that we've all seen before on Law and Order or Crooklyn.

It's racially messy, and most of the messiness stems from its conventionality. Maybe this was on purpose, but I'm not sure why Lethem thought it was important to present us with yet another white male's construction of blackness. At times I thought that he was just writing this book as some sort of 500 page excuse to experiment with the word nigger. You can tell Lethem's got this weird fetishistic relationship with the word and he tries to project it onto black characters. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it but whatever, that and his general disconnect from people of color made me really dislike the author.

He's also really longwinded and not as funny as he thinks he is. I found myself questioning wether or not certain parts (Liner Note and Prisonnaires) were written poorly on purpose.

Despite (or maybe because of) all of these problems, I still liked the book. I finished it a few days ago and I'm still thinking about it.

At times the prose was gripping and it has some awesome passages. I also think that parts 2 and 3 don't detract from the part 1. If anything, they work to show how much things have changed and stayed the same since childhood. The last 2 parts also really made me question the main character's maturity and motives. All of the characters are so sad, live such sad lives, which I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised by since the book is called Fortress of Solitude.

I liked how depraved and infuriating it was at times and i enjoyed the elements of magical realism.

That said, I don't see myself reading anything else by Letherm in the future. Mixed feelings, man.(less)

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Mar 06, 2009 Meredith rated it 3 of 5 stars

I feel like the ending really saved this book for me. I found the beginning interesting, but had a hard time working through the middle. The race relations in this story seemed very nebulous and conflicted; I may be reading too much into it, but it seemed like the author spoke through Dylan, who was continuously coping with or processing his childhood in a predominantly black neighborhood of Brooklyn. This was a process that never seemed to have a resolution, and I couldn't figure out if this wa...more

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Jan 04, 2009 Jonathan N rated it 4 of 5 stars

The first half of this book is the best thing I've read in years. The stories of Dylan Ebdus growing up in Brooklyn, dealing with racism and graffiti and superpowers, were amazing. I couldn't put the book down. I loved it.

But then the timeline jumps forward into the 90s. Instead of a shy middle-school student, or a punk poseur teenager, Dylan is a whiny rock journalist in 1999. That's not the book I want to read. I don't care about his problems with his girlfriend or efforts to pitch a movie dea...more

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Oct 15, 2012 Nicole rated it 2 of 5 stars

I appreciated this book, but I did not love it. The character depth of certain characters was thorough and meaningful and the story was compelling. Having said that, the second part of this novel just about killed me for a while. The ForbiddenCon episode was painfully overdone and just seemed like agitating excess. I started to feel like I was begrudgingly reading the book just to finish it. The ending did pick up but I fell out of love with the book half way through the second half.

I felt that...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Edward S. Portman rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Si passa dall'infanzia all'età adulta, passando quasi in un soffio attraverso l'adolescenza, ma quel che rimane davvero impresso non è solo la prima parte, quella dell'essere bambino e delle amicizie, dei giochi in strada. E' un po' come costruire delle fondamenta capaci di reggere il mondo intero, ma poi finire per vederci eretto sopra solo un semplice palazzo di neppure due piani.
Lethem scrive senza troppi intoppi, passando pure da un personaggio all'altro, da una narrazione in terza persona a...more

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Sep 06, 2012 Bessie James rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Fortress of Solitude is a big, sprawling book (perhaps a little over-ambitious) but the writing is superb and the characterizations are memorable.

It documents the life of Dylan Ebdus from the time he grows up on the mean streets of Brooklyn. Dylan is a white boy in a very rough, largely black area of Brooklyn. He is befriended by a black kid named Mingus Rude. Their relationship is curious -- Mingus is one of the cooler kids in the school he sometimes attends, Dylan is somewhat nerdy but the...more The Fortress of Solitude is a big, sprawling book (perhaps a little over-ambitious) but the writing is superb and the characterizations are memorable.

It documents the life of Dylan Ebdus from the time he grows up on the mean streets of Brooklyn. Dylan is a white boy in a very rough, largely black area of Brooklyn. He is befriended by a black kid named Mingus Rude. Their relationship is curious -- Mingus is one of the cooler kids in the school he sometimes attends, Dylan is somewhat nerdy but they bond over comic book characters and playing stoopball.

They both have weird fathers, Dylan's dad is a reclusive artist who earns his money doing science fiction book covers (which he hates) while painstakingly painting an abstract film on celluoid that seems to have no point. Mingus' father is a legendary singer, Barrett Rude Jr. who falls into drug addiction and selling to support his habit. Both boys have missing mums.

The gritty reality of the Brooklyn streets -- "tagging" buildings, hanging out on brownstone stoops, petty thievery, white boys getting "yoked" (head locked) for their lunch money -- is juxtaposed with a strange plot twist. Dylan discovers a ring with magical powers and Mingus experiments with it -- finding he can fly from rooftops on criminals. At first, this seemed like a strange diversion by the author but he doesn't overuse the "gimmick" trap some writers would fall into. He manages to weave it into the story quite well.

We follow the story lines of Dylan and Mingus lives from the seventies up until the year 2000 as well as their fathers.

In summary, I found the book immensely satisfying for its language and imagery to bring alive a world I've never come close to experiencing (I'm from Montana). I would be interested to see a review from someone who lived in those areas of time and place the author describes. If accurate, I would likely upgrade this to 5 stars. There were also a few loose ends -- some obviously deliberate (no pat endings) and others just curious (a movie script writing session that seemed shoe-horned in).

Another thing I enjoyed immensely was the information about R & B and soul singers. This was extremely welll researched. I am a big fan of Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Smokey, etc. If you like this kind of music, you'll really enjoy this book.

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Jul 04, 2012 kate rated it 3 of 5 stars

Cursory pros: The writing here is top-notch, eminently readable. Lethem litters it with linguistic gems. (See: “Smoke scribbled in the air between them, like exhausted language.”) Also, love the superhero angle, with its twinges of magical realism, scattered throughout like so many textual beacons.

Ditto cons: The traditional self-indulgence of semi-autobiographical fiction – not to mention that Lethem borrows from DeLillo a little too much for my taste. And I love my DeLillo. The twentieth-centu...more Cursory pros: The writing here is top-notch, eminently readable. Lethem litters it with linguistic gems. (See: “Smoke scribbled in the air between them, like exhausted language.”) Also, love the superhero angle, with its twinges of magical realism, scattered throughout like so many textual beacons.

Ditto cons: The traditional self-indulgence of semi-autobiographical fiction – not to mention that Lethem borrows from DeLillo a little too much for my taste. And I love my DeLillo. The twentieth-century New York landscape, the complications of race, two solid references to Breughel – hell, the first chunk of text is even titled “Underberg.” Granted, all of which is thankfully transformed into an anti-anachronistic (chronistic?) bildungsroman, creating a somewhat different type of story. But did Lethem really have to end with an encomium to Brian Eno?

And I have a bone to pick with Chabon, whose blurb on the back of my edition praises Lethem’s creation of “a genuine literary hero” in “young Dylan.” In truth, the novel is populated with antiheroes – and only antiheroes – the kingpin of which really should be Mingus Rude. He’s the one who successfully ekes the fantasy out of Doily’s ring as he simultaneously spirals out of control under the overwhelming forces of realism. He has no real voice in the text, though – I get Lethem’s third-to-first person switch between “Underberg” and “Prisonaires,” formally speaking, but the linguistic parallels between the two sections tell us that Dylan’s been speaking all along, rendering the former section’s shifts in center-of-consciousness moot. Readers’ forays into the minds of Abraham or Barrett Junior or Aaron Doily are at best Dylan’s own fictions, at worst his appropriations of others’ realities.

“Underberg” sets up readers to identify with Dylan in his (somewhat annoyingly) reverse-racist victimhood, (perhaps unintentionally) demonizing pre-gentrified Brooklyn in the process – undercutting what should be the primary social criticism of the novel, which surfaces in “Prisonaires.” (See: “A gentrification was the scar left by a dream, Utopia the show which always closed on opening night.”) The saving grace here, as I see it, is that you’re supposed to hate Dylan. You’re supposed to feel his failure; “Prisonaires” should leave a bit of a foul taste; we should cringe at Dylan’s appropriation of ghettodom on an upscale New England campus. We should despise him that he never loses his self-image of victimhood, that “whiteboy” claims his revenge, gets off scot-free, and doesn’t know it. I just have a tough time believing this works – with the literary strength of “Underberg” and the fact that so many will see too much of themselves in the comic-toting, Eno-loving Dylan, haunted by whiteness and childhood bullies. I’m not sure we’ll have it in ourselves to blame him, because that would entail turning one’s criticism inward.
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Jun 09, 2012 Pa rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Brooklynites, or those interested in black - white relationships, comic books, or black soul music.

This book is the tale of a white kid growing up in a mostly black section of Brooklyn in the 1970's and also of what happens to him after leaving that environment. The book also focuses on comic book superheros and black soul music. I am mildly interested in the former, but not very much in the latter. Nevertheless, I am puzzled by my overall reaction to this book. It is well written. The characters are multidimensional and develop in interesting ways over time, and many of the interactions amon...more

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Aug 25, 2011 Margot rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I enjoyed the sprawling narrative and Lethem's scrawling, graffiti-esque effects of language. I also appreciated the hyper meta-cognition of social interactions bestowed on Dylan Ebdus (and other children-forced-to-grow-up-too-soon) as a boy by the first section's omniscient narrator. He is able to fathom the broader meaning and context of the constant hassling he encounters as a whiteboy in Brooklyn, as if seeing these petty infractions from the heights of aerial flight attributed to Aeroman.
Un...more I enjoyed the sprawling narrative and Lethem's scrawling, graffiti-esque effects of language. I also appreciated the hyper meta-cognition of social interactions bestowed on Dylan Ebdus (and other children-forced-to-grow-up-too-soon) as a boy by the first section's omniscient narrator. He is able to fathom the broader meaning and context of the constant hassling he encounters as a whiteboy in Brooklyn, as if seeing these petty infractions from the heights of aerial flight attributed to Aeroman.
Unfortunately Dylan doesn't seem to have remembered those lessons when we meet him later in his role as first-person narrator, when he's transitioned to hiding from the world and from himself, wrapping works of musical art in liner notes as his father wraps works of literary effort in abstract art book covers. He's looking for pity around his circumstances and the pride that comes with being there first, being an o.g. (original gentrifier) before all the neohipsters with their swanky shops and renovated homes. In the end, I was left with a sense of pity and hopelessness for the characters and the society they represent--everything is inevitable.
Overall, the book is both petty and transcendent all at once.

A few tastes:
"Then he would be beckoned to the table to be met. Dylan would recall the visitors only as Rachel described them later, to Abraham at dinner: the not-brilliant folksinger who'd opened for Bobby Dylan once and wouldn't let you forget it, the horny yippie who faced prosecution for stuffing subway turnstiles with slugs, the rich homosexual who collected art but wouldn't buy one of Abraham's nudes because they were women, the radical black minister from Atlantic Avenue who had to scrutinize everyone new in the neighborhood, the old boyfriend who now worked as a piano tuner at Carnegie Hall but might join the Peace Corps to keep out of Vietnam, the Gurdjieff-quoting English couple on their way to bicycle across Mexico, the woman from the Brooklyn Heights consciousness-raising group who just couldn't believe they'd bought on Dean Street."(12)

"It was entirely possible that one song could destroy your life. Yes, musical doom could fall on a lone human form and crush it like a bug. The song, that song, was sent from somewhere else to find you, to pick the scab of your existence. The song was your personal shitty fate, manifest as a throb of pop floating out of radios everywhere.
At the very least the song was the soundtrack to your destruction, the theme. Your days reduced to a montage cut to its cowbell beat, inexorable doubled bass line and raunch vocal, a sort of chanted sneer, surrounded by groans of pleasure. The stutter and blurt of what--a tuba? French horn? Rhythm guitar and trumpet, pitched to mockery. The singer might as well have held a gun to your head. How it could have been allowed to happen, how it could have been allowed on the radio? That song ought to be illegal. It wasn't racist--you'll never sort that one out, don't even start--so much as anti-you."(109)

"It was the library where they finally spoke. Dylan and Arthur Lomb's two homerooms had been deposited there together for a period, the school librarian covering some unexplained absence of teachers for an afternoon, a blip in the routine nobody cared about anyway. Most kids sent to the library never arrived there, ended up outside the building instead, taking the word as a euphemism for class dismissed. So the I.S. 293 library was drab but peaceful, an eddy of calm."(111)

"Yet it exists under a spell, a pall. The white families appear continuously these days, not too many to count, but collectively they're still a dream, a projection conjured up by Isabel's will. The renovators--that's a politer word for them--they're a set of ghosts from the future haunting this ghetto present. They're a proposition, a sketch. Blink and they might be gone."(134)

"There was a hierarchy of remembering here, I understood. Mike remembered for Jared the sort of things Jared had once remembered for someone else, on his way up through the ranks. Someday Mike would have someone remembering things for him as well, and be free to abandon the skill."(322)

"One release blurred into another, a Twilight Zone recurrence of being dropped by the Riker's shuttle at Queensboro Plaza. There the bus stopped under the el tracks and the driver doled out subway tokens, one per man, the system's laconic parting gift. Up on the platform, Dose would wait in the middle of a gaggle of freaked-out felons, each pretending not to be in the company of the others, each with panic in their eyes. The releasees chewed gum frantically, spit, tugged too-tight street clothes over new biceps and pecs, every last one of them as conspicuously ill-armored for this world as lobsters loosed in an open field."(473)(less)

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Aug 03, 2011 Amanda Phillips rated it 3 of 5 stars

It's too bad I'm not obsessed with music, comic books, or graffiti. If I were, I would probably have liked this book more. I can appreciate how well written it is, and how astute Lethem's social and psychological observations can be, but appreciation wasn't enough to make this an enjoyable read. I should say I read plenty of stuff I don't enjoy for school and work, and that's okay with me, but when I read something that has nothing to do with school or work I want to enjoy it. Instead of which,...more

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Jun 05, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

I really, really liked this book. I have read the criticisms and the negative reviews on this site, and I actually agree with many of them. The second half is worse than the first half. It even took me a while for me to pick it back up after a hiautus. Maybe it was overreaching.

This book has really stayed with me, though. The protagonist's struggles are so real, and his friendships accurately depict childhood fickleness and change. The "supernatural" elements are subtle -it's ambiguous if they e...more

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Feb 28, 2011 Alexis rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who liked Cavalier and Klay

Shelves: favorites

I would give this ten stars if I could.

The writing is masterful, with metaphors chosen not just for accuracy and not just for poetry but also because they chime a reference to some other imagery or idea elsewhere in the book. ::SPOILERS MAYBE?:: Two characters experience body dismorphism in mirrored ways--it's just a note, a hundred pages apart. And I love the description of Dylan feeling small, comparing it to when he was younger "the ailanthus branches brushing the back windows had seemed to m...more

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Feb 22, 2011 Bret Harper rated it 5 of 5 stars

i really like this book, but it wasn't particularly engaging right off the bat. after reading a run of detective novels, it took a while to adjust to a style that doesn't do anything to hook you into turning the page and rewards a slower reading pace. its mostly about a boy who grows up in brooklyn in the 70s and early 80s. we don't get much recounting of the boy's life in straightforward biographic detail. instead the author dwells on certain instances or moments without a lot of context, and t...more

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About Jonathan Lethem

JONATHAN LETHEM is the author of seven novels. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Lethem has published his stories and essays in The New Yorker, Harpers, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and the New York Times, among others.

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Quotes from The Fortress of Solitude

“Dylan's friend Linus Millberg appears out of the crowd with a cup of beer and shouts, 'Dorothy is John Lennon, the Scarecrow is Paul McCartney, the Tin Woodman is George Harrison, the Lion's Ringo.'
'Star Trek,' commands Dylan over the lousy twangy country CB's is playing between sets.
'Easy,' Linus shouts back. "Kirk's John, Spock's Paul, Bones is George, Scotty is Ringo. Or Chekov, after the first season. Doesn't matter, it's like a Scotty-Chekov-combination Ringo. Spare parts are always surplus Georges or Ringos.'
'But isn't Spock-lacks-a-heart and McCoy-lacks-a-brain like Woodman and Scarecrow? So Dorothy's Kirk?'
'You don't get it. That's just a superficial coincidence. The Beatle thing is an archetype, it's like the basic human formation. Everything naturally forms into a Beatles, people can't help it.'
'Say the types again.'
'Responsible-parent genius-parent genius-child clown-child.'
'Okay, do Star Wars.'
'Luke Paul, Han Solo John, Chewbacca George, the robots Ringo.'
'Tonight Show.'
'Uh, Johnny Carson Paul, the guest John, Ed McMahon Ringo, whatisname George.'
'Doc Severinson.'
'Yeah, right. See, everything revolves around John, even Paul. That's why John's the guest.'
'And Severinson's quiet but talented, like a Wookie.'
'You begin to understand.” — 12 people liked it

“There were days when no kid came out of his house without looking around. The week after Halloween had a quality both hungover and ominous, the light pitched, the sky smashed against the rooftops.” — 11 people liked it

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