<![CDATA[The Fortress of Solitude]]>

false <![CDATA[The Fortress of Solitude]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166064772m/9799.jpg 9799 21 This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They are friends and neighbors, but because Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple. This is the story of their Brooklyn neighborhood, which is almost exclusively black despite the first whispers of something that will become known as "gentrification." This is the story of 1970s America, a time when the most simple human decisions—what music you listen to, whether to speak to the kid in the seat next to you, whether to give up your lunch money—are laden with potential political, social and racial disaster. This is the story of 1990s America, when no one cared anymore. This is the story of punk, that easy white rebellion, and crack, that monstrous plague. This is the story of the loneliness of the avant-garde artist and the exuberance of the graffiti artist. This is the story of what would happen if two teenaged boys obsessed with comic book heroes actually had superpowers: They would screw up their lives. This is the story of joyous afternoons of stickball and dreaded years of schoolyard extortion. This is the story of belonging to a society that doesn't accept you. This is the story of prison and of college, of Brooklyn and Berkeley, of soul and rap, of murder and redemption. This is the story Jonathan Lethem was born to tell. This is THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE. From the Hardcover edition. 1971520 2003 The Fortress of Solitude total:4723|5:1334|4:1879|3:1054|2:323|1:133| 4723 18127 6714 593 1 10 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Mar 19 12:18:17 -0700 2008 Sat Mar 29 21:16:10 -0700 2008
Let me start by saying, i understand why Lethem gets such rave reviews. He is a strong stylist, certainly, and that fact may blind readers to the book's deeper problems. However, its problems a...more...]]> 2 4 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Jun 27 09:48:33 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 08 08:15:39 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 2 false false Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2003 Sat Sep 22 13:32:56 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 22 13:34:25 -0700 2007 more...]]> 2 2 false false Sat Jun 09 01:03:54 -0700 2007 Thu Jun 21 01:41:11 -0700 2007 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 m...more...]]> 4 2 false false Wed Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Mon Apr 16 00:52:37 -0700 2007 Mon Apr 16 00:56:57 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 3 false false Tue Jul 24 19:01:01 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 24 19:02:15 -0700 2007 1 5 false false Sat Dec 13 14:45:24 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 13 14:45:45 -0800 2008
I can't stomach the current-trend of neo-sentence structure that this novel is saturated with. My head explodes when I read literature that falls into th...more...]]> 3 2 false false Tue Oct 24 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Fri May 23 10:42:27 -0700 2008 Thu Jun 12 12:36:05 -0700 2008
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 th...more...]]> 3 1 false false Fri Feb 15 18:36:12 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 15 15:05:01 -0800 2008 Fri Feb 15 07:51:58 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Nov 28 11:29:40 -0800 2007 Thu Jan 10 05:59:40 -0800 2008 I loved the story of growing up in Brooklyn and how graffiti, drugs etc was al...more...]]> 3 1 true false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 13 08:23:12 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 23 06:19:41 -0700 2007
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 ...more...]]> 1 3 false false Sun Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Thu Jul 12 04:11:37 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 12 04:18:43 -0700 2007
This was recommended to me because I'm a big fan of superheroes (in comics, in literature &c) and its conceit revolved around the idea of boys who re...more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Oct 07 18:34:48 -0700 2007 Tue Oct 23 19:11:02 -0700 2007 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 m...more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Sep 12 07:47:50 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 15 11:34:00 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Mar 06 20:37:15 -0800 2009 Fri Mar 06 20:43:15 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Jan 04 07:38:00 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 04 07:48:56 -0800 2009
But then the timeline jumps forward into the 90s. Instead of a...more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jul 27 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 28 07:24:57 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 28 07:26:01 -0700 2009
I've been away, sort of. I've spent three weeks in Brooklyn, without leaving home. I've been engrossed in Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude, which is about a white boy, Dylan Ebdus, growing up in a black ghetto in the years before Brooklyn became gentrified.

Apart from be...more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sun Nov 11 19:34:55 -0800 2007 Sun Nov 11 19:43:55 -0800 2007 more...]]> 2 1 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 13 15:33:00 -0700 2007 Wed Dec 26 15:06:56 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Oct 05 13:44:31 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 05 13:45:35 -0700 2009
Set in Brooklyn i...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=9799