The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jonathan LethemEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-08-24
ISBN: 0375724885
Number of pages: 528
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of The Fortress of Solitude
Book Review: Growing up in "Old" New York City
Summary: 5 Stars
Did you grow up in "old" New York? The NYC of the late 70s and early 80s? When crime was a real issue - and it was a reason everyone wanted to get out? Was your junior high school a dangerous place you weren't sure you would survive? Were your parents pretty much absent? Did you take the test for Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech? Did you dream about going away to college - if you could ever figure out where to get the money - and never coming back? This book reminded me - in a good way - of all the bad old days when growing up was so far away it really was just a dream. A tremendous story if you have any of this background. I'm not sure to what extent that means you had to live in New York City.
This is very unlike Lethem's other books - noir science fiction mysteries - none of which I've been able to bring myself to pick up after skimming in the store.
I haven't read Call It Sleep by Henry Roth in a while, but a recent New Yorker review reminded of it. There's a lot here that reminds me of Call It Sleep. A future writer and um, intellectual, for lack of a better word, growing up in not a safe middle class place. How do you grow up in, what would have been called a slum, or more recently the ghetto? Should you try to become a part of it to survive? Or do you grasp at any ray of light that filters in, any straw of hope to keep you safe and get you out? How many dreams about life and the world does the everyday view of proverty, violence and crime destroy? And looking back, you still wonder that you made it out alive. And even though you get out, having lived there makes you different for the rest of your life.
OK, looking at the other reviews, I'll concede that if you grew up in a nice suburban house, had parents that took care of you rather than just put food on the table, never got beat up in school, never had anyone steal your bike, and were looking for another science fiction mystery, or a plot beyond "growing up, surviving, and getting out of NYC" in all its subtleties, you may be disappointed. This is still a great book - literature even - that makes me glad Lethem kept re-writing for 20 years.
Summary of The Fortress of Solitude
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 creates an overwhelmingly rich and emotionally gripping canvas of race and class, superheros, gentrification, funk, hip-hop, graffiti tagging, loyalty, and memory. The Fortress of Solitude is the first great urban coming of age novel to appear in years.Literary Books
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