September 1, 2006
Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem ::
books — tagged books, brooklyn, childhood, drugs, fantasy and vermont
3:13 pm
I am falling behind on my book reviews. But I hope to get caught up in the next few days.
Fortress of Solitude was one of those books I felt like I was reading for weeks, but when I look back on it, it only took me four days to read the book. This was partly because I was reading it while I was travelling out to San Francisco; but mostly, it was because of the density of the story and Lethem’s abilty to really grip the reader with a compelling narrative and realistic, complex characters that defy the stereotypes found in most novels.
Fortress of Solitude follows the life of Dylan Ebdus and his friend Mingus Rude as they grow up in pre-gentrified, 1970’s Brooklyn. Starting from when Dylan was five, we follow him as he grows into adolescence and then into adulthood. And while there are elements of the fantastical (Lethem has been given to such narrative devices going all the way back to his Hard Boiled/Sci-Fi mash-up romp, Gun with Occasional Music), the story line is compelling not so much because of the extraordinary events within it, but because of Lethem’s finely-tuned ability to take what seems to be the ordinary events in everyday life—a mother leaving her husband and son or a kid shaken down for his lunch money—and rendering them in such a way that reveals their emotional spiritual, and artistic signficance. We see Dylan as a child, going to an almost all African-American elementary school; see him fall in love with comic books, then R & B music, then the New York Punk Rock/New Wave scene; we see him become enamored of the 1980’s drug scene, first in New York and then at college in Vermont; we see him succeed academically, almost always against his will. We find Dylan’s childhood is so wrapped up in conflict and so spiritually exhausting that it becomes almost like an addiction, to the point that, when Dylan is an adult and he no can no longer rely on all of the sadness, fear and anger of his childhood that he is left feeling, well empty. And with all that, I found myself reading on, dying to know how, as a 35-year-old, he was going to fill the void. And if you want to find out how, you just have to read the book yourself.
Every novelist—or at least every male novelist—seems to have some obligation, or maybe a compulsion, to write a coming-of-age tale that is in fact a thinly-vieled autobiography. Some novelists are better than others at telling a story that is in fact worth reading. With Fortress of Solitude, Lethem definitely falls into the “better” category. Whether my conclusion is based on the broad appeal of Lethem’s story telling abilities or just my identifying with much of what he values and finds emotionally substantial isn’t exactly clear to me. But at the end of the story, I felt close to the adult Dylan Ebdus, and for all his flaws wanted him as a friend. So the reasons don’t really matter, I think. And more importantly, I really can’t think of a better compliment for an author’s abilities.
January 11, 2006
Review: Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem ::
books — tagged books, brooklyn, fiction, jonathan lethem, nyc and tourettes syndrome
8:56 pm
So, it took me about seven years or so, but I finally read Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn. Lethem’s writing style fits well with my short attention span—he’s able to communicate a lot of information through is text, and keeps up the pace of his story-telling that also keeps me interested. His characters are also delightfully quirky and unpredictable, and I’m always interested to see what they will do next. Case in point: Lionel Essrog, the main character of the novel, is a private investigator with Tourette’s Syndrome, who grew up an orphan in Brooklyn under the care local criminal big-shot Frank Minna. Minna is killed early in the story, and Lionel spends the rest of the narrative investigating the murder. But Lionel’s verbal and physical tics, as well as his unskilled approach to investigation, lead to some bizarre interactions with other characters, which became the main focus of the story for me. Although the narrative structure of the story is definitely a Raymond Chandler-type mystery, I was so focused on the curious nature of Lionel’s character that I would lose sight of the storyline, until I hit a point that pushed the story forward and reminded me that the story did indeed have a structure, it wasn’t just a string of Tourretic interactions with the world. In that regard, it was really a perfect book.
At the end of the day, Motherless Brooklyn will not be on my all-time favorites list, but the book was perfect for our flight down to Alabama and back home. During that time I was able to really get involved with the quest of the story’s hero. But when I finished the book, I didn’t find myself thinking about it too much. In that regard I also found the book worthwhile—it exceeded every one of my expectations, but didn’t expect too much from me in return.
