Geeky Dylan and hip Mingus and hiphop on a block in Brooklyn

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Has anyone read the novel THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, By Jonathan Lethem, (Doubleday) which was blurbed in the Sunday December 7th N.Y. Times as follows "Everyone seeks his own Garden of Eden, but who would think to find it in a single block of Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, in the 1970's, when New York City was going down the tubes? In Jonathan Lethem's new novel it is there for Dylan, a white geeky boy, and his friend Mingus, a hip black neighbor. These boys' knowledge of life comes in piles of hoarded comics; graffiti, which they streak together as if by a single hand across the borough; unending black and white confrontations of will on the street; and black music, from jazz and blues to hip-hop. If Dylan, who seems to be Lethem's alter ego, looks like the threatened outsider among the black kids on their street, what he gets from them makes him a prophet of cool among whites he later meets in college, but since he ends up a pedantic music critic, the cool must have worn off. It was Mingus who was the outsider all along; from Day 1 he had a lashing knowledge of the great world and he emerges out of a long silence at the novel's center as the tragic figure of the book. If at times this sometimes disheveled novel strikes one as a meander through memory, magic and regret, his fate gives it a bitter bite."

― Steve Kiviat (Steve K), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 19:10 (twenty-one years ago)

It's on my holiday reading list. Looks pretty great.

― scott m (mcd), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 19:26 (twenty-one years ago)

I've read it. The first section is particularly good--it does a nice job of capturing childhood anguish, and is even daring in its look at the complexities of race relations. It's also a fun read for music geeks. It has a magical realism element that didn't quite work for me, and is occasionally a bit overstuffed, but overall very well written and enjoyable.

― dylan (dylan), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 19:28 (twenty-one years ago)

was this excerpted in the new yorker a few months ago? i liked what i read.

― s>c>, Tuesday, 9 December 2003 19:46 (twenty-one years ago)

a few comments here

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 19:49 (twenty-one years ago)

i thought dominique's was very OTM.

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 19:49 (twenty-one years ago)

I missed that earlier thread and the New Yorker excerpt. It sounds like it's worth reading.

― Steve Kiviat (Steve K), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 19:55 (twenty-one years ago)

jonathan lethem is always worth your time! (i have to admit that I never got around to reading the advance, though)

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 19:58 (twenty-one years ago)

I am about 150 pages in. So far comics seem more important to the book than music. The writing is superb but the characters/plot feel a little programmatic. Long way to go though.

― bugged out, Tuesday, 9 December 2003 20:08 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm a big fan of his, but this is easily his weakest (and, oddly, his most over-hyped) book. Subject matter is too close to home for him, it lacks his flair for fucking with genre conventions.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 9 December 2003 20:11 (twenty-one years ago)

lethem has a beautiful piece on prince in his novel motherless brooklyn. ignore for the moment that his thesis (tourette's = beauty) has pretty much nothing to do with prince as i hear him. it'd work just as well as a micro-essay on any sort of post-sampling chopped vocals.

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 20:12 (twenty-one years ago)

I liked the novel, but don't have much to say about it now. Dylan pretty much OTM.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 20:23 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm almost finished this one. I liked it less the more it got into music, although the music stuff isn't bad. I just found the characters more interesting or perhaps sympathetic in the earlier parts of the book, I guess.

― pauls00, Wednesday, 10 December 2003 01:15 (twenty-one years ago)

three years pass...

I finally read Fortress awhile back and enjoyed it alot (a few things I could nitpick about). I think Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn is being made into a movie, and Lethem got some hype for doing the last James Brown interview before he passed away. Lethem's got a new book out, YOU DON’T LOVE ME YET . I might go see him at Politics and Prose bookstore in DC tonight. The new one, that has gotten mixed reviews so far, is about Lucinda, a complaint-line operator, a caller known simply as “the complainer,” and an indie-rock band in Los Angeles.

― curmudgeon, Thursday, 29 March 2007 15:27 (eighteen years ago)

lethem has a great article in the new harper's about influence vs plagarism, or basically saying that everything is plagarism in a way, and it doesn't matter.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Thursday, 29 March 2007 15:30 (eighteen years ago)

nothing matters.

― scott seward, Thursday, 29 March 2007 15:31 (eighteen years ago)

it's all just subjective opinion!

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 29 March 2007 15:36 (eighteen years ago)

Apparently he's gonna let anyone take characters from his latest book and adapt them and use them for their own stories (without having to formally acquire the rights, etc). Plus I think he wants to deal more directly with anyone who wants to turn his written work into film.

― curmudgeon, Thursday, 29 March 2007 15:42 (eighteen years ago)

Some of this philosophy sounds derived from his love of hiphop and comics.

― curmudgeon, Thursday, 29 March 2007 15:44 (eighteen years ago)

Sounds like my kind of guy.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 29 March 2007 17:20 (eighteen years ago)

He's also got this section called "Promiscuous Materials Project" on his website:

These stories are for filmmakers or dramatists to adapt. They’re available non-exclusively -- meaning other people may be working from the same material -- and the cost is a dollar apiece.

There’s a simple written agreement to sign, which imposes a couple of restrictions, and that's it -- once you've paid your dollar and signed the agreement, you're free to adapt or mutate the story as you please.

http://www.jonathanlethem.com/promiscuous_materials.html

― rudyrudyrudy, Thursday, 29 March 2007 18:17 (eighteen years ago)

He's doing the keynote address on April 19th at the EMP Pop conference in Seattle

― curmudgeon, Thursday, 29 March 2007 18:34 (eighteen years ago)

I read You Don't Love Me Yet awhile ago, it's okay. Not great, but I thought the sections about the band rehearsing and playing were pretty good.

― Jordan, Thursday, 29 March 2007 18:53 (eighteen years ago)

(I really like FoS)

― Jordan, Thursday, 29 March 2007 18:53 (eighteen years ago)

I missed his reading last night. Oh well. I think I'll try to read Motherless Brooklyn before the new one.

― curmudgeon, Friday, 30 March 2007 17:53 (eighteen years ago)

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