| The Fortress of Solitude |
 Before putting The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem on my Amazon.com Wish List last year, I knew very little about the book or the author. I had scanned through a review of the novel in Newsweek and saw that Amazon had listed it as one of its Editor Choices for 2003. Despite this ignorance of the author or the subject of the book, somewhere a positive buzz had been created in me surrounding the work so I added to my list. My Dad ended up buying me the novel for Christmas – thus committing me to reading Lethem story.
The Fortress of Solitude chronicles the life of Dylan Ebdus and his friend Mingus Rude. Two boys, one white (Dylan) and one black (Mingus), living in Brooklyn, NY who are struggling to understand their world and finding their place in it. The story starts in the late 1970s and follows the two boys through to the late 90s. Some books are considered good because they work within a genre so well. Other novels are considered great because they break new ground or push the envelope of literary achievements. Still other works are admired for the skillful use of the language – the almost poetic use of prose to tell a story. I consider Fortress of Solitude an exceptional novel not for any of these reasons, but another: the ability to recreate a moment in history so vivid, that your story just sinks right in and take root to grow and thrive as naturally as if it was actually happening right in front of your eyes. Such is Lethem’s skill in this novel. He uses the music, race relations, social issues, street games, and even the popular drugs of the time to set and ground his story. Lethem not only uses these cultural touchstones to define the characters, but he uses them in the characters’ future to tie them back to their own past within the story. The music of 1979 defines who Dylan Ebdus is as much as anything else Lethem might say about him. The net effect is undeniable: characters who are elevated above simple ciphers to become dimensional entities that we can connect with emotionally. We don’t just read and learn what it was like to be the only white kid in an all black NYC public school in the late 70s – we feel what it was like. We feel the relationship develop and grow between Ebdus and Mingus and feel the strains too. We anguish with Ebdus as he comes to terms with his lost relationships with his father and mother later in life. With the lost relationship with Mingus. With the struggle to find and create the middle space – what Ebdus eventually refers to as the “hippie dream” – the dream of what life could be, but which the forces (i.e. the real world) around it constantly threaten. It’s this strong emotional connection with the characters that Lethem is able to establish that I enjoyed so much while reading Fortress of Solitude, and it’s while I highly recommend this novel to anyone interested in a compelling, beautifully written, and emotional resonant story. |