Laith
This popped on my radar after I finished The Secret History, with Lethem being a onetime classmate of Donna Tartt and one of the many Bennington-related authors that became the white-hot stars of ’90s and ’00s lit. The Fortress of Solitude is his semi-autobiographical opus, a loud and racially charged exploration of his childhood in ’60s/’70s Brooklyn. It tells the story of Dylan and Mingus, two friends who grew up in the shadows cast by their evolving neighborhood and their absent mothers. Dylan, the lone white face in a sea of Black, recounts his youth in pre-gentrified/gentrifying Brooklyn; Mingus is his oasis and conduit, his childhood friend and the focal point of the book. This book is huge, and I’m not just talking page count; it’s simultaneously a bildungsroman, time capsule, and social justice essay wrapped around a comic book plot.
Split into two halves—childhood and later adulthood—Dylan recounts his life after the abandonment by his mother and the arrival of Mingus and his father, Barrett Rude Jr. Mingus’s arrival heralds Dylan’s debut into adolescence as they become fast friends. Exploring music, comics, graffiti art, and their sexual identities, the boys grow incredibly close. Things change when Dylan meets the flying homeless man, Aaron X. Doily (who I can only assume is the impetus for the character of Hancock (2008)), who gives Dylan his magic ring, which he in turn gives to Mingus. Mingus learns to fly with the power of the ring, gradually becoming separate from Dylan as his cohort expands to include the neighborhood ne’er-do-wells Arthur and Robert Woolfolk, his interests diverge from comics to cocaine, and Dylan grows increasingly alienated from him.
Their separation becomes more concrete when Mingus is arrested for the murder of his grandfather, the novel transitioning to Dylan’s aimless years bouncing from the NYC punk scene to college and ultimately to Berkeley, and his eventual career writing the liner notes for Barrett Rude Jr.’s compilation album.
Dylan cannot find peace; he finds himself trapped in an existential loop that can only be resolved by breaking Mingus out of prison. So that’s exactly what he does. Armed with Doily’s magic ring, its powers having changed to grant invisibility, Dylan sets out to free his friend.
I read this and Motherless Brooklyn in advance of my first trip to New York earlier this year; ironically, I did not have the time to cross the East River, much less the Gowanus Canal. I mention this because whether you’ll like this book is make-or-break on whether you like Lethem’s highly detailed prose. As I still remain a Brooklyn virgin, I found his descriptive style captivating and illustrative—this is some of the best English written. Likewise, I could see that same attention to detail overwhelming or choking, depending on the reader. Particularly if you’re from Brooklyn, I doubt you need the four pages he seems to devote to each minor setting.
That said, this book is sprawling. Whether it’s the not-quite coming-of-age story it tells, the comic book subplot, the devotion to set and setting, or the secondary focus on music, there seems to be something for everyone. I will echo other reviews in saying the last third is underwhelming. As I hinted before, the only real complaint I have is that the characters never truly mature; Dylan’s motivations are less relatable, and it leads the final act into nonsense territory.
This popped on my radar after I finished The Secret History, with Lethem being a onetime classmate of Donna Tartt and one of the many Bennington-related authors that became the white-hot stars of ’90s and ’00s lit. The Fortress of Solitude is his semi-autobiographical opus, a loud and racially charged exploration of his childhood in ’60s/’70s Brooklyn. It tells the story of Dylan and Mingus, two friends who grew up in the shadows cast by their evolving neighborhood and their absent mothers. Dylan, the lone white face in a sea of Black, recounts his youth in pre-gentrified/gentrifying Brooklyn; Mingus is his oasis and conduit, his childhood friend and the focal point of the book. This book is huge, and I’m not just talking page count; it’s simultaneously a bildungsroman, time capsule, and social justice essay wrapped around a comic book plot.
Split into two halves—childhood and later adulthood—Dylan recounts his life after the abandonment by his mother and the arrival of Mingus and his father, Barrett Rude Jr. Mingus’s arrival heralds Dylan’s debut into adolescence as they become fast friends. Exploring music, comics, graffiti art, and their sexual identities, the boys grow incredibly close. Things change when Dylan meets the flying homeless man, Aaron X. Doily (who I can only assume is the impetus for the character of Hancock (2008)), who gives Dylan his magic ring, which he in turn gives to Mingus. Mingus learns to fly with the power of the ring, gradually becoming separate from Dylan as his cohort expands to include the neighborhood ne’er-do-wells Arthur and Robert Woolfolk, his interests diverge from comics to cocaine, and Dylan grows increasingly alienated from him.
Their separation becomes more concrete when Mingus is arrested for the murder of his grandfather, the novel transitioning to Dylan’s aimless years bouncing from the NYC punk scene to college and ultimately to Berkeley, and his eventual career writing the liner notes for Barrett Rude Jr.’s compilation album.
Dylan cannot find peace; he finds himself trapped in an existential loop that can only be resolved by breaking Mingus out of prison. So that’s exactly what he does. Armed with Doily’s magic ring, its powers having changed to grant invisibility, Dylan sets out to free his friend.
I read this and Motherless Brooklyn in advance of my first trip to New York earlier this year; ironically, I did not have the time to cross the East River, much less the Gowanus Canal. I mention this because whether you’ll like this book is make-or-break on whether you like Lethem’s highly detailed prose. As I still remain a Brooklyn virgin, I found his descriptive style captivating and illustrative—this is some of the best English written. Likewise, I could see that same attention to detail overwhelming or choking, depending on the reader. Particularly if you’re from Brooklyn, I doubt you need the four pages he seems to devote to each minor setting.
That said, this book is sprawling. Whether it’s the not-quite coming-of-age story it tells, the comic book subplot, the devotion to set and setting, or the secondary focus on music, there seems to be something for everyone. I will echo other reviews in saying the last third is underwhelming. As I hinted before, the only real complaint I have is that the characters never truly mature; Dylan’s motivations are less relatable, and it leads the final act into nonsense territory.