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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 647
EAN num: 9780375724886
ISBN number: 0375724885
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 528
Printing Date: August 24, 2004
Publishing house: Vintage
Release Date: August 24, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 22444
Studio: Vintage
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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 grey 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 very first great urban coming of age novel to appear in years.
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Rated by buyers 
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I virtually never read fiction, but I loved this book.
As several reviewers have noted, The Fortress of Solitude does a beautiful job of evoking a time, place, and people that will never be the same. Jonathan's eye for detail and the cultural minutiae that characterized the 70s-90's in Brooklyn is amazing. That said, even a Southern California raised whiteboy such as myself could relate strongly to the story and experience nostalgia for a place I've never been. I attended schools in a predominately white suburb of Los Angeles. A good 25% of our school population was African-American kids, bused in from other parts of the Los Angeles school district. I knew several "Minguses" -- cool kids whose language, speech patterns, and humour were so different than my own. Although I was never yoked, I can recall many times where someone asked to "take a look" at something of mine, or uttered a "**** you looking at?" to me. I grew up much richer for those experiences, knowing there was something way different and deeper than the sun, sand, and blondes that dominated our corner of the country.
Contrary to some other readers, I feel Jonathan did an excellent job developing the characters. It also took me a bit to really wade in to the book, and I laid it down at one point for a few weeks. But before long, the characters hooked me and never let go. The FOS brought my teen years back, with a wallop.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
Rated by buyers 
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My son, who is now 38, told me I must read this novel, without telling me why, just "Trust me." So I did, and saw immediately why. Throughout the very first 16 years of his life, we--he and I and his mother--lived in the exact neighborhood where this story is centered. In fact, at one point the protagonist, Dylan, is looking out the back window of a friend's house on Pacific Street between Hoyt and Bond, across the backyards and into the windows of the apartments above the antique stores on Atlantic Avenue--which meant he was very possibly looking into the back windows of our apartment. For me the story is filled with similar shocks of recognition; Lethem's acute eye for detail makes this one of the most hypnotically fascinating novels I've read in the last decade, and reading it really was like a visceral visit to a place so familiar that even after almost 25 years away from it, its sensory textures could be evoked in an instant. So of course I'm a special case, as is my son; I have no way of knowing how someone who has never been to or lived in Boerum Hill and its surrounding neighborhoods would relate to the story. That said, I had a similar experience to that of several other reviewers in that when the story took its sharp turn into the fantastical, I was initially jarred. Possibly I shouldn't have been--after all, the title telegraphs this possibility, referring as it does to the Arctic stronghold of the world's seminal comic-book superhero. But that feeling didn't last, and ultimately I felt that Lethem was saying something true and perhaps universal about the places where we grow up--that for every child, behind the ordinary reality of familiar places lies the possibility of magic.
Rated by buyers -
Really dug this one. Cool story, lots of music and comic book references, and good pace. Recommended.
Rated by buyers -
What is it like to grow up a white child in a grey world, "yoked" in a double-bind that keeps you small and paralyzed? It's not something you can talk about, and I never saw anyone so astutely describe the experience until I read this book.
Lethem's semi-autobiographical novel reveals itself gradually, like a multi-layered painting. During his early childhood, the protagonist lurches zombie-like through a thick fog, smothered by grim surroundings and events that he cannot control or even understand. Gradually, as he matures, the fog starts to lift. And we see how his victimization has carved into Dylan's psyche a complex love-hate obsession with blacks and a burning need to be a hero - or maybe to get revenge.
This book is about betrayals, about the illusory nature of autonomy and choice, about the costs (and rewards) of fulfilling one's class and race destiny by leaving one's roots behind.
And the ring? Is it magical realism, as some have proposed? I see it more as a metaphor. Initially, it is about power and the freedom of escape. Later, it stands for invisibility, the feeling of being unseen and unknown by those around you.
The topic is painful and the style meandering. But it is a great book.
Rated by buyers -
What is it like to grow up a white child in a grey world, "yoked" in a double-bind that keeps you small and paralyzed? It's not something you can talk about, and I never saw anyone so astutely describe the experience until I read this book.
Lethem's semi-autobiographical novel reveals itself gradually, like a multi-layered painting. During his early childhood, the protagonist lurches zombie-like through a thick fog, smothered by grim surroundings and events that he cannot control or even understand. Gradually, as he matures, the fog starts to lift. And we see how his victimization has carved into Dylan's psyche a complex love-hate obsession with blacks and a burning need to be a hero - or maybe to get revenge.
This book is about betrayals, about the illusory nature of autonomy and choice, about the costs (and rewards) of fulfilling one's class and race destiny by leaving one's roots behind.
And the ring? Is it magical realism, as some have proposed? I see it more as a metaphor. Initially, it is about power and the freedom of escape. Later, it stands for invisibility, the feeling of being unseen and unknown by those around you.
The topic is painful and the style meandering. But it is a great book.
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