Name: Dave Konopka's review of The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
Item: The Fortress of Solitude
Rating: 3
Author: Dave Konopka

Jonathan Lethem

This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They live in Brooklyn and are friends and neighbours; but since Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple.

This is the story of 1970s America, a time when the simplest decisions - what music you listen to, whether to speak to the kid in the seat next to you, whether to give up your lunch money - are laden with potential political, social and racial disaster. This is also the story of 1990s America, when nobody cared anymore.

This is the story of what would happen if two teenaged boys obsessed with comic book heroes actually had superpowers: they would screw up their lives.
--back cover

The Fortress of Solitude

Dave Konopka

Chris Dailey

Wonderfully written semi-autobiographical novel about growing up in Boreum Hill, Brooklyn during the 1970's/80's. Full of music, graffiti, drugs, race, genetrification and ultimately lonliness and seeking refuge in art. Two friends bond over being motherless and drift in and out of each others' lives as they navigate adolenscents, teenagehood and being adults. Kind of awkward reading a white man imitate the black voice and full of tropes (white hippies, black crackheads) but it mostly works out. The first 300 pages are incredible, the next two hundred requires suspended belief in some parts (the ring with super powers) but the writing carries you throughout.

This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They are friends and neighbors, but because Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple. This is the story of their Brooklyn neighborhood, which is almost exclusively black despite the first whispers of something that will become known as "gentrification."

This is the story of 1970s America, a time when the most simple human decisions—what music you listen to, whether to speak to the kid in the seat next to you, whether to give up your lunch money—are laden with potential political, social and racial disaster. This is the story of 1990s America, when no one cared anymore.

This is the story of punk, that easy white rebellion, and crack, that monstrous plague. This is the story of the loneliness of the avant-garde artist and the exuberance of the graffiti artist.

This is the story of what would happen if two teenaged boys obsessed with comic book heroes actually had superpowers: They would screw up their lives. 

This is the story of joyous afternoons of stickball and dreaded years of schoolyard extortion. This is the story of belonging to a society that doesn't accept you. This is the story of prison and of college, of Brooklyn and Berkeley, of soul and rap, of murder and redemption.

This is the story Jonathan Lethem was born to tell. This is THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE.
--jacket flap

a novel

Melody Izard

I like the magic stuff, but there wasn't enough of it and it really wasn't clear. The prison part was awful and the comic book stuff sucked. Disjointed and well, not really clear to me. It's all Brooklyn and black and white and rotten parents and drugs and bad schools.

Juan Sacco

Konrad Lischka

Helen Bright

From the prize-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn, a daring, riotous, sweeping novel that spins the tale of two friends and their adventures in late 20th-century America. This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They live in Brooklyn and are friends and neighbours; but since Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple. This is the story of 1970s America, a time when the simplest decisions - what music you listen to, whether to speak to the kid in the seat next to you, whether to give up your lunch money - are laden with potential political, social and racial disaster. This is also the story of 1990s America, when nobody cared anymore. This is the story of what would happen if two teenaged boys obsessed with comic book heroes actually had superpowers: they would screw up their lives.

Martha F.

Channing Williford

Will Vunderink

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 black 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 first great urban coming of age novel to appear in years.
(back cover)

Dave Konopka &
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

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Dave Konopka &The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

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Dave Konopka &
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem