The Fortress of Solitude

By: Jonathan Lethem

Narrated by: David Aaron Baker

Length: 18 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2002 Jonathan Lethem (P)2003 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Glorious, chaotic, raw. . . . One of the richest, messiest, most ambitious, most interesting novels of the year. . . . Lethem grabs and captures 1970s New York City, and he brings to it a story worth telling." ( Time)

“The finest novel of the year, by far, and likely of the past five. . . . Better than a movie, better than a symphony, better than a play, and better than a painting, because it is all of them.” ( Austin Chronicle)

"A tour de force . . . Belongs to a venerable New York literary tradition that stretches back through Go Tell it On the Mountain, A Walker in the City, and Call it Sleep." ( The New York Times)

Brilliant

The book amazing. The dynamic between white and black cultures is captured with such realism and honesty. It's hilarious and beautiful. Also, possibly the best narration I've ever heard for a book (and I've listened to more than 100).

A Treasure!

I listened to this book a few months ago, yet it remains with me. I might even listen to it again as there are so many dimensions to Lethem's work. In addition to an interesting plot, the author presents rich information about growing up in Brooklyn, education, grafitti, music, prison life, and neighborhood development. Although it's a long listen, there is much magic in the content and the performance.

One of the best books I've ever listened to.

Which character – as performed by David Aaron Baker – was your favorite?

Mingus Roode. I love him. When I wasn't listening I was wondering what was happening to him.

Any additional comments?

This is one of the only books I've ever read/listened to that I felt had no cheesy filler parts. Most books have parts that you can take seriously, and parts where you can tell the writer is filling in or trying to bring things together, you know where you stop hearing the story and you're just watching the writer write feeling a little sorry for him/her. This book was real heart felt story telling all the way through. These characters are real people, even though they aren't.. They could be any one of us is what I mean. Just read it.

Brilliant

The specificity of the music references, the accuracy of the slang and the poignancy of words unsaid, the feel of a place and time delivered as if by sense transmission, the roots and rise of the crack epidemic, the escape from the confusion and loneliness of adolescence into worlds of superheroes - "Fortress of Solitude" delivers on so many levels at once that I found myself backing up and listening again over and over to my favorite parts trying to gather it all in. This is a masterful piece of fiction that I know I will return to.

It’s not a novel, it’s a song

I liked this book by Johnathan Leitham even more than Motherless Brooklyn, the characters so vivid and the plot flowing steadily without gimmicks. But it may be that these qualities do not come so much from the novel itself but from an absolutely superb performance of the narrator. To my ear the voices are so true to the author’s descriptions, so flawless, recognizable and diverse that I cannot imagine this book in any other form, only as performed on this recording. Bravo, David Aaron Baker!

Historical Fiction Fatasy

I thought this book was an excellent portrayal about the lives of Brooklyn kids growing up in the seventies. True, the plot is a wider scope than some people may desire but it is unique and the character development is superb.

A smorgasbord of language

Some of the sentences in this book are so well crafted, they actually made me whisper "wow" outloud alone in my car.

I've phoned people to make them listen to a single passage.

The reader has it down pat.

This book isn't a thriller, and sometimes runs a little slow. This isn't a drawback as long as you don't go in expecting a rollercoaster. Listen to this book when you feel like contemplating life in general, and your own life specifically.

A bastion against judgment

Any additional comments?

This coming of age tale is something truly unique. The most fantastic aspects of the story are, funnily enough, the least engaging. The characters are never truly surprising and this is welcome because what they lack in spontaneity they drown in realism. The attention to detail and the love and care which all subjects are handled is something to be lauded. I often find books easily a number of adjectives for a good time but rarely so moving, and heartfelt as this unabashed meditation on growing up in a world without heroes.

Better Read

I couldn't stick with the audio version, but perhaps one day I'll try again. It's a great book, which was better read.

Perfect! Maybe my favorite book ever

This book was fantastic, from the fascinating story to the fabulous writing (I agree with the previous reviewer who was so "wowed" by it), to the reader who managed to capture perfectly the wide range of voices and personalities of the characters. Even though there is some magic realism in the story, I found everything as believable as a memoir. This is a book I'm going to buy in hardcover and give for gifts this Christmas. I'm looking forward to my 23 and 28 year old sons reading it as so much describes their urban schools and the world and people they knew, including the graffiti painters, and the boys who went off into drugs and incarceration and the ones who survived, damaged or resilient, to grow up.