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)

Growing up in Brooklyn/Autobiographical

I can't tell you the number of times I zoned out of this navel gazing tale, spanning three decades. Clearly this mirrors the author's life, but I found precious little to latch onto in terms of story. You probably have to be from NYC to understand because we Upstate rubes probably can't relate.

A Perfect title for a very sad story

Perfectly crafted sentences......yeah, if you carry a dictionary with you. The writer likes to use words that make the sentences flowery and beautiful....but what did he say?
I walked away after listening to this book with a very sad feeling. The book was about being depressed .......passing through life without any meaning.....wasting time.....being a victim...I wish I had never read this.

The author was able to keep my attention for the entire book but I felt very let down at the end with the absurd fantasy of a jail entry.

Maybe I missed something. But, I can't recommend this title to anyone.

Goes nowhere

This is one of the few audio books in the three years I have been a member that I wanted to turn off and dump. There was no ending, it just stoped in the middle of nowhere. I kept thinking there has to be more to this story. It was read very well. I give five stars to the reader. It was like hearing someone reading an encyclopedia that went nowhere. Do not waste your credit or time on this book

Pointless

I stuck with this book til the bitter end because I kept thinking there must be a satisfying tying-up of myriad loose ends. But no. The book just didn't seem to have a point. If the writing and narration hadn't been as good as they were, I wouldn't have been able to stick it out. There were some interesting characters, too. But in the end, I felt there needed to be a stronger story line.

The Fortress Of Solitude

This is one of the most boring books I have ever listened to. The basic story is good, however Lethem rambles for countless minutes about nothing pertaining to the main story. Talk about mindless dribble. After listening to about 75% of the book, I finally stopped. I couldn't even finish the book, which is unusual for me. If this book was cut in half it might have been OK.