Day Thirty-Nine

5/9

The Book: The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

ISBN: 0-375-72488-5

Suggested By: Dan Solomon

Where: Home

When: 1:10-1:40P

Music: None

Company: Alone

Pages: 447 - 509 (62)

The Lead In: Decided the day had come to finish this sucker off and wammo, I did it. While discussing this book with a friend of mine, I realized how much this book is like the person who recommended it. This is right down Dan Solomon’s alley of taste. Not that there is anything wrong with that, just realized the similarity. 

The 411 on the 55: Dylan decides he needs to help Mingus escape from prison and so, with his ring on, sneaks into the prison. After searching through the files, he finds Mingus’ cell number and they make a plan to get him out. It involved another member of Mingus’ gang, which Dylan will have to break out.

Then the interlude, telling the story of Dose, Mingus’ alterego. Mingus seems to embody the African American youth of Brooklyn during the 80s, with the explosion of crack and the escalation of crime. This part of the book is almost newspaper style, with facts and places, I enjoyed it.

When Dylan is discovered by the guards, he convinces him that someone had let him in and he just wanted out (which they buy, and is the most out there idea in the whole book. Well, except the flying/invisibility ring. No prison guard in a state pen is letting you out of prison without figuring who the hell you are and why you are there). While escorting him out, he finds out that Mingus, now freed from his cell, killed himself by jumping off a guard tower (ironically, flying. get it???).

Dylan visits the farm where his mother had sent him so many postcards and is disappointed to find she is dead and sinks into his car, depressed and despondent with life.

The 20/20: My complaints with Lethem are two. One, his female dialogue is really bad. Like he-has-never-spoken-with-a-woman-in-his-life bad. Two, his style of tying in music, movies, book, etc seems stilted. Like he’s trying to hard to connect these things together. It might make the setting sound authentic, but it gets in the way of flow. But that’s my opinion. The book was good and fun to read. If you like comics, soul music, New York City, white/black relations this is your book.

Line of the Day: “Living dawn to dusk, pawn to pipe.” pg 475

The Fact on the Fiction: The changes of Brooklyn are pretty interesting. Found a neat article on the history of Brooklyn in one house. As the article put it, “from farmland to euchre to crack and back to farmland in 150 years.” New York Times

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