(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

Soon after opening CCLaP in the summer of 2007, one of the first books I had a chance to review was what at the time was Jonathan Lethem's latest, You Don't Love Me Yet; and as long-time readers remember, I found that book to be a nearly unreadable pile of horsesh-t, so bad in fact that it served as the inaugural entry of my old "Too Awful to Finish" essay series, a series I eventually shut down again because of it being just too damn mean. And that's when I started hearing from all of Lethem's fans, telling me that I should give this grad-student panty-moistener another chance, that I had simply picked the wrong book of his to start out with. "Read The Fortress of Solitude instead!" all these academes argued. "That's the good one! You'll like that! That's the one that got all the award nominations! You'll like that one!"

So this week I finally did, yet another older title I'm getting caught up with through new "Netflix for books" service BookSwim.com, which I'm in the middle of a courtesy two-month membership with, in exchange for doing a write-up about my experience here in mid-December. And it was at this point (in fact, about 50 pages in, the point when I angrily gave up on this book) that I realized that a little theory I've had about the arts for some time now seems to be coming more and more true with every new book I read, with every year I continue being a book critic: namely, academes don't know what the f-ck they're talking about, and in the process are completely wrecking the entire literary industry we all used to know and love. I mean, how else to explain these people's baffling love for this unmitigated piece of garbage, which much like Augusten Burroughs presents a ridiculously overwritten, pop-culture-laced memoir of 1970s Gen-X childhood, featuring excruciatingly precious slang-filled magic-realism dialogue and with insanely too much gravitas assigned to such plotless meanderings as kids watching bad television and eavesdropping on their intellectual parents' insultingly banal conversations?

And then I realized -- oh, right, of course, this is an early-2000s novel by a white academe about how much white people suck (specifically, the story of the "re-whitening" of Brooklyn starting in the late '70s, after the New York borough turning into an ethnic slum following World War Two, a process called "gentrification" that has by 2009 turned nearly the entire city into a Caucasian hipster fantasyland); and man, if there's one thing that's become an undeniable truism by now, it's that back in the '90s and early '00s, academes tended to automatically fall in love with preciously overwritten screeds by self-loathing white males about the horrors of their fellow Caucasians, with the same kind of burning passion that, say, dogs love licking their own f-cking balls.

F-CK YOU, SELF-LOATHING GRAD STUDENTS! Stop ruining the entire subject of literature for the rest of us by falsely trumpeting these unreadable pieces of horsesh-t by such preciously twee suck-ass fellow self-loathing academes! J-sus F-cking Chr-st, no godd-mn wonder that the general public has stopped reading novels anymore, when you all keep running around handing out awards to execrable f-cking turds like this! Please, PLEASE, for the love of GOD, no more worshipping of overwritten plotless Gen-X pop-culture-obsessed '70s-memoir drivel! PLEASE! STOP! I'M F-CKING BEGGING YOU! STOP! STOP! STOP!

Out of 10: 0.0 ( )

Lethem's novel is set in Boerum Hill in Brooklyn in the 1970's, 80's, & 90's and tells of the friendship of two boys: Dylan Ebdus one of the few white children in the neighborhood and his black friend and idol Mingus Rude. Both boys live with fathers who are artists and emotionally distant from their sons and their mothers are completely absent from their lives. So Dylan and Mingus have to make it on their own. Lethem excels in the parts of the novel when his characters are younger and capturing the street scene of 1970's Brooklyn - the games, the language, and the uneasy state of race relations. There's also a magical element to the novel when Dylan finds a ring that allows him and Mingus to fly and they use it to try to fight crime. Along the way the novel takes on many topics and tangents such as music of the 70's & 80's (from R&B to punk), the tagging culture, drug abuse, the lucky breaks Dylan gets from white privilege, and gentrification. Dylan ruminates about feeling invisible in the mostly black neighborhood and the duality of his life in black Brooklyn and at his white high school and college. I have no way of knowing for sure if Lethem was alluding to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk for these concepts of invisibility and duality, but either way it's a bold move to apply these traits to the white character.

While overall this is a great novel and one I wanted to keep listening too, there are a few flaws. For one thing I found it hard to believe that two teenage boys would make as little use of a magic ring as they did, although I appreciate Lethem's efforts to show that having magic powers in the "real world" can be more complicated than in comic books. I also felt that the book may have been more successful if it ended earlier, at the end of Dylan and Mingus' childhood with the liner notes "Part II" as an epilogue. While "Part III" focusing on Dylan and Mingus as adults is interesting and has some really strong pieces, I felt that Dylan the narrator and Lethem the author were trying way too hard to find an explanation for Dylan's childhood and some closure too the detriment of the novel overall.

( )

Brooklyn in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Two boys: Dylan is white, Mingus is black. This is a "huge" book in the sense of the ground it covers, yet keeps the reader enthralled. This is really the story of Dylan's life told through his eyes and through the music he loves. Realistic view of families and race with the theme of abandonment threading through all of it. Excellent writing. Highly recommended. ( )

Excellent for 90% of the novel. Disappointing end. ( )

Well, I'm on a Jonathan Lethem jag...probably the last reader on the planet to read him and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. Verdict so far: despite the brilliant first image of the two girls at sunset, the first 100 pages kind of go nowhere. And the writing isn't that great either in that: characters are predictable and I had this creepy feeling that the author looked at a lot of postcards or old movies and took stuff from there. I mean, I read it all before, somewhere else, where it was fresher. It is very second-hand. And this stuff about "race-relations" is kind of old. I mean, we've moved past black-white and we're into shades of yellow and brown. Maybe if he moved out of Brooklyn the author would figure this out. I don't like to be so negative, but when something is so highly recommended, it has to fullfil a big order.

Found it hard to get into, but certain parts of the book I really liked. I admired the writing style, but also found it tedious in parts as the book was longer then it needed to be. But for some reason, I feel it is a book I wouldn't mind reading again in the future. ( )

I had a hard time starting this book, so much so that after I got about a hundred pages into it, I put it down and didn't touch it for 4 months. However, I am glad that I finally decided to finish it as the story did pick up after those initial hundred pages. The story center's around Dylan, the lone white kid on his block in Brooklyn during the 1970's. The book focuses on Dylan as he first tries to become invisible to avoid daily bullying and then as he tries to but physical distance between himself and Brooklyn by going to high school in Manhattan and college out of state. The story particulairly revolves around Dylan's friendship with Mingus Rude. Where Dylan tried to hide from the neighbourhood to protect himself, Mingus becomes part of the streets in order to build a reputation that not only will protect him but allow him to protect Dylan. I'll admit that some parts of the book were great and engaging while others seemed to drag, but I'm glad I finally read the book and I feel like it is one that I will remember for quite sometime. ( )

Argh!

One of my favorites.

One of my favorites.

I really loved Motherless Brooklyn, so I was really disappointed with this one. I tried about a ga-zillion times to get into the story, but it never got going for me. ( )

I

Overall fairly enjoyable but excessively loquacious and would have been half the length if the author hadn't padded with incidental descriptions at every opportunity. In a more succinct version, perhaps the story and the characters would have held more weight.

Confusingly, the protagonist and occasional narrator, Dylan Ebdus, is by far the weakest character in the book. Lethem's flat, matter-of-fact and, at times, downright cold prose, leaves it easier for the reader to empathise with Dylan's somewhat more interesting friends, such that the passages where they are absent tend to drag for what feels like an eternity.

When this book is good, it shines. The chapters about the super powers, for example, are inspired. Sadly the highlights are few and far between, and the ending is hugely disappointing. ( )

With 2 new kids in my house I find less time to listen to books on audio so after giving this about 3.5 discs of my time I've decided to give up on it. It definitely evokes an atmosphere and the comic book references are kind of cool but it's basically just everyday life in 70's Brooklyn overwritten. It also seems a bit self indulgent, I can't help but think, how much of this is directly from Lethem's past?

His non-fictional biographical stuff (The Disappointment Artist) was actually much more interesting and inspiring. ( )

If I had to review this in less than 10 words, they'd be: "Brilliant in streaks, but maddeningly inconsistent and overlong."

Long stretches of this novel frustrated me; they mostly involved several characters' perceived 'magic' of Aaron X. Doily's ring and their ensuing actions. However,I was impressed by the prose, absorbed in the story, and only occasionally frustrated by the characterizations to the point where my overall reaction is positive one, if qualified.

I'm only a little younger than the novel's protragonist, Dylan, and while I didn't grow up in Brooklyn, my neighborhood adjacent to the housing projects (an area trending away from gentrification to the same extent Dylan's Gowanus was trending towards), provided enough touchstones for me to connect with his experiences and observations on race, yoking, school, childhood friends and enemies, etc. (Although, with the obligatory Seifeldian "Not that there's anything wrong with that," as a preface, none of the boys on my street - that I know of - were giving each other blow jobs.)

If Dylan's stunted development into a man-child carrying maladaptive behaviors learned on the streets and home of his youth forward into adulthood speaks to me so directly, I'm reluctant to praise Lethem for capturing the feelings and conveying them so accurately on account of the ill my recognizing reaction to them speaks of me ... but there you have it: he did a great job. In that regard, I'm jealous of his writing skill. On the other hand, I felt the novel suffered a fairly serious problem of scope: too long for the story it told, dawdling on characters and events that could have been more precisely encapsulated in the narrative. That's my long-winded way of the long drag from the Con in California back to see Mingus and Arthur (and Woolfork and Junior) bored me. ( )

An imperfect childhood perfectly realized. When you're finished, you'll swear you grew up in Brooklyn, too.
-- James

I really really liked this. It took me a long time to get through because it is 500 pages, and not a big font. The threads of the plot are woven together seamlessly, the writing is lush and evocative, the characters have depth. Also it starts out in the 1970s, a period I am intimately acquainted with. What's not to like? ( )

Fortress of Solitude was one of those books I was very sad to finish. There are musical and super hero references scattered everywhere that help sell the magic behind childhood friendships. Even though I'm just a shy younger than the audience that would get all of the references, the book reminded me to the portions of my childhood where a strong enough belief made things real. It was fun revisiting that place. ( )

http://adt1960.blogspot.com/2006/10/b... ( )

Rarely do books actually make me cry, but Fortress of Solitude achieved this. I am a sucker for books about friendship, and this one really gets at it all, the shared secrets, the heartbreaking letdowns, the miscommunications, the unimportance of time & distance. Plus, one of my best friends in all the world is of a different race, and this NAILS the discontinuities between the races on the individual scale, where the change happens. There are so many erudite, intellectual books about race. This intimate, obviously personal novel affected me far more profoundly.

Plus I'm a sucker for magical realism. If you don't go there, you might want to skip this book because you really don't see the magic coming at first. It is absolutely necessary for the plot, tho.

Oh, I'm tearing up again just writing this. I wanna go read it again. ( )

Good but strange. ( )

A really good book, but somewhat weakened by the fact that its first part, telling the growing up of a white kid in a poor, black/latino neighborhood in Brooklyn, is much better than the third one, where the kid has grown up and has some scores to settle with his past (the second part being just liner notes to an imaginary cd collection). Still, a really good read. Lethem is an almost scarily gifted writed, and the matter-of-factly way he introduces a fantastic element in this painfully realistic story is disarming. Can't wait for "Motherless Brooklyn". ( )