Joel and I have been reading Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude -- actually, we've been stealing it from each other all week. Well written, not afraid of old-fashioned big metaphors, and resonant with much, though hardly all, of our own Gen-X experience. Brings up a lot of issues that have emerged here. Many have to do with the protagonist growing up as a bullied semi-middle-class white kid in a tough majority-black neighborhood. There the author is well aware that he's skating close to stereotype, and it's hard to know what to say without having been a witness to the real events Lethem has distilled -- was life really so racially determined in 1970s Brooklyn? But there's also stuff about nerds taking easily to punk culture, which weirdly I hadn't understood, and interesting talk about the American flavors of guilt, and a wickedly described science fiction conference. I'll defer to Burmese Days rather than suggest anyone start reading it for discussion purposes, but has anyone read it already?
Posted by Martha Bridegam at December 5, 2004 04:41 PMFortress of Solitude is a great novel, as was his previous, Motherless Brooklyn. On the subject of nerds drawn to punk, that was, at one time, the main constituency of the subculture. In fact, it could be argued to be it's germination. For more on this, see: The Ramones (spec. Joey).
Lethem's depiction of the early days of hip-hop culture is such a warm breeze
paul.
Posted by: Paul Sebastianelli at December 5, 2004 08:12 PMYep, Lethem is good. A little twisted of course, but no more than what's helpful to storytelling.
Re: punk, is it like the "No Future" line blends well with the "Mommy, I Don't Wanna Be A Doctor" thing?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at December 6, 2004 04:46 PM