More than any other writer of his generation, Jonathan Lethem has delighted in mixing up highbrow and lowbrow styles. Pulp fiction recipes and high literary aspirations somehow peacefully coexist with each other in his works, and the most puerile fantasies are elevated into ‘serious' art, yet without losing any of their playfulness.
In Motherless Brooklyn (1999), he took the formulas of a Raymond Chandler potboiler, and transformed them into a colorful, quirky novel about an amateurish investigator with Tourette syndrome trying to solve the mystery behind the murder of his mentor. In Amnesia Moon , from 1995, Lethem seemed to be channeling Philip K. Dick, while in his short story collection Men and Cartoons (2004) he somehow managed to create a variant of magical realism -- imagine a Gabriel Garcia Marquez who grew up in Brooklyn reading about superheroes -- by mixing stark confessional literature with the trappings of comic books. As far back as his debut novel, Gun, with Occasional Music (1994), Lethem was practicing this pot-luck with various genres, combining mystery, sci-fi, and elements of film and literary traditions into a amalgam that proved as strange as it was pleasing.
But Lethem’s masterpiece is The Fortress of Solitude , a semi- autobiographical novel of epic scope which follows the emotionally charged relationship of two friends, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude, over the course of three decades. As always, Lethem adds a dose of the fantastic –- the two friends share a magical ring that was handed on by a scraggly wino superhero –- yet the overall mood of the novel is soberly realistic and intensely introspective. Here Lethem rises above the playfulness that characterized his earlier books, and creates a powerful narrative with compelling characters who don’t need a cape and super powers to grab our attention.
Dylan is a white boy in a black neighborhood, the son of 1960s free spirits who devote more energy to self-actualization than to parenting. Before his hippie mother disappears from his life, she demonstrates her solidarity with the common people by putting her son in a tough and dangerous Brooklyn school. Here the youngster’s chances for acceptance -– and even physical safety –- hinge on his complicated relationship with Mingus Rude, a street smart black youth who also comes from a broken home. Lethem handles the racial, social and psychological overtones of this relationship with extraordinary deftness.
There is nothing in this author’s pulp fiction roots to prepare us for the vividness of these character studies, which at times veer closer to Dostoevsky than to Dick or DC Comics. In this setting, Lethem’s ability to incorporate fantastic themes without dispelling the intensity of the narrative is remarkable. The novel is well on its way before Lethem introduces the magical ring that allows his protagonists to fly through the air, and use their new-found powers for good . . . or just for mischief. (The movie Hancock , with its bumbling black superhero protagonist seems to me to be more than a little indebted to Lethem’s novel.) In the hands of a lesser writer, this sub-plot would be the centerpiece of the book, but for Lethem it functions almost as a dream sequence, as an insight into the wish- fulfillment aspirations of the emotionally-starved characters at the core of his book. In short, don't be fooled by the comic book trappings here -- The Fortress of Solitude is not a work of escape literature.
The very title reveals the paradoxes of Lethem’s novel. Fans of Superman will recognize the “Fortress of Solitude” as the hero’s hidden lair, a remote getaway where the Man of Steel goes to chill out. For Lethem, a writer always sensitive to adolescent fantasy life, such a reference is not surprising. Yet the title is also an indicator of the tremendous isolation and loneliness of his protagonists –- not just Dylan and Mingus, but also their parents, who share their children’s aloofness. A pervasive, if poetic, atmosphere of estrangement and alienation pervades Lethem's novel, and the author's ability to probe into the dark night of the soul by means of a panoply of pop culture references is both strange and endearing.
Yet even in this dark book, Lethem has not lost his light, playful touches. At a surprising juncture he incorporates a long essay on 1970s soul music into his novel, and it is as delightful as it is intelligent. It also helps, in an indirect manner, to enhance our understanding of the main narrative. Elsewhere in The Fortress of Solitude , Lethem turns his attention to the themes of gentrification, graffiti art, avant-garde cinema and other topics that add to the rich tapestry surrounding his main characters.
As this book demonstrates again and again, Lethem is one of the most original and invigorating authors of the new millennium. He is comfortable with all of the zany post-modern techniques, especially the juxtaposition of different cultural bric-a-brac in striking new patterns. Yet while so many post-modern works tend to collapse into idle games, cut-and-paste efforts that fall over when exposed to the elements, Lethem has proven capable of probing the psychological depths in The Fortress of Solitude . This novel, demonstrating the author's rare ability to combine the fanciful and tragic in a single epic work, stands out as one of the finer literary achievements of recent years.