Stu’s Reviews
Genre: Novel
Grade: B+/A-
Notable People: Jonathan Letham
Title: Fortress of Solitude
Review –Wow- this guy is prolific- churning out existential novels of growing up in NYC. This is the third one I’ve read and each has been successively weirder- though not necessarily in a bad way. Letham is a Jewish New York John Irving type, in that the themes are constants in his books. Mothers disappearing, crackheads in Brooklyn or Queens, late 60s rock, Marvel comics and hapless fathers. Letham is VERY intellectual- so a lot of challenging verbage- but always interesting. This one has a lot of race relations, superheroes, escape to Vermont, escape to Berkeley and a mother disappearing to become a sort of Crab. It’s a long book and I found it hard to read a lot in one sitting- so has taken me about three weeks to finish. If you want a challenging writer with lot of weird shit and a novel 30 years in scope-to be read a bit at time- check it out, Letham also really knows his music scene- from the Village 60s folk scene to sixties soul music.