Fortress of Togetherness

This book was a bit of a paradox to me because I tore through it, but ended up feeling generally unimpressed for reasons I can’t really identify. One of the things I found mildly irritating was that in one form or another, I feel like the first part of this book seemed really familiar – nerdy white/Jewish reminisces about growing up in a NYC borough, gets picked on and into trouble with juvenile criminal types, but perseveres and as an adult feels an attachment to his old block and its former tenants. It at least reminded me of the book/film Sleepers, about an Irish kid growing up in Hell’s Kitchen – you throw in some superhero shenanigans and send the main character to jail with his friends, and you’ve got a very similar story. That being said, I thought Lethem developed some very interesting characters – characters that are well aware of their flaws, yet carrying on despite being fully aware of the negative consequences of their actions (for example, Abraham’s full devotion to his film, at the expense of his deteriorating family, income, and artistic prestige, and both Dylan and Mingus’s loyalty to their fuck-up friends Robert and Arthur).

This is something I’ll leave to you more insightful literary types, but on the back of the book, our friend Michael Chabon praises Lethem for creating Dylan, “a genuine literary hero”. I exaggerate for the sake of argument, but is it a bit cynical to question why we should bestow this title on a dude whose life accomplishments consist of: Cocaine dealer, college dropout, accessory to prison escape, and writer of liner notes for obscure compilation albums? Generally, his “heroic” deeds seem to be limited to helping out his friends, maintaining a relationship with Mingus, and (mostly unsuccessfully) attempts to stop relatively innocuous crimes from occurring. Or am I confusing a literary hero with an extreme alpha-male hero that shoots down helicopters and deactivates apocalyptic nuclear warheads at the last second, saving humanity? Or maybe that’s precisely a statement of this book – that Superman/save the world types really only exist in comic books, and real heroes may be really flawed, but at least have the balls to try to make a difference where no-one else gives a shit (i.e. saving homeless alcoholics and incarcerated crack-dealers)? Something to think about, anyway…

P.S. I liked Yiddish Policeman's Union - good call, Chilibone.