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Liked It2 of 2 members found this review helpful “Lethem's magnum opus so far. He's a master of the language and an author who doesn't want to play by anyone else's rules, and a man who knows the importance of a great novel. It's a serious book about serious relationships: boys and their fathers, boys and their schools, boys and each other, kids...” see full review » see other reviews » |
Didn’t Like It “this book sucks so far, I may stop reading it” see full review » see other reviews » |
Newest Reviews
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“What more could you need with every drug in the world, a great time period of comtempary music, and a life on the block in brooklyn? A power ring that gives the wearer the ability to fly! this book is about the life of Dylan and his world and friends. He goes from one goal and path in life to the next but always mixed with a different drug of the day. is father is a sort of artist and his mother left him along time ago when he was 5, the only thing he remembered was her image and her smell, Weed. so how Dylan manages to live and grow old only to learn that his bestfriend is in prison.....sounds like theres one last job for the power ring that changes as if it were alive.
clint G wrote this review 4 days ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
If i were reading this right now id head out 1st thing and check down a copy of this book to read, ill give you this book in 3 words: Sex, Drugs, and Rock n Roll. lite on the sex, heavy on the drugs, and less roll more R&B.”“this book sucks so far, I may stop reading it”
bukowski wrote this review 8 days ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Set aside.”
Autumn T wrote this review Saturday, November 7 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“(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.)
jasonpettus wrote this review Wednesday, November 4 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
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”
“I struggled with this book but did not allow myself to give up. I wonder would I have liked it more if I was into 70s motown?”
Ellen M wrote this review Wednesday, September 23 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Very entertaining slab of modern, urban culture.”
Hal S wrote this review Sunday, September 13 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Lethem recreates Brooklyn in the 1970s with uncanny detail. An excellent narrative. Funny, too!”
Noah L wrote this review Saturday, August 29 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“ This is one of those books that is equal parts brillant and infuriating due to the author's insistence on trying to do too much. This novel has enough plot and themes for at least three novels and Lethem switches obsessions frequently from comics to pop music. The plot involves two Brooklyn kids one white and one black who find a magic ring that grants theme super powers but it is surprising how little that ends up playing in the book overall even though it is the dominent plot thread. This book is like a crazy jazz riff that you either go with or end up tuning out in frustration. Fans of Lethem will likely enjoy it but if this is your first experience with him it may be daunting. ”
Robephiles wrote this review Wednesday, July 29 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“The best portrayal of Gentrification and liner notes.”
Jimbo wrote this review Monday, May 11 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“I have a bit of a mixed response to this novel. I got bogged down in Dylan's obsessive self indulgence or myopic viewing of himself or whatever you want to call it. I don't like characters that can't seem to get past getting past. He spends 30 years (and the novel spends 30 years) tracing Dylan's inability to make sense of himself. At the end, maybe that's what happens but it seems more like he just keeps on keeping on. I don't know if this is a fortress of solitude or a fortress of self absorption, but I kept thinking "grow up." granted, the kid's mom (crazy) leaves him when he's 8, his father is an artist recluse who seems to give him very little mental or physical attention although he is present, he is regularly harassed by the neighborhood gangsters (mom has insisted they raise him in the ghetto of Brooklyn in the 70's) who found it both amusing and profitable to pick on the lone white kid. His best friend, Mingus ("Dose" as he tags himself) is a rapidly deteriorating crack addict that he really has no real relationship with (except that they "play" superhero--aeroman--and exchange hand jobs). I found the relationships in the book to be very unsatisfying--perhaps that was intentional to emphasize Dylan's inability to have satisfying relationships, and hence his fortress of solitude. But the guys is just unappealing to me.
Mary v wrote this review Friday, April 17 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Some might call this a "coming of age" novel, but then doesn't the character have to come of age? And if his return to Brooklyn to visit Mingus in prison and his brief sojourn to Bloomington Indiana to try to find some memory of Mom is this "break through", it didn't work for me. It just reinforced for me how difficult it is to empathize with Dylan because he just keeps going over the same stuff like a broken record (maybe that's why his job is writing the liner notes for CD's).”
