read this novel has been a factor.
being inside the old cartoons of Marvel wrapped as relics, tons of titles of tracks funk and soul and discover the satisfaction that I knew all, and three pages to track Rapper's Delight the Sugarhill Gang made me a reader satisfied and qualified. After the reading I went into my personal "bat-cave" with renewed devotion to admire my collection of original American comics incellophanati carefully and old LPs and 45s.
I've always been convinced that everything that collection had its poetic soul of literature, but sometimes in order to substantiate its belief that there is a need for a writer like Lethem that we confirm it.
Released by the bat-cave is in the spirit of the blog and the step Fortress of Solitude (The Fortress of Solitude) that, for the uninitiated, in addition to the novel's title is the name of Superman's secret hideout.
The book, first published in 2003, tells the Brooklyn of the '70s through the history of friendship between the white Dylan Ebdus Black and Mingus Rude, a friendship experienced between four streets of Brooklyn, a microcosm of the changing racial where "there are murmurs that whites are returning" .
Dylan, Ebdus and the other kids in the suburbs, including the tough Robert Woolfolk, grow on street games, petty theft, music, tags and graffiti on the walls, superheroes, bullying. And the drug, spiced with hopes no one knows what.
They dream of being superheroes and also for some of them the opportunity will present itself, thanks to a mysterious ring had inherited from a bum. But
Dean Street, Flatbush Avenue, Nevins Street, Bergen Street , not Manhattan, with its towers and skyscrapers, districts are horizontal, with low houses where no flying superhero, even their Aeroman, moves smoothly: "Dylan is close to the edge, at most, then closer. She slides one foot on the ledge, bend your knees as George Washington on the bow. He can see down the bottom of the pit of Dean Street, the tops of newly planted trees, grids on the roofs of buses passing through, but the feeling is dizzying. "
that road, where it takes place throughout the first part of the novel long and have little or nothing nice: "Brooklyn is not always felt able to look different from what it was, conscious and anxious, pointing Manhattan, as in Dean, in Bergen or in Pacific Street. Brooklyn, at times, was also pleased, as in Flatbush Avenue, to be herself, messy and persistent. "
Yet the appeal of the suburbs, where it grows, it is undeniable suffering and the hope is for the reader as to the writer. Those roads are the setting for the training of social acceptance, where it remains unclear who laughs at those who challenge those who are victims of those. Lethem's writing is vivid, sharp, and with dialogues that affect impact and there are exercises in style refined as the transition from third to first person narration after the first part of the novel and the writing of the liner notes of the CD box set Bothered Blue imaginary Subtle Distinctions group.
The events of the two protagonists and other characters such as Mingus's father, Barrett Rude (he is the former lead singer of the aforementioned Subtle Distinctions, probably inspired by Philippe Wynne of the Spinners ) are followed step by step from the '70s to ' 90, make us breathe the air of a District of New York literary and sap that is, in spite of family situations certainly not idyllic, even nostalgic dream for a generation of forty-fifty years old who have spent their youth to read with the greed comic books and liner notes discs until the last printed character, was that of copyright and credits microscopic printing. As someone has already
sospettato, le storie di Dylan, Ebdus e Robert e gli altri avranno destini diversi, non tutti con la stessa fortuna, ma le radici della strada sono difficili da estirpare.
Chiudo con una nota sulla copertina di questa edizione italiana del romanzo.
Credo che sia totalmente sbagliata.
Questa illustrazione del Red Nose Studio, perfetta nell'esprimere angoscia e oppressione, non evoca minimamente i contenuti del libro e non aiuta certo a dare al lavoro di Lethem una maggiore diffusione. Lethem, qui al suo sesto romanzo, resta in Italia un autore per intenditori e un progetto di grafica più accattivante e più in tema, come ad esempio quello realizzato per il libro di Claudia Durastanti Un Giorno Verrò a Lanciare Sassi alla tua window, not far from the atmosphere of this volume would have been more appropriate. Or just take any of cover American or British .
The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem, The Assayer Pocket, 2010
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