Rudderless Brooklyn

Writing in the New York Times Book Review last May, Laura Miller did readers everywhere an enormous favor by issuing a blanket amnesty for those who abandon books before finishing them. "Why subject yourself to an irksome book when so many sublime ones are available?" Miller asked. A number of writers and reviewers with whom she talked agreed. The talented Michael Chabon, who gives a book two pages to grab him, explained his ruthlessness as a function of time: "I'm very unforgiving. ... I guess I'm less responsible to books than I should be, but my time for reading is so limited and the competition is so fierce. It's a Darwinian process."

Miller continued:

Some might see this as evidence of a culturewide case of literary attention-deficit disorder, but it's hard to justify time wasted in the reading of unloved books. The burden is on the author to prove that what you're holding is something exceptional, and if not in the first few pages, then where? It's also unwise to idealize the passionately committed reading habits of youth; becoming a writer yourself can make you realize how low you once set the bar. ''I had an insatiable appetite for complete narratives,'' says Jonathan Lethem (''The Fortress of Solitude''), remembering the years when he finished every book he started. ''I needed to know what happened. I'd fillet a novel of its story. Now I read more slowly, less to get to the end than for the pleasure of the sentences and paragraphs. Before, it was pure consumer frenzy.''

Interestingly, I thought of Miller's piece while struggling with the first 150 pages of Lethem's book and ultimately giving it up. His ode to "the pleasure of the sentences and paragraphs" is what made Fortress such a frustrating read for me. The portion I read was terrifically overwritten, as if Lethem ached with the need to describe, as unnecessarily precisely as possible, every last excruciating detail in the lives of a white kid and a black kid growing up together in Brooklyn in the 1970s. While his acclaimed Motherless Brooklyn, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, careened along with an entertaining, manic abandon, Fortress feels like a calculated attempt to write something Important, and in the process the book suffers. Suffocated by its attention to detail, the novel come across as unfocused, with nothing to ground it, nothing to compel me to continue to its conclusion

My brother, a more discerning reader than I and a hell of a writer in his own right, offered both a modest defense and a few jabs of his own:

I'm sure Lethem would tell you he's trying to take a giant step forward. From what I understand, most or all of his previous books are exercises in so-called "genre" fiction, especially sci-fi and mystery; even "Motherless Brooklyn" (the only other thing by him that I've read) is at heart a detective novel. "The Fortress of Solitude" feels to me like a very conscious (or self-conscious) attempt to write the Great American Novel -- a serious literary book that will say everything important that needs to be said. ...

For what it's worth, I found it equal parts interesting and frustrating. (How's that for taking a stand?) Yes, parts are overwritten -- the obsessive attention to detail, in particular, feels frantic and precocious, like grad-school fiction. And the second half of the book -- in which a 30-something Dylan ends up unhappy and adrift in California, and feels the pull of Brooklyn -- is pretty unsatisfying because it's so generic and easy; Lethem uses bright, weightless California as a lazy stereotype, the opposite of dark, gritty New York. But a lot of the first half is really something. You don't have to have grown up on that particular block in Brooklyn to respond to Lethem's channeling of summer in the neighborhood. ...

Like I mentioned earlier, it's definitely a product of its time, sharing a voice and a mission, among other things, with "The Corrections" and "White Teeth" and "Underworld" and other recent books about everything.

I guess I give Lethem points for trying, but I can't say I regret bailing, especially after recalling Miller's essay. If life is too short to drink bad beer -- and it most certainly is -- then, too, it is too short to finish frustrating books. Back to the search for something sublime.