Word: fortresses
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...Spiegelman and his desire not to be shelved next to Marvel's books, he is just wrong. Of course some Graphic Novels have a "seriousness of purpose," as he says, that superheroes or some manga don't have. Novels like "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" or "Fortress of Solitude" have a seriousness of purpose that the latest Clive Cussler or Robert Ludlum doesn't have. Still they are all novels. Spiegelman seems to be making the same mistake that people who won't consider comics and Graphic Novels seriously make (I realize he really knows better) by associating...
...artistry and digital effects with a theme of self-discovery in the great heroic tradition. So, what did the brothers do for an encore? They spread the sequel over two feature-length films and, with all that time to fill, got a little gassy in their storytelling. The rebel fortress of Zion was a drab lair whose denizens engaged in way too much Jedi Council--style nattering. Then--as if producer Joel Silver had pleaded, "Could you please have somebody hit somebody?"--Reloaded 180'd into an action film, with the most elaborate car chase ever shot but without...
...these days. Jonathan Franzen set the stage last year with his verbose and neverending The Corrections, and recently another Jonathan—Jonathan Lethem—hit the literary big-time. Fortunately for us, Lethem’s efforts yielded a smarter and more complicated (albeit grandiose) novel, The Fortress of Solitude. And this comic but poignant novel was penned by an author both exuberant and thoughtful, something audience members at First Parish Church learned last Thursday evening...
...Fortress of Solitude is filled with cultural references, a novel that wavers between an interesting cultural history and a forced inclusion of everything that comprised the 1970s. Even Bruce Lee is mentioned, seemingly for no other reason than a gratuitous name-drop...
Lethem is one of those novelists who get better book by book, from his early science-fiction noodlings to the hard-boiled, atmospheric Motherless Brooklyn. The Fortress of Solitude is a glorious, chaotic, raw novel, and God knows there are any number of ways to pick it apart. Lethem has adopted a furiously literary, poetic style that would look overwrought in the pages of an undergraduate literary magazine, and he gambles on a risky element of magical realism: the boys discover a magic ring that intermittently (it's capricious) gives them superpowers. But Lethem grabs and captures 1970s New York...