Jonathan Lethem recently returned to his hometown of Brooklyn, and it piqued my interest as to why. One day, he took me to Dean Street in Boerum Hill, the neighborhood where he grew up in the 1970s. This area serves as the backdrop for his acclaimed novel, “The Fortress of Solitude,” as well as his new book, “Brooklyn Crime Novel.”
As a fellow Brooklynite who grew up a few years after Lethem, he has always been somewhat of a literary hero to me and my childhood friends. He immortalized our beloved borough in his fiction and garnered praise from the literary world for doing so. However, there was a sense of betrayal when he left Brooklyn, both physically and in his writing. As Brooklynites, we have a high tolerance for crime, but we consider desertion to be one of the gravest offenses. Despite writing six novels after “The Fortress of Solitude,” Lethem had not set another story in Brooklyn, until now.
When asked why he returned to familiar territory, Lethem explained that people were always asking him if he would ever revisit Dean Street in his writing. He always responded with a firm “no,” until one day when he jokingly said, “The only way I would ever do a sequel to ‘The Fortress of Solitude’ is from the perspective of a character who grew up on that street and despises the book.” This offhand remark turned into the premise for his latest book, “Brooklyn Crime Novel.”
Meeting Lethem in a trendy hotel in the neighborhood, it was clear that time and California had treated him well. Approaching 60, he appeared distinguished with his white hair and slim figure, dressed in a denim jacket and stylish shoes. We both wore the signature “interesting writer glasses” that come with age. To the waitress, we probably looked like any other tourists in the lobby, but we felt the need to escape that perception. So, we ventured out for a walk around the neighborhood.
“Brooklyn Crime Novel” is divided into six sections, with the first titled “Everybody Gets Robbed.” The book explores the theme of gentrification and its aftermath. Lethem portrays a scenario where well-intentioned white parents move into a supposedly “abandoned” neighborhood called Boerum Hill, only to have their children face the consequences through street harassment by their Black and Puerto Rican peers. Many characters are identified only by their initials or their race/ethnicity, while others have quirky nicknames that highlight their distinctive traits.
Even Lethem himself makes a hilarious appearance as “the novelist,” confronting the criticism that he committed a crime by writing a popular book about growing up in the neighborhood. He is accused of stealing stories and exploiting the area’s nostalgia for his own gain, paving the way for gentrifiers to flood in. The neighborhood’s history-keeper, known as the Wheeze, disagrees with Lethem’s portrayal, claiming that Lethem himself gentrified gentrification.
“Brooklyn Crime Novel” is not a conventional narrative but rather a series of stories that form an inquiry, as described on its first page. Each story is like an artifact from a bygone era.
As a third-generation Brooklynite, I grew up thinking of Brooklyn as just another place I happened to be from. People didn’t flock to Brooklyn; they aspired to leave it behind. It was a place on the fringes, filled with working-class and middle-class New Yorkers from diverse backgrounds. It was far from the idealized “melting pot”; it was a place where fiefdoms were established and protected by those who arrived first, leading to acts of violence in the name of protecting their “turf.”
Living on the edge of violence could breed hatred, but it also fostered a strange form of respect. We recognized that different people existed, with their own communities and strengths. This is what we have lost to gentrification – the ability to see beyond ourselves and appreciate the diversity that once defined Brooklyn.
When “The Fortress of Solitude” was published, I had just returned to the city after college. New Yorkers were still grappling with the aftermath of 9/11, and Brooklyn was a place that many Manhattanites looked down upon. Reading Lethem’s novel with my high school friends, we felt validated in our experiences and discovered a shared sense of nostalgia mixed with guilt about our own aspirations. The book made us realize that some of us can “get out” of Brooklyn, while others are tied to circumstances much larger than themselves.
“The Fortress of Solitude” follows the story of Dylan Ebdus, a white boy, and his best friend, Mingus Rude, whose father was a former soul singer. They bond over shared interests like comics, music, and graffiti, but their friendship is tested by the events that unfold in their lives. Mingus ends up in the criminal justice system, while Dylan flees Brooklyn, yet the further he gets, the more the place defines him.
After the success of “The Fortress of Solitude,” a wave of “Literary Jonathans” emerged. Lethem himself received a MacArthur grant and split his time between Brooklyn and Maine. Other talented writers named Jonathan, like Jonathan Ames and Jonathan Safran Foer, were also making waves in Brooklyn. Jonathan Franzen even gained attention for his refusal to live in Brooklyn, though he, too, was a Guggenheim recipient. The Brooklyn writing scene exploded, and Lethem found himself unintentionally at the center of it all.
“Brooklyn Crime Novel” is Lethem’s return to his literary roots in Brooklyn. It explores the complexities of gentrification, crime, and the loss of community that comes with it. Through its interconnected stories, Lethem captures the essence of a bygone era and forces us to confront the consequences of our actions. As a Brooklynite, I am grateful for his honest portrayal of our borough and the introspection it inspires.
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