Only a decade ago, mostly it was just people up to no good who could be found outside on Smith Street after a certain hour. It was the edge of a particularly rough Brooklyn neighborhood known as Gowanus that real estate developers pretend no longer exists. People who visited Smith Street late at night in those days were not in search of the gourmet. more ›

Last year, when everyone else was reading The Fortress of Solitude, we picked up Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem’s previous novel, about a South Brooklyn detective with Tourette’s. Given our general suspicion of It-books and buzzy fiction, we were pleased to find that it was good—really good, in fact, intelligent and true, more entertaining and earnest and linguistically acrobatic than anything we had read in ages. Even more surprising was the way strangers would approach us every time we pulled it out on the subway: Hey, how is that, I’ve heard he’s great or I’m reading The Fortress of Solitude and I can’t wait to go back and read that. It was as if we had joined a secret book club that met on the train (and this even happened on trains other than that favorite of publishing types, the F). more ›

Author Jonathan Lethem gets the work up: A profile AND Michiko review in the Times today. The reason? His new book, Fortress of Solitude, his first since his National Book Critics Circle-winning, Motherless Brooklyn. Ah, the Doubleday publicists are earning their keep.
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