Jonathan Lethem’s “View from a Headlock”

From The New Yorker's archive: semi-autobiographical fiction about the friendship between two teen-age boys, one white and one Black, growing up in Brooklyn.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   View in browser | Update your preferences     Fiction "View From a Headlock" "Dylan wanted to read Mingus Rude like a language, wanted to know if the new kid had changed Dean Street or only changed Dylan himself by arriving here." By Jonathan Lethem The novelist Jonathan Lethem writes evocatively about the compressed fragments of our individual encounters and recollections. Since 2002, Lethem has contributed more than twenty stories to The New Yorker. He has written about a variety of topics, including his encounter with a Beat icon at a bookstore in Brooklyn, his friendship with the writer and cultural critic David Bowman, and how his fascination with pop culture helped him cope with his mother's death. He's also the author of twenty-five books, including "Chronic City" and "Motherless Brooklyn," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and was adapted into a film directed by Edward Norton. In 2003, Lethem published "View from a Headlock," an excerpt from his sprawling semi-autobiographical novel, "The Fortress of Solitude." Lethem traces the friendship between Dylan and Mingus, two teen-age boys, one white and one Black, growing up in Boerum Hill. He follows his protagonists' winding journey a generation before gentrification permanently altered the neighborhood. "The Heights Promenade was a rim of park cantilevered over the shipyards, Brooklyn's sulky lip. Old men and women pecked forward like pigeons on cobblestone, or sat frozen with clutched newspapers on benches in the face of Manhattan's tedious spires, the skyline a channel no one watched that played anyway, like famous static. Dylan and Mingus were detectives, following clues," he writes. Lethem depicts the uncertainties and rife conflicts of youth with intuitive precision. As his story progresses, he explores the tension between his characters' tentative steps toward adulthood and the chaotic streets they must navigate. His protagonists' lives appear, at times, to mirror the shifting landscape of the neighborhood that has defined them. Lethem reveals the unguarded, impulsive moments we often keep interred in the past—and, in doing so, he offers a discerning portrait of an earlier era and milieu, perceived through the lens of adolescent, and ever curious, eyes. —Erin Overbey, archive editor More from the Archive     Personal History From 2005: The Beards Movies, music, books, and a mother's death. By Jonathan Lethem     Personal History From 2003: Dancing in the City A journalist remembers her early life as a dancer in New York, under Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Twyla Tharp. By Alma Guillermoprieto This e-mail was sent to you by The New Yorker. To insure delivery, we recommend adding newyorker@newsletters.newyorker.com to your contacts, while noting that it is a no-reply address. Please send all newsletter feedback to tnyinbox@newyorker.com.    For more from The New Yorker, sign up for our newsletters, shop the store, and sign in to newyorker.com, where subscribers always have unlimited access. Contact us with questions.   View our Privacy Policy. Unsubscribe.   Copyright © Condé Nast 2021. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.