Literary Style
Stylistically, the two main parts of the novel are written as a) a third-person narrative ("Underberg" - part one) and b) a first-person narrative ("Prisonaires" - part three) with distinctive dialogue, though toward the very end of the book dialogue-intensive scenes and the brief entry of “Liner Notes” (part two) by Dylan are introduced to mirror his alienation from society. Since the work covers Dylan's life from the time he was a child to his growing independence and moral detachment from Brooklyn as a young man, the style of the work progresses through each of its thirty-four chapters, with the complexity of language gradually increasing. However, throughout the work, slang and music are used to portray indirectly the state of mind of the protagonist, and the subjective impact of the events of his life. Through the use of these sly literary devices Lethem intends to capture the subjective experience through music, rather than to present the actual experience through prose narrative.
Read more about this topic: The Fortress Of Solitude (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words literary and/or style:
“The further our civilization advances upon its present lines so much the cheaper sort of thing does “fame” become, especially of the literary sort. This species of “fame” a waggish acquaintance says can be manufactured to order, and sometimes is so manufactured.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)