Sag Harbor: A Novel [DECKLE EDGE] (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2009: Like his fellow New Yorker Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead weaves gracefully through genres with each of his books, but Sag Harbor, billed as his "autobiographical fourth novel," seems positioned to be his breakout book--which is a funny thing for a writer who has already received so many major literary awards, including a MacArthur "Genius" grant and being short-listed for the Pulitzer.

The year is 1985 and 15-year-old Benji Cooper, one of the only black students at his elite Manhattan private school, leaves the city to spend three largely unsupervised months living with his younger brother Reggie in an enclave of Long Island's Sag Harbor, the summer home to many African American urban professionals. Benji's a Converse-wearing, Smiths-loving, Dungeons & Dragons-playing nerd whose favorite Star Wars character is the hapless bounty hunter Greedo (rather than the double-crossing Lando Calrissian). But Sag Harbor is a coming-of-age novel whose plot side-steps life-changing events writ large. The book's leisurely eight chapters mostly concern Benji's first kiss, the removal of braces, BB gun battles, slinging insults (largely unprintable "grammatical acrobatics") with his friends, and working his first summer job. And Whitehead crafts a wonderful set piece describing Benji's days at Jonni Waffle Ice Cream, where he is shrouded in "waffle musk" and a dirty T-shirt that's "soiled, covered with batter and befudged from a sundae mishap."

Whitehead pushes his love of pop culture into hyper-drive. Nearly every page is swimming with references to the 1980s--from New Coke and The Cosby Show to late nights trying to decipher flickering glimpses of naked women on scrambled Cinemax. And music courses through the book, capturing that period when early hip hop mixed with New Wave. Lisa Lisa and U.T.F.O make a memorable cameo at Jonni Waffle, and McFadden & Whitehead's "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now"--heard throughout the book in passing cars and boom boxes--gets tagged as "the black national anthem." Like that ubiquitous song, the soulful, celebratory, and painfully funny Sag Harbor and its chronicle of those lazy, sun-soaked days sandwiched between Memorial Day and Labor Day, will stick with you long after closing its covers. --Brad Thomas Parsons

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Amazon Exclusive: Jonathan Lethem Reviews Sag Harbor

Jonathan Lethem's new novel, Chronic City, will be published in October 2009, and is his first to be set in Manhattan. He is the author of seven novels including the New York Times bestseller The Fortress of Solitude, which was also a New York Times Book Review Editors Choice for 2003, and Motherless Brooklyn, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, his stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and the New York Times among others. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Maine.

First, an immodest disclaimer: I knew Colson Whitehead was really, really good before you did. That's because we share a publisher, and an editor, and I was sent a copy of his first novel, The Intuitionist, and asked to give advance comment--"a pufferoon," as insiders affectionately call the things--which I gladly did. In fact, I not only admired The Intuitionist, but it was a book that made me immediately feel less lonely. I'd published four novels at that point, and Colson's helped me to feel my particular approach, the sorts of things I was trying to pull off in my novels, wasn't absolutely misconceived. In fact, I wanted to hitch my wagon to Colson's obvious rising star; his first novel was more flawless, more accomplished, than my own first--it might have been more accomplished than my fourth, I wasn't sure. I immediately sought Colson out as a friend, and he's been one of my own most crucial peers ever since.

Colson's books are all quite different from one another in milieu, strategy, and their ultimate effect on the reader, though united by the signal laconic meter in his voice, by their keen sense of form and proportion, by their brilliance. In Sag Harbor he's "gone personal," though I wouldn't want to have to place bets on what is and isn't his own life-material here, or someone else's, or completely confabulated. This is one of my favorite kinds of books, where memory's kinesthetic floodgates open up to illuminate a lost world. It's like a meticulous diorama of the recent past, with the sharp edges of an exhibit in a museum, one where we learn just how strange and specific the universal experience of "coming of age" really can be. The mundane stuff of a Long Island summer here has the power both of a time capsule, and of an allegorical journey into what every human heart endures just trying to vault out of one's family and into the world of art, sex, and kinship that's so near, and so far off. All this, plus the greatest barbequed chicken wing in the history of literature past, present, or future. That's a pufferoon I'd guarantee with my life. --Jonathan Lethem

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More from Colson Whitehead

Set over the summer of 1985, Sag Harbor, the fourth book from award-winning writer Colson Whitehead, is steeped in 1980s pop culture. Music plays a vital role in the novel, and in this exclusive annotated playlist Whitehead compiles a lineup of nine essential tracks of the early MTV era, including highlights from The Smiths, Run DMC, Bauhaus, and Doug E Fresh and Slick Rick.

And read our interview with Colson Whitehead as we talk about Sag Harbor and discuss some pop culture hits and misses from the 1980s, grilling tips, McFadden & Whitehead, 12-sided die, and the allure of Twitter.

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From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In what Whitehead describes as his Autobiographical Fourth Novel (as opposed to the more usual autobiographical first novel), the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist John Henry Days explores the in-between space of adolescence through one boy's summer in a predominantly black Long Island neighborhood. Benji and Reggie, brothers so closely knit that many mistake them for twins, have been coming out to Sag Harbor for as long as they can remember. For Benji, each three-month stay at Sag is a chance to catch up with friends he doesn't see the rest of the year, and to escape the social awkwardness that comes with a bad afro, reading Fangoria, and being the rare African-American student at an exclusive Manhattan prep school. As he and Reggie develop separate identities and confront new factors like girls, part-time jobs and car-ownership, Benji struggles to adapt to circumstances that could see him joining the ranks of Those Who Don't Come Out Anymore. Benji's funny and touching story progresses leisurely toward Labor Day, but his reflections on what's gone before provide a roadmap to what comes later, resolving social conflicts that, at least this year, have yet to explode. (Apr.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; Stated First Edition edition (April 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385527659
• ISBN-13: 978-0385527651
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #25,047 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars All Theme, No Story, April 23, 2009

By	A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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I picked up Whitehead's first book (The Intuitionist) when it came out about a decade ago, mainly because I thought the author's name was interesting. Little did I know I'd stumbled across one of the best debut novels I've ever read. Next was the flawed but enjoyable John Henry Days, followed by the relatively light but still enjoyable Apex Hides the Hurt. Now, with his fourth novel, Whitehead finally turns autobiographical, and while his prose is as dexterous as ever, the book never really comes together.

Set in 1985, the story follows 15-year-old Benji over the course of a summer in Sag Harbor. He's a perennial outsider, a black kid at a Mahattan prep school, whose social scene revolves around Bar Mitzvahs, D&D sessions, horror movies, and punk and post-punk music. However, during the summers, the family heads to the family house at Sag Harbor where he's in the midst of a cadre of black friends whom he never sees during the school year. With that context, it should come as no surprise that the book shares the same dominant theme as Whitehead's three other novels -- race and identity.

However, unlike those books, there's almost no story to speak of. The reader merely tags along with Benji as he whiles away the summer, doing typical stupid teenage boy stuff, trying to fit in and trying to manage the transition from kid to adult. While this is a pretty good representation of teen angst, it's not that compelling. Sure, the prose is stylish, there are interesting characters, funny scenes, and some deep themes, but without a story to hang these on, the book has a very listless feel. I'm the same age as Benji, and share many of Benji's interests, so I was able to appreciate all the cultural references and whatnot -- but that's not enough. The book never builds to anything -- like the end of summer it just kind of fades away.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Adolescence hits boys harder than it does girls . . ., April 17, 2009

By	Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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. . .Your body is engulfed by chemicals of rage and despair, you pound, you shriek, you batter your head against the trees. You come away wounded, feeling that life is unknowable, can never be understood, only endured and sometimes cheated." Garrison Keilor

Like Benji, the protagonist of Colson Whitehead's "Sag Harbor", I grew up in New York City. The city was my playground. My friends and I wandered the streets, went from playground to playground to play basketball, stickball, or roller hockey. We'd take the subway to Coney Island and spend days on the beach, on the boardwalk and on the amusement park rides. When we were feeling particularly frisky we'd head over to Riis Park at Far Rockaway and try to get a gander at the nude sunbathers. We'd rarely see our parents between sunrise and sunset. I felt in my element. This was my world. Then, when I hit 13 I was sent away to a boarding school. Right when I hit adolescence I was lifted up out of one world and placed by my parents in a new, ostensibly better world. The people I met were alien to me and the disaffection I felt at not quite fitting in was palpable. I spent 9 months longing to return to my universe but when I did I found that being in my old, more comfortable world, did not relive me of the unfettered angst of being a teenager or make me comfortable in a new world where girls, music, Colt 45 Malt liquor and the improbable dream of `becoming a man' still made each day one filled with a mixture of unease and anticipation.

In a very real way this is the same world Benji inhabits. Benji spends 9 months of the year at a Manhattan prep school, a world unlike the middle class world he grew up in. Benji's disaffection may have played out along racial lines while mine was a divide of socio-economic class but the feelings Whitehead evinces in Benji seem to share a lot of the same DNA as my own. "Sag Harbor" is set in that 3-month summer gap after his return from prep school. Set in 1985 Sag Harbor is a local resort community created by and for middle class African-American families. Benji, 15, and his younger brother Reggie have the house to themselves during the week while their parents stay in the city to work. Their buddies lead similar partially adult-free lives. It is a gentle commingling of Lord of the Flies and Summer of 42.

Sag Harbor is well-written and enjoyable. It evokes a time and place in the lives of teen boys. As some reviewers have noted there isn't what you would call a plot-driven narrative. There isn't a series of events leading to a dramatic climax. Like Seinfeld the book is about nothing but in the hands of Whitehead it is a charming read. The life I lived in my summer time was typically about nothing. What are we going to do today? What are we going to get up to? Can we find an older brother to get us some beer? Doesn't so-and-so look hot? Laughing at jokes we didn't quite understand and trying our best, but not successfully, to stay out of trouble, were the order of the day. The book may be about nothing but the writing makes it pleasurable. Benji's observations about himself and the world around him seem spot-on to me. As the summer progresses we see the best-laid plans sometimes work and sometimes fail. Whitehead is a fine writer and managed to keep me laughing, chuckling or sighing at Benji's `summer of `85'.

Sag Harbor was a very enjoyable book to read. It brought back semi-sweet memories of days gone bye. If you are looking for a book with a roller coaster ride of highs and lows Sag Harbor is not for you. However, if you are looking for a very well-written piece that evokes memories of a time in your life when the fog of adolescence weighed heavily on each day's activities, then I think you will enjoy Sag Harbor.

L. Fleisig

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars gangsterism, April 10, 2009

By	Case Quarter (CT USA) - See all my reviews

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the summer they were 14 and 15, not your average black teenagers, as young boys their school clothes were blazers and corduroy jackets from brook brothers young mens department. later they attended a prep school and bar mitzvahs. after memorial day they were out of manhattan and at the family beach house in the hamptons, sag harbor. they were summer people, black summer people. this isn't new fictional territory. dorothy west set her fiction in the island upper middle class black enclave of oak bluffs, martha's vineyard, and in the novel, love, toni morrison wrote of a black resort hotel on the east coast.

the year 1985, the narrator, ben cooper, looks back. their older sister was in college, and once in college you no longer summered on the beach, not until you have children of your own, benji and his younger brother, reggie, were alone at the beach house, until their parents arrived on the weekends. teenage boys, gangling limbs and braces on teeth, with summer jobs, when not working they filled time watching tv and with their black friends playing video games, shooting bb guns, fighting, finding ways to get beer, on the lookout for girls, and scheming to get into concerts.

as the story stretches on you want to keep reading the often told story of growing up familiar to most of us, compelled by the storytelling of colson whitehead of the bright summer season's darkening and ending with labor day, with humor winding down to pathos. ben recalls moments with his father, noted in their beach community for his mastery of barbequing at the grill, a physician who attended schools where blacks were often numbered on one hand, before martin luther king and malcolm x, non violence and black power movements, were made visible by the media, and the sobering lessons his father taught, allowing no racial slight to go ignored by his sons.

colson whitehead layers on detail. he begins stories to interrupt with a flashback or another story of someone who just shows up from strolling along the beach, and pens moody descriptions of the beach and the water and the sky. and there are funny rhapsodies on frozen food, coca-cola and ice cream, and the island types who stop in the ice cream shop where benji worked.



an after note:

the obituary of colson whitehead's father appeared last month, march 2009, in the sag harbor express. a dartmouth graduate, in the early 60s when most large corporations were not hiring black applicants, arch whitehead began his own business research company, arch s whitehead associates.