Sag Harbor, Colson Whitehead

I haven’t read any of Colson Whitehead’s other works (unless of course you count his Twitter feed).  But I would be willing to gander that Sag Harbor is quite unlike his other works from hearsay alone. There's no elevators involved for one.  

Instead, Sag Harbor is a quirky story of an unusual kid growing up in the '80s and trying to make his way from childhood into full-fledged teenager-hood. And while the premise is alluring, the cover is beautiful too… I was pretty happy every time I pulled it out of my purse.  Reading Sag Harbor while in Sag Harbor was sort of (dorkily) cool too, and it even got me an appearance on PlumTV (which I have yet to see).

For you pop culture junkies, the '80s references abound. If I had been born just a decade earlier, I probably would have loved it even more.  But that aside, I loved it nonetheless.  

The story goes like this: Benji, a well-to-do black kid from Manhattan, summers in Sag Harbor and spends most of his time with his brothers while his parents work in the city during the week. Benji charms his reader instantly into loving and rooting for him, especially when he gets a BB pellet lodged in his eye socket.  Seeing as this story line of rich-black-kid-from-Manhattan-in-Sag-Harbor sounds suspiciously like the life of Colson Whitehead, there could be a bit of critique of the work walking the fine line between memoir and novel.  But at least he chose the right side of that line and called it fiction, unlike our dear friend James Frey. I'd bet some of the events are a bit more interesting because of it.

Though this book does (apparently) mark a change in the tone of our dear Mr. Whitehead, it maintains some serious tones with which he has made a name for himself , like abundant racial commentary and the pangs of reality that accompany life.

And don’t worry.  I’ve got The Intuitionist and John Henry Days on the shelf. Reviews to follow, hopefully soon.