Sag Harbor (2009) by Colson Whitehead

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Sag Harbor (2009)

by Colson Whitehead

Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 6/28

New York:  73/105

   Sag Harbor is the eastern most title in the New York/New Jersey chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  If any author was a candidate to get more than one book in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, surely Colson Whitehead is at the top of the list.  Just for New York City you could plausibly use The Intuitionist- also his first novel, which is about elevator operators in an alternate New York City.  John Henry Days probably wouldn't be anyone's first pick but it is set in West Virginia, which I'm guessing is under represented as a literary locale. Zone One is IMO, a killer zombie book set in a very specific part of Manhattan and uses the geography of Manhattan throughout.  The Underground Railroad is a good pick for Charleston, South Carolina, Nickle Boys is set at a specific, historically based school in Florida and both Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto take place in the same area of Harlem.

  The fact that I've made it 20% through the project without an author being repeated makes me think that is the rule for this project.  Quite the opposite of the 1,001 Novels to Read Before You Die list, which had several authors with more than five titles in the first edition.  Maybe as many as 20 writers in that first edition with over five titles.  I can see why Susan Straight picked Sag Harbor- it is, first off, named after a specific place.  Second, it's a book by a canon level author- though god knows quality doesn't seem to be the first, second or third criterion for many of the books on this list.  Third it's about growing up and human relationships, and to my knowledge it's the only one of Whitehead's books that could remotely be thought to be autobiographical. 

    I think it is telling that Sag Harbor wasn't his first, second or third book.  Twenty years into this blog I hold it as a truth that authors who start with a first novel that closely resembles their own experience- a POV bildungsroman or multi-generational family drama with the main protagonist resembling the author- are the weakest authors, canonically speaking.  Yes, they might score a hit with that first book- particularly if they have an unusual background or lived experience, but the odds that they are either going to 1) mine that same subject for a second well received book or 2) move on to create a book that isn't taken directly from their own life is much lower than authors who start with a book that is about something other than their own, fictionalized growing up experience.

   The pleasures of Sag Harbor are many.  It's a low stakes enterprise without the drama that typically accompanies the bildungsroman as a genre.  The biographical details provided sent me scurrying to the internet to look up "Colson Whitehead's Dad" and other related subjects.  Whitehead is an amazing writer, and his era specific soliloquies about the Road Warrior movie, the Roxane/UFTO rap beef and applying Dungeons & Dragons alignments to everyday existence were equally delightful.

   Colson Whitehead is very close to the top of my list in terms of authors who are both commercially succesful AND critically acclaimed.   Whitehead has summitted the American literary establishment with his back-to-back Pulitzer wins but he hasn't quite won over the rest of the world (he sort of missed his Booker Prize window because his prize winners were published before they opened up the competition to American authors).  A Nobel Prize seems unlikely- Whitehead never shows up in the betting odds.  None of his books have landed as a hit on television or film- Amazon put a lot of money into The Underground Railroad adaptation but even a pretty die-hard fan like me couldn't finish the series.  

  Surely though this is a top 10 title for the New York/New Jersey chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list.