Word: whitehead
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There are action-packed summer books - in which, say, a shark attacks on the Fourth of July or a well-tailored man with a mysterious past throws wild parties - and then there is Sag Harbor (Doubleday; 273 pages), the new autobiographical novel by Colson Whitehead. Not much happens in Sag Harbor. It's 1985, and Benji, a 15-year-old New York City kid, takes off for his family's beach house on Long Island, where for the first time he'll look after himself and his brother while his parents are at work...
...distinctive premise, but Whitehead provides a distinctive heritage: Benji's grandparents were among a group of professional African Americans who bought land in Sag, built homes and created a community. "According to the world," says Benji, "we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses." With this, Whitehead creates just enough tension for his coming-of-age novel. His teenage hero is both insider and outsider, working nonstop to find his place among the white kids he attends prep school with from September to June, the black kids he hangs out with in Sag and the expectations...
...sand to cover, and Whitehead is determined not to miss a grain of it. At times his prose mimics the speed of the butterscotch Benji ladles out at his summer job scooping ice cream at Jonni Waffle. ("Is the toppings bar ready for its close-up? Let us cue the orchestra as we pan lovingly, lingeringly, over the delights in the tiny containers.") But if the slow zoom sometimes verges on the picayune, it also highlights the eternal puzzle of summer pacing. Benji and his friends can't wait to get out to Sag, but once they do, they...
That puts a lot of pressure on the prose, but Whitehead, whose writing earned him a MacArthur "genius" grant in 2002, makes the surface idiom-rich and plenty compelling. Benji is a Coke fiend (the drink, not the drug - he's a good kid), and 1985 was the year of New Coke, an announcement that hit him hard. "It was as if someone had popped the top of the world," he says, "and let all the air out." The simile perfectly fits the crime...
...appear to share these tactics and philosophy. Several of its top employees formerly worked at a now defunct chain of troubled-teen programs known as CEDU, which was founded by former Synanon members. "The process of breaking kids down is very much integrated into the therapeutic milieu," says Kat Whitehead, executive director of the Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth, an expert on such abuse, who has testified before Congress on the topic. "Unfortunately, that seems to be very common, at least in the private facilities...