I thought I would do a general thoughts/observation on Sag Harbor post to bid the blogosphere farewell for the semester.
The novel has been giving my this weird childhood-I-never-experienced feeling; like Benji's adventures are all familiar even though I've personally had almost no experiences like them. I think it's because summertime beach-town is a pretty common setting in pop culture and stories about kids messing with BB guns and alcohol and working summer jobs are probably pretty familiar to most of us. But I think that Sag Harbor puts a few spins on this archetype. There're Benji's family issues and complicated racial conundrums and the generational differences in Sag Harbor, and commentary on hip hop culture and it's evolution (the list goes on I'm sure). Whitehead has worked a lot of themes into his summertime beach-town story and made it a pretty interesting read. I've been enjoying it. New train of thought:
We were introduced to Benji's sister (rather late) for the first time in the last chapter. She reminded me of Julia in some ways; very cool and sure of herself (at least from her younger brother's perspective). She also seems very opinionated. I think it would take a lot of conviction to leave Sag and her parents and adopt a new sub-culture like she did. I don't know how important Elanor will be to Benji's development (judging by how much she's appeared so far, I'm guessing not a whole lot) but she seems to have the potential to be an important role model (like Julia ends up being for Jason).
I still haven't read the last chapter so I suppose a question to ask would be "Will Benji reach his goal and be transformed by the end of the next two weeks?" Of course I don't think that Benji will be completely transformed (he's still being called Benji, after all), but he has certainly made some progress. Narrator Ben had that moment of connection with Benji at the concert, he's had what seems to be his first kiss, gotten his braces off, acquired the BB that will stick with (in) him for the rest of his life. He hasn't had any great revelations, and he hasn't progressed as notably as Jason had by the end of Black Swan Green, but he's had quite the summer and I'm sure he's somewhat different for it.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Monday, May 11, 2015
Hangman
I was curious about how autobiographical Black Swan Green is, so I looked up David Mitchell and was not super surprised to find out that he has a stammer. I guess this means that stammering wasn't chosen (at least not solely) as a plot element due to its propensity to represent more general adolescent issues, but I think it does this very well. There was certainly a distinct difference between how open I was about expressing my thoughts in 5th grade vs. how open I was about expressing them in 6th grade. Somehow the foreign everything of middle school and the increasing social complexity that comes along with adolescence made me more self conscious about how I was projecting myself to the rest of the world. So I edited my speech, my posture, just like hangman forces Jason to edit which words he uses, and it really limited my communication (although not nearly as much as Jason is limited).
Like Unborn Twin, Hangman is personified as an independent entity inside Jason with its (his?) own desires and schemes to make Jason miserable. This seems an appropriate representation to me of some part of you that you have no control over and therefore doesn't quite feel like you. I can picture it, though I've never had a stutter.
Jason explains that he has dubbed his stutter "Hangman" because it first appeared when he couldn't get the word nightingale out during a game of hangman in class, but I think the fact that Hangman uses words to "execute" Jason's social standing probably also has something to do with it.
At the end of the book when he's talking with/at the old lady, he seems to make some progress in understanding Hangman. He decides that he doesn't cause it, rather the expectations of whoever he's speaking with do. So if he speaks with people/things that won't judge him, he does just fine, and that if he could stop caring, Hangman would go away entirely. This is both probably true of stuttering and, I think, sort of representative of Jason's larger social issues in the novel. He finally overcomes his struggles with coolness not when he achieves it but when he stops caring about it. And, in fact, this causes him to be perceived as cool to some extent (or at least not to be teased mercilessly).
I was kind of expecting Jason to kick it by the end of the novel and I think the fact that he doesn't reinforces the idea that his development as a character isn't over. It also made his (fairly abrupt) transition into a confidence in his social standing more smooth. I also take it that Mitchell himself still doesn't have Hangman completely under wraps and that is he still somewhat embarrassed about it "I'd probably still be avoiding the subject today had I not outed myself by writing a semi-autobiographical novel, Black Swan Green, narrated by a stammering 13 year old."
Like Unborn Twin, Hangman is personified as an independent entity inside Jason with its (his?) own desires and schemes to make Jason miserable. This seems an appropriate representation to me of some part of you that you have no control over and therefore doesn't quite feel like you. I can picture it, though I've never had a stutter.
Jason explains that he has dubbed his stutter "Hangman" because it first appeared when he couldn't get the word nightingale out during a game of hangman in class, but I think the fact that Hangman uses words to "execute" Jason's social standing probably also has something to do with it.
At the end of the book when he's talking with/at the old lady, he seems to make some progress in understanding Hangman. He decides that he doesn't cause it, rather the expectations of whoever he's speaking with do. So if he speaks with people/things that won't judge him, he does just fine, and that if he could stop caring, Hangman would go away entirely. This is both probably true of stuttering and, I think, sort of representative of Jason's larger social issues in the novel. He finally overcomes his struggles with coolness not when he achieves it but when he stops caring about it. And, in fact, this causes him to be perceived as cool to some extent (or at least not to be teased mercilessly).
I was kind of expecting Jason to kick it by the end of the novel and I think the fact that he doesn't reinforces the idea that his development as a character isn't over. It also made his (fairly abrupt) transition into a confidence in his social standing more smooth. I also take it that Mitchell himself still doesn't have Hangman completely under wraps and that is he still somewhat embarrassed about it "I'd probably still be avoiding the subject today had I not outed myself by writing a semi-autobiographical novel, Black Swan Green, narrated by a stammering 13 year old."
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Horsefly Shuffle
As several people have mentioned in class, Sag Harbor is very similar to a book we read in AA lit last semester called The White Boy Shuffle.
Both books are written by young African American males who are torn between different cultures in race related ways. They both have similar, sarcastic, contemporary-seeming narrations and they were both written about the 80s from a later perspective (TWBS was published in '96 and Sag in '09).
Both books are written by young African American males who are torn between different cultures in race related ways. They both have similar, sarcastic, contemporary-seeming narrations and they were both written about the 80s from a later perspective (TWBS was published in '96 and Sag in '09).
I noticed these parallels almost immediately, but the similarities really got to me when Benji mentioned that the "horsefly shuffle" (a fly swatting technique for summertime hikes through the brush) is the only dance he can do, because The White Boy Shuffle is named for the only dance that Gunnar, the main character in TWBS, can do. Perhaps this is total coincidence. Maybe the __ shuffle was just a common expression in the 80's and self confident, coordinated main characters aren't any fun, but to me it seemed pretty bizarre that this would appear in both novels. I think, in WBS, the dance represents Gunnar's awkward position in between the white world and the black world, as a kid who spent his early childhood in a mostly white area as the cool black kid and then seemed like a nerd when he moved to Hillside. Likewise, in Sag Harbor, it seems that Benji is simultaneously unusual at his (primarily white) prep school, and somewhat separated from the "street culture" that he's trying to imitate (his little blurbs about it make it seem very alien; he's thinking really hard about those ___ lookin' ___ expressions and things), and the fact that he can't dance might play into that like is does for Gunnar. The significance of the dance is more obvious in White Boy Shuffle, but I think that maybe a similar interpretation can be applied to Sag.
I think that a big theme in what we've read so far of Sag Harbor is that Benji (and all of Sag Harbor) is in this awkward place with respect to black history and traditional black problems and things. He and his friends kind of want to embrace classic black culture (like Nick) but aren't quite authentically inclined to follow it. It's not natural for them; they have to work at it. Likewise, Benji really ought to know about all these famous black people like W. E. B. Du Bois, but he doesn't because in his everyday life he is benefitting from their achievements and therefore not constantly forced to think about the issues which they fought against/ not exposed to them sufficiently because he's always around white people. And, he still has to deal with the world's (specifically white peoples') perceptions of his blackness. Like, he has to actively avoid stereotypes and stuff.
Benji's black, but also, in some senses, kind of not (for some very restrictive cultural definitions of 'lack'), just like Gunnar at the start of TWBS. Both books bring up the very complicated issues brought about by the slow and uneven meshing of cultures in modern America.
I think that a big theme in what we've read so far of Sag Harbor is that Benji (and all of Sag Harbor) is in this awkward place with respect to black history and traditional black problems and things. He and his friends kind of want to embrace classic black culture (like Nick) but aren't quite authentically inclined to follow it. It's not natural for them; they have to work at it. Likewise, Benji really ought to know about all these famous black people like W. E. B. Du Bois, but he doesn't because in his everyday life he is benefitting from their achievements and therefore not constantly forced to think about the issues which they fought against/ not exposed to them sufficiently because he's always around white people. And, he still has to deal with the world's (specifically white peoples') perceptions of his blackness. Like, he has to actively avoid stereotypes and stuff.
Benji's black, but also, in some senses, kind of not (for some very restrictive cultural definitions of 'lack'), just like Gunnar at the start of TWBS. Both books bring up the very complicated issues brought about by the slow and uneven meshing of cultures in modern America.
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