LitPicks - January '10

Coming of Age—It seems fitting to begin the brand new decade with novels about young people who cross a threshold and enter the adult world. In that passage, often bittersweet, sometimes searing, they gain new-found wisdom, maturity—even sadness—as they leave their innocence and childish ways behind.

A Lighter Touch | Wonderfully Written | Great Works




Sag Harbor
Colson Whitehead, 2009
288 pp.
                           
By Molly Lundquist
At 15 Benji Cooper is a nerd—someone forgot to leave him the instruction manual on cool. He fumbles the latest handshakes, wears braces and a "f**ked up" haircut, loves Dungeon and Dragons, Fandango magazine, and Easy Listin' music. Worse, he's never kissed a girl and can't get anyone to call him Ben.

Benji is an African-American in an all-white private Manhattan school, his parents upper-middle-class professionals who summer in the black neighbor-hood of Sag Harbor, right around the corner (hidden) from the uppity-upscale white Hamptons. That summer idyll, out from under constant white scrutiny, is where Benji can feel like himself, except that he's not sure what that "self" should be. But this summer, 1985, Benji makes a plan to find out.

Unlike typical coming-of-age stories, there's no big payoff at the end of Sag Harbor, no crossing over the threshold into the grownup world. Instead, Benji's summer is composed of momentary enlightenments, random events that open the door to maturity by only a crack.

At the end of the book, our narrator—an older, wiser Benji, now "Ben"—makes a wonderful Alice-Through-the Looking-Glass observation. Here's older Ben telling us how younger Benji is looking for an older version of himself, the adult he might someday become:

[Benji] would not recognize the man he came to be. The poor sap. I need him to figure out how I got where I am, and he needs me to reassure him that despite all he knows and has seen and feels, there is more. I can listen to him. But of course he can't hear a damn thing I'm saying.

I love this book...especially Benji's smart, hilarious, made-me-laugh-out-loud voice as he parses the many conflicting cultures around him—black, white, teen, adult, "bourgie" (bourgeoise), and hip. Oh, one more thing: a girl in the book says to Benjie and his buddies, "You use some foul language." It's true...just to warn you.

Be sure to see the Reading Guide for Sag Harbor.

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A Gate at the Stairs
Lorrie Moore, 2009
336 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
Lorrie Moore is "brainy," "Lily-Tomlin-funny", and possibly "the most irresistible contemporary American writer" (that from Jonathan Lethem, no slouch himself). A Gate at the Stairs, Moore's first novel in 11 years, has been widely praised for its stunning portrait of a young woman maneuvering her way in the adult world.

Tassie Keltjin, a student at a mid-sized liberal arts college in Wisconsin, defies the "take the girl out of the country but not the country..." maxim. Raised on a potato farm, Tassie takes to her new academic life with zest: she thrills to the words of Geoffrey Chaucer and Sylvia Plath alike, relishes her first taste of Chinese food, and engages in courses like pilates, wine tasting, war-movie soundtracks, and dating rocks (whether socio-psychology or geology isn't quite clear).

At the end of the fall semester, Tassie signs on with an attractive couple as nanny for their adopted baby. Sophisticated and smart, the couple disarms Tassie, who also develops a deep attachement to the child, Mary Emma. But...well, things aren't what they seem. And Tassie, already feeling alone and adrift, finds that love isn't strong enough to hold tragedy at bay.

A lover of word play and purveyor of puns, Tassie knows that language can be unreliable in how it presents itself; she comes to learn that the world and its people are equally unreliable, if not more so, in the way they present themselves. It's a sad and painful lesson.

A Gate deserves all the praise it's received. Tassie's voice engages us from the start, a funny, precocious innocence that draws us into her world. And guaranteed—book clubs will have riveting discussions when it comes to Sarah and Edward Brink.

See the Reading Guide for A Gate at the Stairs.

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A Separate Peace
John Knowles, 1959
208 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
Truly, I wanted to recommend Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint. (Notice how I seem to be recommending it anyway.) One of the great coming-of-age novels of modern America, it manages to be side-splittingly funny and tender at the same time—but so focused on the male member and bathroom humor that many find it offensive. (Others' sensibilities are more acutely tuned than mine...so now you know.)

Instead, I offer...John Knowles's beautiful rendering of youth, war (within and without), and hard-gained self-knowledge. Published in 1959, A Separate Peace has maintained its power to move us for 50 years.

The story follows two adolescent boys in a private New England school who become fast friends—Gene, a shy intellectual, and Finny, a gregarious athlete. Their innocent summer session is marred when Finny falls from a tree, an accident that may or may not have been intentionally caused by Gene. Gene both adores and resents all that Finny represents, and the love-hate war within himself—played out against the backdrop of World War II—forms the heart of the story. Brinker, a third boy, represents a sort of adult maturity who gradually spurs Gene's own movement toward responsibility and self-awareness.

It's a wonderful book. And even if you read it in high school...it's time to re-read it as an adult. Lots to think and talk about.

Coming-of-Age is a richly populated literary theme, and it bears pointing out other works that fall within the category. So here goes...previous LitPick books include Atonement, Book Thief, My Antonia, Out Stealing Horses, Prime of Miss Jean Brody, River Runs Through It, Samurai Garden, Secret Life of Bees, Sons and Lovers, Syringa Tree, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Other superb books in the coming-of-age tradition include Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger), The Chosen (Chaim Potok), Demian and Siddhartha (both by Hermann Hesse), House on Mango Street (Sandra Cisneros), Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison), Look Homeward Angel (Thomas Wolfe), Native Son (Richard Wright), Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce), Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving), Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane), Someone Knows My Name (Lawrence Hill), Song of the Lark (Willa Cather), To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee Harper), World According to Garp (John Irving).

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