Benji's Place in Sag Harbor
While Benji is the protagonist and narrator of Sag Harbor , I don’t think the book was really about him. What the author is telling is not the story of Benji, but the story of the town of Sag Harbor. Benji’s coming of age story is an illustration of the unique culture of this place and time. His story is just a little slice of the experience of growing up going to Sag Harbor, an experience shared by Benji’s friends, relatives, and community members across generations. What I took away from the book was much less about Benji’s personal journey, and much more about the very unique community and time period that it took place in. In the book, Benji and his friends are framed as one iteration in a series of crews that came down to Sag Harbor in years past and years to come. Benji discusses the crews that came before him. His grandparents were the first residents to build houses in Sag Harbor. His parents once roamed the beaches just like he and his friends did, and eventually went ...