Sag Harbor and Nostalgia - Connor Guarnieri
Sag Harbor tells the tale of a young Benji, who is visiting his summer home. The most prominent theme I noticed throughout Ben's narration was the theme of nostalgia. In fact, the town itself is an embodiment of nostalgia, holding multiple features of a long lost time. The old movie theater with its single screen, the historic whaling museum, the abandoned family houses that Benji thinks of, wondering if his own family home will share the same fate. Even nostalgia is present on his walk home from his job at Jonni Waffle. "The candles and kerosene lanterns burned in the windows of the houses, pulsating in orange and yellow, showing the way, just as they had a hundred years ago...Events had pulled the plug on the modern world. As if it had never been. The lights in the windows of the familiar old houses had guided the men home when they returned from the sea, the earthbound constellations they recognized and trusted and steered by (pg. 143)." Ben shows the town of Sag Harbor to be stuck in time, a relic of the past that stays consistent with it's ancient roots. It is interesting with the fact that Benji returns to Sag Harbor every year, seeing as he grows up within Sag Harbor, while the town itself seems not to grow at all, further remaining in the stasis of the past.
The town of Sag Harbor is very similar to the song Benji describes in "Tonight We Improvise." "It proceeded thusly: out of the speakers emerged a song you'd heard only once before in your life, one that left such a faint record in your brain that it was a memory of a memory. Paralyzed by confusion, you wondered, Where have I heard this before? The answer was, Nowhere important...but the deep sense of familiarity and loss was unshakable (pg. 269)." That sense of "familiarity and loss" perfectly describes the feeling of nostalgia, so this cheesy song that plays on the WLNG radio station instills a deep sense of nostalgia, one that aligns with the theme of the town of Sag Harbor. A relic of "remember whens", of reliving the past again and again. Ironically, Benji's entire goal in the town of Sag Harbor is to transform into a new person, not to lament on the past. He wishes to distance himself from it, even attempting to change his name to "Ben". However, due to the towns unique community and structure, it is impossible not to experience the feeling of nostalgia. While the world changes rapidly, Sag Harbor offers the rare comfort of familiarity and consistency. And that is the essence of nostalgia: not just remembering the past, but feeling its presence in the present.
Setting definitely plays a major role in the story and the whole idea of nostalgia that is so persistent throughout. Benji's always reflecting on his younger self and relating that to setting definitely amplifies those feelings significantly. Nice post!
ReplyDeleteConnor, I think that "familiarity and loss" is the perfect way to describe nostalgia. It is something so ingrained in us but we will never be able to experience it again. You do an amazing job of describing that feeling in relation to Ben. I find it funny how Benji spends so much time trying to become Ben, but it seems almost as if Ben would like to be Benji once again. They have this mutual yearning to be the other, but it isn't possible. It is so familiar, but it is lost.
ReplyDeleteHey Connor, I liked the connection you made between the song and Sag Harbor. I agree that Sag Harbor is a motionless relic, which is nostalgic for Benji but also a hinderance, as he does want to change. I do find it interesting how much of an active effort Benji takes to avoid the past of Sag Harbor in an effort to change himself, and yet by the end of the book he instead embraces how he is. Benji seems to be more nostalgic than he would like to admit, and the ending hinted towards that. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that this feeling of nostalgia throughout the book is most prominent in "Tonight We Improvise". I think that Melanie even further builds on this, herself being an almost embodiment of nostalgia, but to an even earlier time. It's interesting to see how WLNG brings back memories to Benji (whether true or not), and how his nostalgia as Ben compares to his nostalgia as Benji to when he was even younger. This was an interesting post, Connor!
ReplyDeleteNostalgia is a really interesting topic to write about and I think you do a great job at creating a definition for it. It feels like the process of writing (just narrating?) Sag Harbor is an active process of memory recall for Ben.
ReplyDeleteI wrote about this subject on my own blog, but an interesting corollary to the nostalgic impulse in this novel is the sense of decadence and decline that surrounds the present-day (1985) Sag Harbor teenage community. There's a nostalgic narrative around Sag Harbor's Black community itself, with the story of Maude Terry originally "settling" the area, buying the land, with members of Benji's grandparents' generation *building their houses themselves*. But Benji and his crew don't clearly fit into this historical arc: after the first generation of "strivers" and the second generation of civil-rights agitators, what we see in 1985 is a bunch of aimless kids wasting time, drinking soda and beer, eating junk food, watching cable TV, playing video games, and spending their time making fun of each other. It's hard to avoid a sense of loss, of decline, of a movement away from real community toward whatever Benji and his crew represent. Back in the day, Bobby's grandfather remembers how you'd go from party to party, and everyone had their door open. Benji, in contrast, thinks this sounds insane--he says the whole purpose of a party is to keep some people out! In a whole range of ways, that storied past is long gone by 1985. And Benji claims not to feel any particular nostalgia for this time he never experienced--he never even met his grandparents.
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