Favorite Passages?

[Rachel-K]

Please share some of your favorite lines and scenes from Sag Harbor!

[Bonnie824]

One of my favorite lines was when Reggie said his family looked good on paper, the Cosbies. It made you think and kind of tied up the whole family dysfunction/how things look on the outside theme.

[dhaupt]

One of my favorite passages of the book was on page 166 when Benji was talking about his hair.

"Sir Isaac Newton's third law of motion holds that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The entity on my head was proof of another fundamental law: a fu--ed-up Afro tends toward complete fu---edpuedness at an exponential rate over time, as express by the equation

AN=F*t 

where AN is Absolute Nappiness, F is f---edupedness and t is time."

I laughed til I cried on that one. 

[DSaff]

I had a good laugh over this one also.

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dhaupt wrote:

One of my favorite passages of the book was on page 166 when Benji was talking about his hair.

"Sir Isaac Newton's third law of motion holds that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The entity on my head was proof of another fundamental law: a fu--ed-up Afro tends toward complete fu---edpuedness at an exponential rate over time, as express by the equation

AN=F*t 

where AN is Absolute Nappiness, F is f---edupedness and t is time."

I laughed til I cried on that one. 

---

[libralady]

One of my favorite passages is at the very end of the book, on pg. 271, when Ben and Reggie were standing in the Gardner's driveway watching Barry David and the little kids make their way down to the beach with the patio furniture.  Ben tapped Reggie ont he shoulder and said, "Let's get a beer."  When Reggie replied, "okay", Ben seemed a bit surprised and thought that they usually had to bicker over stuff like that.  I liked the part when Ben asked Reggie was he ready to go back to the city.  The summer ended like it started, with the brothers together.  I thought this passage was nostalgic and it reminded me of when I was growing up, and Labor Day weekend, and the official end of summer...

[DSaff]

This question is both easy and difficult. Easy because I loved the book, and difficult because there are so many scenes and passages that touched me. Here are just a few of my highlights.

pg. 26 talks about being out of touch with those around you "Of course that could happen to people who lived on the same street. Sometimes it happened to people who lived in the same house." --a reminder to stay close to the ones you love!

I love Colson's descriptiveness and analogies. One example can be found on pg. 70.

"It is the smell of dessert, the smell of chocolate and sustenance shared, the aroma of waiting treasures, anticipation itself. The smell of normalcy."

another on pg. 163

"It was a weird black amoeba testing the edges of itself, throwing out nappy pseudopods here and suddenly there, an unpredictable new direction every day."

The description of Coke and hoarding it brought back happy memories and provided more than a few chuckles.

 As I mentioned in another post, this line from pg. 264 reminds us to love, cherish, teach, support, and supervise our children. "Incomplete children are incomplete adults."

But, I think my favorite passage is the one where Colson describes an idea as a weapon. It is on pgs. 158-59 "As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us with more ephemeral weapons, an idea or improbable plan or some sort of formulation about how best to move through the world. An idea that will let us be. Protect us and keep us safe. But a weapon nonetheless."

[mattzay]

My favorite passage is on pages 102-106 when he talks about when Coca-Cola was going to change their recipe in response to the Pepsi wars. I laughed so hard when he talks about stocking up and hiding it in his closet so he wouldn't run out. I too love Coca-Cola and was furious when they brought out the new Coke. I also remember going out and buying a lot to try to hold on to it. I could totally understand how he felt when his mother asked him for some and was heartbroken when he had to dump it out.

I can even relate to his desire to steal a 6 pack from the party he was at. Although, I don't think I would ever be that desperate, I understood how attached he was. I felt like I could really connect with him as a character at that point.

[aprilh]

This quote from page 230 made me laugh and also really described how people in Sag Harbor felt about their houses. "Getting rid of your Sag house, that was unforgivable. Like selling your kids off to the circus for crack money."

[sylvia387]

It seems most of my favorite passages come from very early on in the story.

Pg 2 - "Knock on that door and watch it relent under your knuckles-once you were out, the door stayed unlocked until you closed up the house. 

Once we're all out, we can begin."

I just felt this "opened the door" for me to continue reading and become a part of the story.  A very welcoming statement of sorts.

Pg 3 - The description of the brothers in the car as the drive to Sag Harbor begins early in the morning. Especially the comparison to the Rorschach test.  I read the passage out loud to my husband who came from a military family and traveled extensively in the car with three siblings.  Very clever visual.

Pg 7 - "...but more important it trains the kid in question to determine when people in the corner of his eye are talking about him and when they are not, a useful skill in later life when sorting out bona-fide persecution from perceived persecution....."

While this is a favorite passage of mine...it's because it made me so sad.  To think a child would have to think that way.  It's a line that will stick with me and hopefully resurface at the appropriate times.

Pg 12 -"I would have huffed that hankie for all it was worth." -  HILARIOUS!!!!!

[Carmenere_lady]

These passages left a particularly vivid picture in my mind:

p 9  Benji describes Emily Dorfman, the tallest person in class...."Her arms and legs were pae scaffolding propping up her shirts and skirts, and she hadn't yet realized that growing her hair out might cover up the extra vertebrae she seemed to have in her neck - if she were an animal, she'd be nibbling those high-up leaves."

p209 As the group crosses the bridge to North Haven, Benji describes the area, "A few yards from our feet, seagulls staggered and pecked at a fallen waffle cone-run the film backward and the bits fly up into the hand of an anguished child, un-breaking and fitting together as his face transforms from anguish to absentminded, Oreo-licking ecstasy."  That, to me, is a very insightful line.  Yes, we learn of how the cone may have gotten where it did but also as to Colson's creativity in making up a possible scene.  He also impressed my again like this when he describes a possible scene played out to the song on page 233 "Oh, Babe, what would you say?"

[kpatton]

I also found this a difficult task to come up with one or two favorite passages, since I had marked several.  Many of the passages you have already commented on were ones I also liked and some I went back and found.  One of my favorites was toward the very end of the book on page 263 where Ben is talking about the young runner that Ben sees himself in.  I loved the way Mr. Whitehead talked about how we select our friends at different times in our lives.

Kathy 

[Maria_H]

Pages 87 - 88 struck a giant chord with me.  The part about *NOT* walking down the street carrying a watermelon was plenty hilarious, but under the funny it spoke the truth about certain things you *just do not do.*

In Benji's case, it was not sporting a thick gold rope around his neck (or walking Main Street accompanied by a watermelon).  Both to combat stereotypes and to appease his father who would not look kindly at a son who embraced what he considered below them.

I think all ethnicities and races have their own standards to avoid giving people reason to think "Aha!  I knew that's what they do!"  Whether it is their speech, or visual cues, or behavior.  I have witnessed plenty of these among my own that have made me cringe. 

[CJINCA]

On p172, after Ben describes the sounds, the omens, as his father prepares himself drink after drink, we get this passage that I found very striking:

"I was well acquainted with all these sounds and heard the other silent things.  This made no sound:  my father stirring his drink with his finger.  This also made no sound:  that dreaded calculation, how many is that today?  Certainly this made no sound:  the understanding, I'm pushing my luck by hanging around here.  And silent now but soon to make itself heard, the chemical reaction in his brain that said, Let's get this hate in gear."

[PinkBaby]

well i kinda liked the passage where  benji was killing flies. he was so bored that killing flies became exciting.h e made it  sound exciting because he would sneak up on them with a rubberband and bop them.

[Thayer]

My favorite passage were the last two sentences of the book..."Isn't it funny? The way the mind works?" 

What a thought provoking way to end a book!

[emmagrace]

This was my favorite quote as well!

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dhaupt wrote:

One of my favorite passages of the book was on page 166 when Benji was talking about his hair.

"Sir Isaac Newton's third law of motion holds that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The entity on my head was proof of another fundamental law: a fu--ed-up Afro tends toward complete fu---edpuedness at an exponential rate over time, as express by the equation

AN=F*t 

where AN is Absolute Nappiness, F is f---edupedness and t is time."

I laughed til I cried on that one. 

---

[jabrkeKB]

My favorite passage is the middle paragraph on page 165. (too long to quote here)

He is talking about his school picture and wondering why nobody said anything to him about his hair.

I know I can relate to this passage, I was laughing out loud.

I think everyone has a school photo or two with a really bad hair style.

[booksJT]

One of my favorite passages was when Bneji's mother asked to borrow some coke for her party. "a few cans for mixers" pg 105. Benji was thinking if she knew about the cokes what else did she know. Another passage I like was when Benji and Reggie realized that this summer they would have the empty house. "Our parents only came out weekends,which meant that now me and Reggie had the place to oursleves.....pg 40. I also thought this was an interesting passage something the father said to them ,"You're men now,".. "You can take of yourselves" pg 40. Benji and Reggie were still kids at the time.  I think the parents father were irresponsible for leaving their sons alone.

[Read-n-Rider]

I had to laugh out loud at the episode which begins near the bottom of page 200 and concludes--after some invervening material--on page 212.  I can't relate the whole thing in a concise manner, but it starts when Bobby tells Benji the supposed meaning of the Indian word Sagaponac ("the land of the big brown nuts," says Bobby), and this leads to Benji's definition of what he calls one's "sacadiliac."  The ensuing short dialogue is hilarious, and the fun continues on page 209, where Bobby attempts to impress NP and the girls by using his newfound word.  Resolution finally comes on page 212, when Doc Ice tells the kids what a "sacroiliac" is.  Priceless!

Joan

[chris227]

Favorite passages?  There are way too many to mention!!  Two of my favorites though:

p 71 "...minimum wage is your boss's way of telling you, If I could pay you less, I would..."

p 110 when Benji is talking about the customers that come into Johnni Waffle "Remember Whensters lumbered in with their musty catalogues of the bygone, dragging IVs of distilled nostalgia behind them on creaky wheels"

The book is so full of wonderful imagery and humor that I could name many many more.