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Also this issue: Learning to Fly First Friday Focus Blind Date East Meets Midwest Poe's Own Twilight Zone |
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June 6-12, 2002
books
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the real mccoyBy Darin Strauss Dutton, 326 pp., $24.95
Boxers and con men, Darin Strauss would have us believe, draw on the same pool of skills for success. Rather than simple brute force, each depends on his own conviction and his command of misdirection. The con artist represents a championship fight as a faked charity exhibition; the boxer fakes a left to land a right. Both strategies combine to take out a champion and to create a new one. Both roles rely on smoke and mirrors, and Strauss’ “real McCoy,”small-town Midwestern boy Virgil Selby, masters misdirection to gain himself a title, a personality and a reputation built on little more than hot air.
As with his debut novel, Strauss spins The Real McCoy off from an offbeat historical curiosity. Chang and Eng transformed the biographies of a Siamese-twin sideshow act. And even though Kid McCoy -- polygamist, pugilist, flim-flam artist and potential politician -- may lack the freakishness and the pathos of medical oddity, Strauss' invention of his character marks out a greater significance than the scant facts of his biography would seem to indicate possible. His Selby steals the name of a renowned boxer and invents a personality and a technique to support that persona; the false McCoy that results becomes both a champion and a turn-of-the-century catch phrase for authenticity.
The interest here, though, goes beyond biographical interest or historical reconstruction. Strauss is an able writer; in the (numerous) boxing scenes, he manages to mesh clear and precise description of action with the stream of McCoy's thoughts and emotions. Even more impressively, for their number, these fight scenes never become monotonous. Each pugilistic set-piece illustrates a different point in McCoy's progress, with different stakes and techniques, and Strauss shows the ability to vary his narration so skillfully that each bout feels fresh, moves the plot forward, and provides a necessary insight into his character.
This skill in relating action becomes especially important as the book wears on. For all of the variety of McCoy's interests and experiences, Strauss seems to focus on his career in the ring at the expense of his time out of it. McCoy, we're told, is more than just a boxer; we see him briefly as a con man, as a lover (with three concurrent wives, although his polygamy is more a matter of not divorcing than simultaneously marrying), and as a public figure with political ambitions. But none of these other careers receive the degree of attention Strauss lavishes on boxing. McCoy's flim-flam capers serve as an apprenticeship in public relations, and are quickly glossed-over; the only one that gets more than passing attention, a set-piece at the end of the novel, is so unclear and incoherent (especially given the clarity we expect Mamet-esque confidence games to be delivered with) that Strauss' previous glibness seems preferable. He may well know his limits.
More troubling, though, is the oversimplified love affair between McCoy and his second wife, Broadway actress Susan Fields. Strauss' difficulty in creating a believable, or even an understandable, love affair becomes a serious problem in his portrayal of McCoy. For Strauss, McCoy makes a compelling figure not only because of the breadth of his experience or the contrasts among different parts of his life, but also because McCoy represents the first triumph of image over substance. As a literally self-made man, constructed out of sheer self-promotion, he prefigures the 20th century's preoccupation with image at the expense of reality. But the drama of McCoy's story comes out of the tension between Selby's authentic belief in the McCoy he creates, and the simple fact that McCoy is a character created from a gauzy mix of small change, big lies and sleight-of-hand. McCoy's love for Susan needs to show him at his most authentic -- Strauss positions the affair as the single factor that can unite Virgil Selby and Kid McCoy, the thing every facet of this character can agree on -- but his tinny treatment of it leaves the character's, and the novel's, center false and vacant. As an ironic Œreal McCoy,' Strauss' character hits his mark solidly, but irony's a simple misdirection of the themes Strauss wants to uncover.
Darin Strauss will read and sign Tue., June 11, 7 p.m., Borders, 1727 Walnut St., 215-568-7400.
