The Real McCoy (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Deadpan comic and grandly imaginative, The Real McCoy, Darin Strauss's recounting of the life of a legendary grifter, is a sparkling, memorable novel. Strauss (author of the highly acclaimed Chang and Eng) tells the story of Virgil Selby, or "Kid" McCoy, turn-of-the-century flimflammer, welterweight champion, and the speculative origin of the famous titular catch phrase. After witnessing the death of a small-time boxer named McCoy, young Selby adopts his name and reputation and leaves his Indiana home to achieve renown. Taking up residence in Louisville, McCoy befriends brilliant Chinese con man Jonnie Gold, who teaches McCoy the twist fist fighting style and the art of the flimflam. The naive and monomaniacal McCoy soon departs for New York City, where he uses his newfound trickery to conquer the boxing world, marry a Broadway starlet, and become a minor celebrity and the origin of a national phenomenon. However, McCoy's perpetual mythmaking catches up with him, revealing the cost of his attempts to turn a life of fiction into immortality.

Strauss has created a resounding personal narrative and cultural allegory with The Real McCoy. The hopeful, starstruck McCoy embodies the obsessive American tendency toward self-improvement and reinvention, and demonstrates the consequences of these ideals. Like its hero's successful though obvious scams, The Real McCoy is wonderfully entertaining fiction that reveals no small amount of truth. --Ross Doll

From Publishers Weekly

Strauss follows a brilliant debut novel (Chang and Eng) with more fictive doctoring of history in this daring, unique reenactment of the life of reed-thin, bone-weary Virgil Selby, who came to be known as Kid McCoy: a talented turn-of-the-century boxer, professional flimflammer and bigamist. The book opens with a bogus charity benefit exhibition boxing match on the first night of the new millennium (1900) as Kid McCoy fights and defeats welterweight champ Tommy Ryan, garnering the crown for himself. The narrative backtracks several years as McCoy, a young runaway still developing his boxing form, meets Johnnie Gold, a philosophical Chinese grifter who initiates McCoy into a life of swindling and deceit, peddling snake oil remedies and betting on fixed horse races. Lonely at times, McCoy settles on a timid department store clerk, and though he's not in love, he marries her, if only to test his new powers of flimflam. When he moves to Manhattan, vaudeville actress Susan Fields catches his eye and they quickly marry, just in time for a spectacular rematch with Tommy Ryanwhich is set up for McCoy to win but backfires, sending McCoy into a depression compounded by an unexpected visit from his father. Several championship fights, another marriage and a cinematic jewel heist later, McCoy emerges as the defeated narrator of his own madcap tale. Apart from the book's awkwardly shifting time line (a device that too often steals McCoy's thunder), this book is well written, comprehensively researched, and stylish, sure to score at the cash register. The big question on fans' lips: Whom will Strauss consecrate next?
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 326 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult; First Edition edition (June 6, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525946519
• ISBN-13: 978-0525946519
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,990,598 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More style that substance, August 28, 2003

By	J. Mullin (Plantation, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have to agree with some of the other reviewers here who opine that while Strauss definitely has a way with words, this novel left me wanting a little more. The book presents a fictionalized account of the fighter "Kid McCoy", a bare-knuckles brawler and scam artist from the beginning of the 20th century. I thought the novel would paint a real vivid picture of turn-of-the-century big city life, but ultimately the novel lost steam amid crazy twists and turns of the plot, until its wacky ending.

The scenes of young Virgil starting out his career and assuming his identity (as "McCOy") on a fateful train trip were the highlight for me, as well as his curious first marriage to a poor midwestern girl who never had a clue what made her husband tick. In that respect she was kind of like the reader, since we were similarly in the dark surrounding most of McCoy's motivations. Once McCoy made it to the big time (with his bizarre Oriental side-kick Johnny Gold), I rapidly lost interest.

Had the novel given a better glimpse of New York City at the turn of the century, rather than an occasional reference to Madison Square Garden or a famous hotel, I might have enjoyed it more just for the setting. Instead, while often impressed at Strauss' writing style, I found the book to be a pretty forgettable tale written by a talented author yet to fully hit his stride.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sheer Virtuosity!, July 26, 2002

By	Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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Darin Strauss is a new writer that is growing more important with each book. His first novel, CHANG AND ENG, mingled history with fanstasy, seducing us with the bizarre but wholly credible tale of the lives of Siamese twins. In THE REAL MCCOY he has again demonstrated that he has few peers in the genre of history manipulation in his semi-biographical novel of a midwestern kid who dreamed himself into the champion boxer of the 1900s. I have never enjoyed the sport of boxing or stories about boxing and it was only my lingering excitement after reading CHANG AND ENG that encouraged me to read this book. But the surprise is that this is not a biography of a boxer. This brilliantly written, cativatingly interesting book is about flimflam artists, about the individual's identity in context with his times, about the question of reality versus fantasy. But even more than that it is a 'documentation' of the idiosyncrasies of this strange country America at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century. Created like a richly painted mural that extends from Indiana to Manhattan, Darin Strauss has sensitively examined this vast melting pot of a nation and in doing so allows us to learn much about our past that makes our present more comprehensible, especially in light of the current globalization of terror and the dangers of insular misunderstandings. But as if this book isn't entertaining enough simply on the basis of a contemporary novel, Strauss throws us a curve a la Guy de Maupassant for an ending. Only after some re-reading of certain important chapters and passages can we as readers appreciate the journey Strayuss has created.

To say more would be to diminish the rewards for the prople who have not yet had the privilege of this novel. Darin Strauss is a meaty, graceful, gifted wordsmith whose every page contains sheer virtuosity. BRAVO!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Unreal McCoy, August 14, 2003

By	J. Carroll "Jack" (Island Heights,NJ) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Darrin Strauss's second foray into historical fiction is much like his first, (CHANG AND ENG) taking the bare bones of a true story and then totally changing it to comment on other aspects of human nature. Virgil Selby starts out as a young man in search of something more than life is offering him. By taking on the identity of a fighter named Kid McCoy and following the advice of a Chinese flim-flam artist named Johnnie Gold; he sets out to make himself into a great man. The real problem is that Virgil's new life is based on a lie and of course it falls apart. Sort of a rags to riches to rags tale that could have been so much better if Strauss had stayed closer to McCoy's actual life; which fans of boxing history know had more than a few twists and turns to it, or at least skipped the ridiculous character of Johnnie Gold, who is so over the top in his Machiavellian plans that he is seen as blatantly unbelievable. Strauss is most successful at portraying McCoy's love for Susan Fields, an actress, who McCoy is constantly winning back after pushing her from his life with his lies. Strauss does a nice job recreating the rural and urban America of the early twentieth century, but Johnnie Gold and the finish with McCoy's plan for one last score are just so far-fetched they distract from the other pleasures of the novel. An interesting read, but like CHANG AND ENG, the idea for the novel is better than the execution.