In Person

The audience was surprisingly thin in BookPeople's third-floor events room on Thursday, June 27, for New York literary lion Darin Strauss' reading and signing of his second novel, The Real McCoy (Dutton, $24.95). But the easygoing Strauss took it in stride -- "It happens sometimes" -- and gave his best for an hour or so, even recruiting a male volunteer to read dialogue opposite him. "You don't mind being Susan Fields, do you?" Strauss asked, referring to his protagonist's love interest.

Like Chang and Eng, his marvelous 2000 debut, The Real McCoy uses the life (lives, in the case of the former's conjoined twins) of a major historical player whose fame is largely untapped as good clay to sculpt an interesting story, taking great liberties with details in the process. Strauss referenced the advice of his former teacher E.L. Doctorow to "do the least amount of research possible" when writing fiction set in the past to be sure the facts support and color the story, not dominate it. In history, Charles "Kid" McCoy was a dominant boxer in the 1890s and early 1900s. He is enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame with an official record of 86 wins -- 64 by knockout. Strauss builds an entirely new story on the framework of McCoy's life and career, freely departing from the original. It becomes a tale of shifting identity and truth, featuring a boxer and flimflam man who acquires and discards personae whenever he stands to gain advantage by dishonesty and deception. In turn-of-the-century America, Strauss explained, the concept of modern popular celebrity was just taking hold. It was no longer only politicians and soldiers who achieved fame, but performers, athletes, and the like who were thrust in the public eye.

The original McCoy was no choirboy. He served a 10-year prison sentence for murder, married often (perhaps as many as 10 times to eight different women), faced accusations of feigning illness before fights to lull his opponents into a false sense of confidence, and died of a sleeping-pill overdose. But Strauss' fictional McCoy is an outright shyster -- a category of crook he claims is original to the place and time. "Con men say a lot about America," the author said. "They're an American phenomenon, and Americans were the easiest marks -- the most trusting."

Early reviews for The Real McCoy (see the Chronicle's here ) have been enthusiastic, though predictably short of the extravagant praise lavished on Chang and Eng. As Strauss admitted, writing a novel about Chang and Eng "was kind of like cheating -- everything they did was interesting. People wondered how they performed the most basic tasks. I could describe how they walked down the street and readers were fascinated." Strauss' Austin stop comes near the end of a coast-to-coast promotional tour, and he appears at least slightly anxious about getting off the road and back to the business of writing. The Real McCoy is the first release in the three-book deal he signed with Dutton after Chang and Eng's breakout success. He might take a break from the ardors of writing full-length novels by releasing a short story collection next. He is warming up to that task with three very short stories to be published in McSweeney's. Strauss claims to have no idea what form his third novel will take, although he betrays a certain willingness (maybe even an eagerness) to leave behind the 19th and 20th centuries of Chang and Eng and McCoy for a current-day setting. Unlike the flimflam artist of his current novel, Strauss is everything he appears to be -- a hugely talented writer with unlimited potential. -- Mike Shea