Victor LaValle's debut book was the story collection Slapboxing With Jesus (Random House, 1999) and it's a book divided into two halves - 'the autobiography of New York today' and 'one boy's beginnings,' the latter from which the story "Chuckie" can be found.
What LaValle captures within this story is the voice of a young man (ten years old) that has already developed a one for one and not a one for all reality. He and two of his friends, Jung and an unnamed boy, end up looking for a ballgame on a Saturday morning and are joined by two others - Chuckie and Mark, two boys invited by Jung, that own brand new silver Huffys and the narrating voice mentions early on a lack of a tie to them.
After an incident, two older, tougher kids forcefully take the two silver Huffys, and having seen and felt the reaction of the other boys,especially the narrator, LaValle writes:
"Ten is too young to learn how you are. That you wouldn't run for the ambulance, as all my friends did, while Chuckie clutched at his eye like his very own soul was in danger of escaping."
This sentiment seems to capture the thoughts of many watching the nightly news at 11 p.m. night after night - "Ten is too young . . ." LaValle seems to have wired himself right into the younger culture of the 90's with this story and others within Slapboxing.
I bought this collection in 2000 or 2001 without ever having heard of the writer, just picked it off the shelf in a B&N, and loved it. I loaned my copy to a friend, who returned it ugly and water-damaged, but I've kept it anyway, and have gone back several times to read it again, especially the first few stories, which were for me the strongest ones.
Posted by: Matt | May 12, 2009 at 10:50 PM
Man, that's why I hate loaning AND borrowing books. I have three kids and some dogs and worry non-stop that a borrowed book is about to be messed up.
The reason I went back to this collection, which I just bought, was I received a copy of "Big Machine", his forthcoming novel, not long ago and am absolutely loving it as my non-short story reading the past week.
Posted by: Dan Wickett | May 12, 2009 at 11:02 PM