In boxing, when a coach says to bring your legs with you, it means your top half and lower half must work together to get things done. It's an apt metaphor for the characters in Darrell Spencer's fourth book of stories, Bring Your Legs With You, winner of the 2004 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Set in Las Vegas, they bring to life the world of Tommy Rooke, a retired boxer turned roofing contracting contemplating a return to the ring. It's a hardscrabble world, a place where men and women tend to go off half-cocked, and even guys on the straight and narrow seem a little bit on the make.
Like Sherwood Anderson and Gloria Naylor before him, Spencer narrates his book in round-robin fashion, showing us Tommy's life and city from many angles. Sometimes we hear things from Tommy's perspective, as in the whiskey smooth title piece. Other times, we hear from Tommy's friends, or even his ex-friends, as in "The Sweet Science," a creepy little yarn about a guy scamming on Tommy's ex-wife.
This variety of viewpoints allows Tommy to emerge as a conflicted character. Undefeated and lethal as a champ, he is generous and fair to a man who intends him harm, and yet in another story, where he comes down hard on a small-minded cheat in his roofing crew, he comes across as stubborn and a little too righteous.
Stories about boxers have a tendency toward indulgent melancholia. Thankfully, that is not the case here. Spencer lets his characters do the talking and their dialogue is pitch-perfect. The men spend a lot of time grab-assing and talking without speaking. In one bittersweet scene, Tommy and his father box in their hotel room. Tommy gives his father a tutorial on how to protect himself.
As touching as the scene is, it demonstrates a problem with Spencer's conceit. Played once, this metaphor of boxing as life feels real; when Spencer plays it again (and again), it starts to wear thin. After all, the point in boxing is to avoid getting hurt while doing the most damage possible to your opponent. People who do the same in emotional life become rather predictable and, well, a little annoying.
Spencer seems aware of this dilemma, since just when you think Bring Your Legs with You is going this way, it changes gears. Tommy is not just trying to decide about going back to the ring; he's also trying to learn how to live outside of it. It may not be a knockout, but go 12 rounds with Bring Your Legs with You and chances are its emotional wisdom will seem like sweet science to you, too.
In the past decade, Dave Eggers has started two literary journals, a nonprofit writing center, a publishing company, a pirate-supply store in San Francisco and a similar shop devoted to superhero accessories in Brooklyn. This Dickensian swirl of activity might explain why it's nearly an afterthought that Eggers is first and foremost a writer. How We Are Hungry, a collection of 15 new stories, is a reminder of this minimogul's prodigious talent, reinvigorating the staid short-story form with a jittery sense of adventure.
If Eggers's novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity, used travel to explore human empathy, this book utilizes it as a lens for more intimate relations. In "The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water," a woman flies down to Costa Rica to figure out whether her friend is a lover or a loser. "Quiet" plays out a similar dilemma on the Scottish highlands. Eggers has an astute understanding of the awkward. Men and women fall all over each other, say inappropriate things and make out a little too forcefully. Meanwhile, God, clouds, horses, sheep and the ocean watch from the sideline like a Greek chorus, in a nifty point-of-view switcheroo that few writers could pull off without seeming hokey.
Eggers understands how movement from one place to the next can put us off balance and heighten our neediness. What's different is how much goofball fun he has. Following his talent as he crosses genres is a bit like watching a spider walk up a wall. He does things that should be impossible, and does them gracefully. And all the while, his web gets bigger and bigger.