Daytona Teddy Riggs
Drew Buxton
Reviewed by Jace Einfeldt
Call him Daytona. Call him Teddy. Call him the biggest strongman in Corpus Christi, Texas. But whatever you do, don’t call him a quitter. “There’s a lot of strong guys out there,” he says, “but I want it more than any of them.” He sniffs smelling salts, straps himself to his Chevy, and pulls it across the beach. He blasts Mötley Crüe into the South Texas night.
In Daytona Teddy Riggs, Drew Buxton’s debut novel, it’s the summer of ’96, and twenty-four-year-old Daytona Teddy Riggs believes his calling is to be the World’s Strongest Man, but first he needs to compete in Gulf’s Strongest Man in Houston in early July. When he learns that Pat Dupree, the foul-mouthed self-help guru whose tapes he gobbles up as voraciously as he does a ten-egg omelet, is holding a seminar in Houston the same week as the GSM competition, he believes the stars are aligning just for him. This calling is the why behind every deadlift, every Whataburger order he scarfs down, every measured breath he takes between reps. He’s a Riggs of Riggs Gas Co. His grandfather served on the USS Lexington. He was once the “Tuloso-Midway District’s all-time single-season sack leader.”
“I’m fucking undeniable,” he tells himself.
But what does this all really mean? To be the World’s Strongest Man? To be strong? To be a man?
Buxton uses Daytona Teddy Riggs’ obsessive quest to examine these questions and illuminate the toxicity of American hypermasculinity. In Daytona Teddy Riggs, Buxton has created a character that is as sure of his destiny as he is insecure about everything from his hulking frame to his own sexuality. Though he wants to be perceived as undeniable, he is painfully aware of his failings. Due to his hubris and single-mindedness, he struggles hilariously at times to justify his desires for strength to others and to himself. Daytona Teddy Riggs is as strong as he is prone to running into self-set traps.
Through Daytona Teddy Riggs’ Oakley-shaded perspective, we see a world full of massive biceps and steroid-induced “dead dick”. A world where Daytona Teddy Riggs wants to be recognized for his strength and also doesn’t “want anyone to see [his] arms” because “[he] feel[s] fucking tiny.” It’s a world where he wants desperately to be accepted by the strongman community while simultaneously complaining that the gyms are full of “fake ass people.” A world where “[w]omen are just distractions, obstacles standing between [him] and [his] goals” and a world where all he wants is to be cared for by Tammy, the woman he falls head over heels for and who bankrolls his final week of training. A world where strong men don’t cry and where Daytona Teddy Riggs lies down in the dirt chained to his Chevy “cry[ing] like a baby” through a bloody nose wondering whether or not his family loves him anymore. In this world of his own making, Daytona Teddy Riggs is persistent. Undeniable. He believes he is too big to fail. And that’s got to count for something, right?