Ten years ago, Victor LaValle’s debut story collection, Slapboxing with Jesus, chronicled a group of kids growing up in New York, a modest crew that one narrator called the “future janitors and supermarket managers, plumber’s assistants and deliverymen of the United States.” They did the kinds of things kids in the city do: have rivalries and fallings-out, roam in packs from borough to borough, check out hookers on the West Side Highway, grow up, and move on. The stories were shot through with gritty humor, and—particularly in the case of the recurring character Anthony James, who would go on