Reviewing Zac Crain’s Black Tooth Grin

What with all the hazing of summer interns and so forth, I’ve been too busy to mention several recent reviews of Zac’s book, Black Tooth Grin. Herewith, then, I bring you a roundup of said reviews, with my commentary thereon.

The Star-Telegram. Reviewer: Preston Jones. Excerpt: “[T]he play-by-play interspersed with suppositions and theories about the killer’s motives is at once repellent and self-indulgent. It’s a sizable stumble in a book that has already courted plenty of controversy; injecting oneself into the key event only reinforces suspicions of opportunism.Put simply, when Crain has access — witness his dazzling, heartbreaking 2008 D Magazine profile of country legend Charley Pride — he can slip inside a musician’s skin like few other writers in the area.” Tim’s take: you know what I find repellent and self-indulgent? The “at once” construction, especially when it’s not employed properly. NB: “At once” should set up the reader for a dichotomy. Example: “At once beautiful and horrific.” That said, I wholeheartedly concur. Zac is repellent and self-indulgent. Oh, and you clearly didn’t read the first draft of that Charley Pride story. Zac put the “ink” in the “stink.”

The Dallas Morning News. Reviewer: Matt Weitz. Excerpt: “As for the sex and drugs, all we learn is that Dimebag had a girlfriend. Pantera owned a topless bar, for heaven’s sake; it’s hard to imagine there aren’t some stories there. And although the booze thing is well-documented, considering that Abbott was part of a band whose lead singer (Phil Anselmo) suffered one of the highest-profile heroin overdoses in the last 20 years, all we get are some vague references to marijuana and pills. It would be hard for a local journalist (Crain is an editor at D Magazine) working on his first book to swing the weight necessary to cajole people into telling stories that they did not necessarily wish to tell. There’s nothing in Black Tooth Grin to suggest that Crain might not one day break through.” Tim’s take: There is the absence of nothing in this review that does not belie Weitz’s jealousy of Zac. But that could just be me.

Quick. Writer: Hunter Hauk. Excerpt from Q&A: “Hauk: ‘[W]hat was the most frustrating part of the writing process?’ Crain: ‘The timing. I had a full-time job, I was running for mayor of Dallas and my son was 2 years old. I had, basically, three full-time jobs. So I would go to work, sometimes have to do mayor stuff, come home, hang out with the family for a few hours. I’d chill out for an hour and then start writing around 11:30. … So I’d stay up until 3 or 4, fall asleep on the couch and get up a couple of hours later. So I was surviving on two hours of sleep a night. I put on 20 pounds in short order because I was drinking those Starbucks Double Shots and Dr Pepper and smoking two packs a day.’” Tim’s take: If I understand this right, Zac is establishing his own mythology here. That way, when he is shot at his computer, while he’s, say, putting up a post about an aborted Mavs trade or something, his biographer will be able to write about what a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, book-writing sonofabitch he was. Like Hemingway. Only a better father.