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Hank Stuever Is Not Assaulted While on Book Tour in Frisco

As I’ve mentioned here before, you need to read Hank Stuever’s new book, Tinsel, which is about Christmas in Frisco (and our consumer culture and a bunch of other stuff). The past two days, he’s been in town to do readings. How’d it go? He has a full report on his blog. My favorite part:

No one at the reading seemed at all confrontational. THAT sort of thing they save for e-mail, some of which would curl your hair. Maybe someday I’ll share it. (News flash, according to one e-mailer yesterday morning: I am nothing but a “self-satisfied faggot” — yow! — who should put my book where the sun don’t shine. Um, sir or ma’am? Do you mean all the copies of my book or just one? They make much less ideal Christmas presents after that happens.)

He also makes some trenchant observations about the Santa at Stonebriar Centre. Check it out. And, of course, we’ve excerpted the book in our December issue. So if you’ve got a short attention span and aren’t quite ready to commit to the entire book, check that out, too.

What You Should Listen to Today at 1 P.M.: Hank Stuever

In the December issue of the “print product,” we excerpt a wonderful new book by Hank Stuever. Hank is a writer at the Washington Post. He spent three years, off and on, living in Frisco to write a book about Christmas called Tinsel. If you live in Frisco, you should buy the book and read it. If you know someone who lives in Frisco, you should buy them a copy. If you don’t live in Frisco and couldn’t even find it on a map, you should buy the book and read it. Tinsel is funny and smart and — don’t take this the wrong way — important.

Anyway, Hank’s in town to pimp his book. He’ll be on Think today at 1. He’ll be at Barnes & Noble in Frisco tonight at 7 to read and sign. He’ll do it again tomorrow at Legacy books in Plano. If you live in Frisco and have read the book and think Hank pulled a Friday Night Lights on your hometown, please call in to the radio show or drop by one of his signings and scream at him. Hank would appreciate it.

Bryan Garner Is Fed Up With Bookstores

Loyal readers of the “print product” know Bryan Garner’s name from this profile we ran of him awhile back. As the headline states, he’s the leading lexicographer of our time. There are a couple of us in the office who, shall we say, are big fans of his work. (And, yes, I realize that might sound a bit dorky.) So when Garner sent out a personal appeal last week for help, I was concerned what was wrong. You should be concerned, too.

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Willard Spiegelman Gets Happy at the Dallas Institute

Willard has come up several times recently in this space. For those who wish to meet the good professor in person, your chance to do so comes tomorrow, at a discussion he’ll lead at the Dallas Institute. The event is described thusly:

The word “happiness” presents us with a conundrum: how is it pursued, and how does one know when one has acquired it? Though the Greek philosophers gave us answers—that happiness comes to the well-ordered and virtuous life, which is also the life of greatest pleasure—such questions continue to vex us, one might say often lead us astray. In this three-part series, Institute Fellow and SMU Prof. Spiegelman will be our guide, speaking and leading discussions arising from his latest book, “Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness.”

Join the Discussion on the Reading Room Monday, October 5

The bad news is, you have only five days to read chapters 1-20 of Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays. The good news is, in five days you can probably read the entire book 10 times over. (It’s a good, quick read.) The other good news is, Play It As It Lays is a lot better than Wonderful World, our first book. The Reading Room, D Magazine’s online book club, starts book No. 2 this Monday, October 5. You can purchase the book from Legacy Books in Plano for 15% off; just tell them you’re with us. Speaking of Legacy, in case you missed it earlier this year, check out Willard Spiegelman’s essay about the country’s largest independent bookstore.

Tincy Miller Apologizes for Religion Remarks

Dallas’ Tincy Miller, a member of the State Board of Education, asked a perfectly reasonable question about some of Texas’s new social studies books. Why, she wanted to know, would they have deleted information about Christmas and Rosh Hashanah in favor of discussing other global holidays like “Diwali”? (Drawing a blank? It’s the Hindu Holiday of Lights.) When Miller called Diwali little-known and lacking much “substance” on KERA-FM, the arbiters of political correctness leaped quickly into action. The upshot: Miller has now apologized for her remarks. Even so, I doubt she’ll be on anybody’s Diwali-card list this year.

Kurt Eichenwald Gives His Take on The Informant!

These are exciting times for Kurt Eichenwald. The Steven Soderbergh movie The Informant!, based on Eichenwald’s book The Informant: A True Story, had its Dallas premiere on Thursday, and the flick is getting rave reviews nationally. I asked Kurt what he thought of Soderbergh’s adaptation of his book. His reply:

I thought the movie was great. What I’ve found really funny about it is everybody who says, “Oh, it’s funny, not serious like the book.” Apparently, people don’t need to read the book to comment.

Every scene in the movie was in the book. Probably 80 percent of the dialogue is in the book. Everything that makes the movie funny makes the book funny. Sure, the book had a lot of other things going on, but the choice of style was dictated by the story.

So, that said…great movie. I was shocked at how much it was like the book.

Where You Should Be Tonight: D Reading Room at Legacy Books

We’re having a cocktail-y thing at Legacy Books tonight from 6 to 8. It’s part of our Reading Room series. Tonight, you get free cheese, wine, and Laura Kostelny, who will be on hand to discuss the last D Reading Room selection, Wonderful World, and unveil the next selection, Evidence-Based Practice of Cognitive-Behavorial Therapy, by Deborah Dobson. I hear the first 400 pages are hard to get through, but after that it’s a real page-turner!

Wyly Calls for Carbon Tax, More Power for FDIC

Sean McCormick photo

Dallas billionaire Sam Wyly (pictured) is out with an expanded paperback edition of his memoir, 1,000 Dollars and an Idea. In it, the successful entrepreneur (Michaels Stores, Green Mountain Energy, etc.) has penned a new chapter about the “Great Crash of 2008,” then argues for a tax on carbon consumption and against excessive government regulation of the financial markets, because “over-regulation in free markets is dangerous.” He goes on:

Having said that, there are two ways the government can use regulation to help. The first is simply to require that the truth be told. Regarding derivatives and securitization and all this alphabet soup of complicated assets, the government should require disclosure. … The second regulatory aid that can be provided by government is to give the [Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.] the power to liquidate bank holding companies. For banks, the FDIC has the power to merge insolvent banks into solvent ones. All it needs today is the same power to deal with bank holding companies. … If given [that power], the FDIC could clean up the mess that the bank holding companies have created with their mountains of debt in probably a few months.

Join the Discussion: D Reading Room

Have you been following along with our book club? We’re reading Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. It’s a Pulp Fiction-esque narrative full of sex, lawlessness, and shady characters you hate to love. Read what it’s all about.

Behind the Scenes at D Magazine (With Apologies to Sam Wyly)

Just had a quick meeting with my boss, the great Glenn Hunter, and something in the corner of his office caught my eye. Atop the pile of business bios was Sam Wyly’s 1,000 Dollars and an Idea, and atop Wyly’s bio was our office mascot (pictured). I shrieked, Hunter shrugged (I think he said “It’s been there a couple of days. Sorry.”).

Now, maybe I was naïve when I decided to leave newspapers for the glamorous world of magazine publishing, but I never thought roaches would be commonplace. Hopefully the roaches won’t follow us to our new digs downtown. That reminds me: Want to intern at D Magazine this fall? Click my name below and send your resume. Previous experience with roaches is not required.

Glenn Hunter, Country-And-Western Enthusiast, Ctd.

After reading our story on Larry McMurtry and Archer City, a book-loving FBvian recalls her own encounter with the Pulitzer Prize-winning author:

[My husband] and I have been to McMurtry’s book stores and enjoyed the trip. We also managed to catch him ambling out of one of the stores and spoke to him. We gave him our biggest grins and hellos, but he ducked his head, mumbled and slunk around the corner. Maybe he thought we were local aliens.

Glenn Hunter, Country-And-Western Enthusiast, Is Also A Bookworm

Late in June, Glenn wrote about his adventures in Branson, Missouri, where he went to see country-and-western legends Merle Haggard and Gene Watson. Well, our cerebral adventurer recently returned from Archer City, home of famed author Larry McMurtry (and his four used-book stores) and site of a week-long summer class about narrative nonfiction writing at UNT’s Mayborn Graduate School of Journalism, under the direction of Mayborn writer-in-residence George Getschow. Here’s Glenn’s report.

Join The Discussion: D Reading Room

Today we bring you the second installment of our discussion of Javier Calvo’s Wonderful World. If you haven’t picked up the book yet (available at Legacy Books), there’s still time to catch up to us. Every week we talk about a few chapters. See what Christine Allison, Laura Kostelny, and Peggy Levinson have to say about chapters 7-14.

Join Our Book Club: The D Reading Room

It might be hard to believe, but I have interests other than reality television. (Lest you worry, The Bachelorette writeup is in process.) Even more surprising: I once belonged to a very nice, civilized book club but I was given the boot. (Okay, it’s less dramatic than all that. I was simply dropped from the evite. But still…) Anyway, I’m now involved in a discussion about Javier Calvo’s Wonderful World with my smart friends Christine Allison and Peggy Levinson.  It’s a quirky book. You should buy it and read along with us. Find out more about our club and follow along with the discussion here.

Blaming America, And Americans, For All The World’s Ills At A DFW Literary Conference

How come it’s so fashionable among the media elite–and the wannabe elites–to blame every bad thing in the world on ordinary Americans and the good ol’ U.S.A.? You could see plenty of this thinking at this weekend’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference, UNT’s annual gathering of scribes in Grapevine. As usual the confab was wonderful, enabling fledgling writers to learn from and to rub shoulders with some true heavyweights. But its sessions also underscored the tiresome, blame-Americans-first mentality that’s almost instinctive with so many in the intellectual/literary set.

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Writers Bill Minutaglio, Michael Hall Unplugged At Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference

The writers who talked at this weekend’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference in Grapevine weren’t stingy with the zingers or the inside dope. Bill Minutaglio, who wrote a book about George W. called First Son, told the assembled that W’s nickname for him was “Mononucleosis.” Not because Bush thought Minutaglio was diseased, but because he couldn’t pronounce the writer’s last name. (Could have been worse; Minutaglio said W called Karl Rove “Turd Blossom” because, when Rove shows up, “s*** happens.”) A little later, Texas Monthly scribe Michael Hall told the great Skip Hollandsworth why he began writing about criminal-justice issues after so many years covering music: “Musicans are basically criminals and scumbags, so there was a connection there.”

Dan Jenkins: The Best Twitterer In North Texas?, Ctd.

It’s interesting that literary lion Roy Blount Jr. isn’t nearly as hot for Twitter as Dan Jenkins. “I don’t Twitter or receive Tweets,” Blount, an Atlantic contributing editor, told a crowd at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference in Grapevine this weekend. “Somebody already asked me to write some ‘twaiku,’ and there will probably be some ‘twagic epics’ written.” So, what’s his beef with the new form? “With tweeting, it becomes easier to lose track of the fact that language is oral–connected to the body, not just the twiddling fingers,” Blount said. “I want to hold on to the oral pleasure of language myself, and hope somebody appreciates it.”

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.

Zac Crain’s Head Is So Big That It’s Bigger Than Brendan Higgins’

I am told that Crawdaddy! is a well-respected music site. Today they have reviewed Zac’s book, saying (and I quote):

Black Tooth Grin (named after Abbott’s trademark drink — a double shot of whiskey with a splash of Coke), is the long-awaited story of Dimebag Darrell, and a tour de force of American music journalism.

A tour de force. And not just of Dallas music journalism. But American music journalism. Zac is going to be impossible to be around for at least a month.

What? Zac Crain Has a New Book Out?

Why, yes, he does. The book is called Black Tooth Grin: The High Life, Good Times, and Tragic End of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott. In the current issue of TexMo, Zac submits himself to a Q&A about Dimebag and his old band Pantera. What you won’t find mentioned anywhere in that article is that Zac is sleeping with Dick Washburne. As long as that remains D’s dirty little secret, all is well.

Willard Cannot Be Stopped. He Can Only Be Contained.

I wouldn’t want a day to go by wherein I did not promote D Magazine Willard Spiegelman promoting his new book. KERA brings you the opportunity to see the good professor in makeup. Added bonus: he talks about why he didn’t include sex in his “ordinary pleasures.”

Willard Spiegelman Will Again Drive to Plano

Tonight at 7:30 our dear professor Willard Spiegelman will bravely venture north to Legacy Books to read from his new book, Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness. Readers of the “print product” know what Willard thinks of Plano. Today will be a scary day for Willard. And for Kyle Hall, too. He is not only the director of marketing and events for Legacy Books, but he’s a former student of Willard’s. Tonight the task of introducing Willard falls to Kyle. Let’s all hope they both get through the evening.

More Kind Words for Willard Spiegelman’s Book

D Magazine contributor and bow tie aficionado Willard Spiegelman continues to draw praise for his new book, Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness, this time from Matthew Gurewitsch, who says:

For Willard, the essence of reading — as of his other six subjects — is pleasure. Wordsworth, one of Willard’s muses, has it that “we murder to dissect.” Williard dissects very capably, yet murders nothing. His capacity for enjoyment is off the charts, and his pleasure is contagious. He is a born teacher by example.

Bud Shrake, R.I.P.

Bud Shrake, a giant on the Texas literary scene, passed away today in Austin.