Articles about Books
A List of Potential Books By People From Dallas That I Made Up As I Typed It, Presented For No Particular Reason
No More Handouts!: A “True Conservative” On What’s Right With America, What’s Wrong With Washington, and Other Things He Thought Would Help Him Get Elected To The U.S. Senate, by Tom Leppert
My Favorite Key is “Return”: The Best of Steve Blow, by Steve Blow
Wildcatter: My Life In And Out Of Football As Well As, You Know, The Oil Business And I Also Talk About Other Things Such As My Life And, Of Course, Without Question, The Dallas Cowboys Are A Big Part Of This, Vis a Vis, The Broader Impact And So Forth, By Jerry Jones, with Jean-Jacques Taylor
The Further Adventures of Arthur & Archie, By Dwaine Caraway
9/11: The Sequel (ARE YOU TERRIFIED ENOUGH TO COME TO CHURCH YET?), By Robert Jeffress, Afterword by Michael J. Mooney
The New Quality Analects of Mr. Funny Guy, by Tim Rogers
Rod Dreher Lands Monster Book Deal
The former DMN editorial boarder and current American Conservative writer has cut himself quite a deal. The New York Post is saying that he landed an “estimated” $1 million deal to write a memoir about how a small Louisiana town supported his sister as she died from lung cancer. The book is titled The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, A Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life. It’ll come out in the spring of 2013.
I asked Rod about this $1 million figure (I’d heard it was slightly higher). He wrote back: “I’m not going to confirm a rumor, but I will say that the money will be sufficient to provide a college education for my sister’s children, provided they go to a state school and, unlike their no-count uncle when he was at LSU, stay the hell out of the barrooms.”
Bill Minutaglio’s Kennedy Assassination Book Is Not To Be Confused With Stephen King’s
As the 50th anniversary of the assassination nears, Stephen King was first out of the gate, with his 11/22/63. Now comes news that former Morning News scribe Bill Minutaglio and his buddy Steven L. Davis will be coming out with a book about the worst day in Dallas. Here’s how the press release describes the nonfiction book:
Dallas 1963 follows the city through three turbulent years, beginning with the Kennedy election in November 1960 and ending on November 22, 1963. Set against the backdrop of a nation in transition, Minutaglio and Davis explain what the President and his team were thinking and doing in those three years, and why they could never have really understood the swirling forces awaiting them in Texas, where a rich and surprising ensemble of characters defined the city many people would blame for killing the President: rabid politicos, gangsters, unsung civil rights leaders, strippers, billionaires, defrocked military generals, fundamentalist preachers, clandestine heroes, and marauding police, among them.
The book will be published by Twelve in 2013, to coincide with the assassination’s anniversary. North American rights were sold in a heated three-day auction by Dallas power literary agent David Hale Smith, who used to run his own DHS Literary but then sold out to the Man and now works for an enormous, soulless, New York-based publishing behemoth called InkWell Management. David used to be a friend of mine. I asked him to confirm for me that the book had sold for $650,000 and a reservation for four at momofuku. He just put his stockinged feet up on his desk, threw his head back, and laughed like Max Cady through the smoke from a fine Cuban cigar.
Mark Cuban on his New E-Book: ‘Don’t Feel You Have to Read It Like a Book’
Our D CEO CEO of the Year, Mark Cuban, has published himself an e-book. According to the Wall Street Journal, much of it is culled from blog postings that were already freely available.
I like how candid Cuban is about just wanting to sell books. The last thing he wants you to do is weigh the likelihood of whether you’ll actually read the thing before turning over your $2.99:
“Don’t feel you have to read it like a book,” he writes in the book’s foreword. “Use it as a way to get fired up. A way to get motivated.”
Stephen King: ‘Follow the Gun’ to Prove Oswald’s Guilt
Stephen King
As Carol reported earlier, Stephen King showed up at the Majestic last night for a chat with Lee Cullum about his new novel involving the JFK assassination, called 11-22-63. At a press conference before his talk benefiting The Sixth Floor Museum, the best-selling author said assassination-conspiracy theorists are unlikely to be fans of the book, which portrays Lee Harvey Oswald as solely responsible for the president’s murder.
“I have no bone to pick with conspiracy theorists, but they’ll have a bone to pick with me,” King said. Riffing on Deep Throat’s Watergate advice to “Follow the money,” King said Oswald’s guilt is evident when you “follow the gun” that was used to kill Kennedy. Oswald ordered the Italian rifle, King said, picked it up at the Post Office, was photographed with it in his backyard, used it to shoot at Army Gen. Edwin Walker here, took it to the book depository that fateful day, and shot Dallas police officer J.D. Tippitt with it. [See Update below.]
Said King of the skeptics: “It’s difficult to believe that one unimportant man can step forward and change the course of history.” He added later that, in contrast to Dallas’s image as a “hateful place,” he’s met only friendly people here who’ve been eager to help him. While the city was surely scarred by the assassination, King said, “my impression is Dallas has dealt with that issue, and pretty much put it to bed.”
UPDATE: Mea culpa, FrontBurner nation. Thanks to the commenters below, I cleaned out my ears and went back and reviewed a tape of King’s press conference. Sure enough, he mentioned that Oswald hid the rifle in the depository before later shooting Tippit. That part was pretty hard to hear, causing me and a journalist for another outlet to misinterpret and mis-report what was said. My apologies for the screw-up.
Stephen King Does the Majestic
We sent D Magazine intern Carol Shih, a Dreamcatcher fan, to see the man who caused a visceral fear of aliens climbing out of toilet seats during her formative years. Her report:
Hail to the King
By Carol Shih
Rarely does Stephen King make appearances at charity events, but lo and behold, the horror writer decided to grace Dallas fans with “A Conversation with Stephen King” at the Majestic Theatre last night. This benefit for the Sixth Floor Museum gave those who shelled out extra green the chance to drink cheap glasses of wine and rub shoulders with the King himself at a 6 o’clock reception. Afterward, DMN columnist Lee Cullum led King in an hour-long conversation over his latest novel, 11/22/63, in which an average English teacher uses a time machine to prevent the Kennedy assassination. Why does this plot sound familiar? Oh, right, it’s been done before. But instead of going on and on about the origins of King’s novel, here are some highlights from the slick King’s talk:
The Lasting Effect of Peter Gent’s North Dallas Forty
Really interesting essay looking back on North Dallas Forty–the book and the movie–by Oregon State English professor Michael Oriard over at Deadspin. Oriard, a former player from the same era as Gent, compares the recently deceased author to fellow ’60s writers Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer. He also wonders if Gent ever smoked pot with Don Meredith. Breaking down the differences between the book and movie, Oriard writes that “the ‘truth’ of North Dallas Forty lay in its broad strokes rather than particular observations. The characters weren’t ‘real,’ but collectively they conveyed the brutality, racism, sexism, drug abuse, and callousness that were part of professional football.”
Astronaut Dad Finally for Sale
At long last, the complete two-volume edition of Astronaut Dad is available for purchase. Call it a comic. Call it a graphic novel. It was written by sometime D Magazine contributor David Hopkins and illustrated by Brent Schoonover. You can read on David’s blog why it took so long to get this thing to print. Hearty congratulations from the D staff!
Leading Off (10/3/11)
Peter Gent, North Dallas Forty Novelist, Dies: The former receiver for the Dallas Cowboys who penned the behind the locker room door exposé of football’s rough and tumble youth, North Dallas Forty, died Friday. He was 69.
Perry Tries to Downplay Racist Name of Family’s Hunting Camp: So who had a worse weekend, Tony Romo, who threw three interceptions to lay the ground for the worst collapse in Cowboys history, or Rick Perry, whose family’s hunting camp, we learn, has been long known by a racial slur? Perry spent much of the weekend denying the report.
UT Southwestern Professor Shares Nobel Prize for Medicine: Bruce Beutler, who will soon rejoin the faculty of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine along with Frenchman Jules Hoffman and Canadian Ralph Steinman for their work on immune system defenses. His most important discoveries were made, in part, during a previous stint at UT Southwestern, when he discovered a molecule that plays a role in the nervous system’s first line of defense against disease.
A Visit to Archer City
Dallas native James McAuley, writing for the New Yorker, runs into Larry McMurtry at his famed bookshop. (H/t Bud Kennedy)
Donaldson’s 99 Days Will be in Stores Wednesday
Kristian Donaldson is a comic book artist who lives in Dallas. His new graphic novel, 99 Days, is about a Rwandan child soldier who grew up to be an L.A. police detective. You can get a signed copy at Zeus Comics between noon and 6 tomorrow.
Borders Patrons Get While the Gettin’s Good
There was a mix of gloom and opportunism at the Old Town Borders this morning, like you were bidding
farewell to a friend who’d died but, before you left, you scoured his closet to see if there was anything in there you wanted. Today marked the first day of a “liquidation” period that’s likely to last through September, somebody said, and plenty of customers were in the store to help clean it out.
The cafe was closed already. But biographies and CDs/DVDs were 20 percent off, young adult books were 10 percent off, and you could pick up magazines for a 40 percent discount. (What the hell; I sprang for the new Texas Monthly.) An enterprising FrontBurnervian who wandered into the Old Town location sent along this photo, which pretty well summed things up.
Larry McMurtry Rips The Last Picture Show
It was the book that thrust Larry McMurtry, the dean of Texas literature, into the American mainstream. And it was the movie that, in 1971, garnered eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. And now McMurtry says it was a “spiteful” book that took just three weeks to write and was intended to “lance some of the poisons of small-town life,” and that Cybill Shepherd, the young (in 1971) chest-bearing star of the film, “couldn’t act a lick.” He did note, however, that she was “real pretty.” More, including video of McMurtry talking before a recent screening of the film in Archer City, here.
Weird: Amazon’s Latest Tax Collection Avoidance Plan For Texas.
Texas Tribune via The New York Times outlined the latest in the Amazon sales tax collection plan for the Lone Star State. As you will recall, Amazon was charged $269 million for sales taxes it was supposed to have collected from Texas buyers, the result of its having a major distribution plant in Irving. But shelve that one for a moment. Amazon has a new proposal, ostensibly to make that tax bill go away. It’s promised to create 6,000 new jobs and spend some $300 million on five or six shiny new warehouses and distribution plants in Texas if the state will give it a pass on collecting sales taxes for 4 ½ years. Exceptin’ the taxes would still have to be paid. By us. Texans who buy Amazon products would have to remit the sales tax owed on these purchases directly to the state. Not exactly one-click shopping. Plus, how on earth would this be enforced? And, rather than write a check for 8.25% of your purchase directly to the state, wouldn’t that make you want to shop online at Barnes & Noble or, even better, patronize one of the few remaining independents in Texas? In which case I am all for it.
A Kennedy In Dallas for a “Rockefeller” Fete
From left: Anthony Shriver, his daughter Eunice, Jan Miller and Mark Seal
While the rest of Dallas was caught up in Mavs mania Monday, big-deal literary agent Jan Miller and her husband Jeff Rich were opening up their Beverly Drive manse to a more subdued gathering of Kennedys and “Rockefellers.” Well, sort of, anyway. The Kennedys were represented by Anthony Kennedy Shriver–the son of Jack’s sister Eunice and her husband Sargent Shriver, and the brother of California’s Maria Shriver. Anthony’s got a nonprofit called Best Buddies International–it helps people with intellectual disabilities–for which Miller will host a fund-raiser here in November.
The Rockefeller part came from guest-of-honor Mark Seal, an Aspen-based contributing editor for Vanity Fair mag who’s penned a new book titled The Man in the Rockefeller Suit. Based on an article Seal wrote for VF, it’s about a German-born con man named Christian Gerhartsreiter who passed himself off as a member of the famous dynasty and was later arrested for kidnapping his daughter. Said Rich of Seal, who used to write for The Dallas Morning News: “If there’s any kind of sexual deviation or impersonation involved” in a story, Mark will be there. “Or prostitution,” cracked Miller, adding that The Man “is a wonderful book. It’s soon to be a wonderful movie. And I’m sure there will be another book, because [Gerhartsreiter has also just] been indicted for murder.”
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