Mike Shea on the month’s new releases
Ron White
Dutton Adult (June 6, 2006)
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An interview with Ron White
The notoriously boisterous—and blue—comic has come a long way, from his oil patch birthplace of Fritch to sold-out standup tours and multimillion-unit DVD sales. His new book, I Had the Right to Remain Silent … But I Didn’t Have the Ability, melds his real-life misadventures and his testosterone-laden stage routines.
You grew up around Houston, where you just played five packed-out shows. Does that make you feel like a hometown boy made good? I just broke all records at the Verizon Wireless Theater for any kind of performer, whether it’s a band or a comedian. It makes you feel great. Lots of friends, lots of family. They were at the shows, and it was a hoot.
Does your mother come out to watch? What does she think of your blue material? Mother, she likes the blue material just fine. I could do no wrong in my mother’s eyes from the day I was born. My fans bought her a very nice house in San Antonio, and she has a great life.
Who are your fans? It is an amazing cross section of folks. I get e-mail from all over the world, and from lawyers and doctors and whoever—plumbers and drywall hangers. A lot of people can find something to laugh at in my humor, I guess.
From what I’ve read in your book, you weren’t a voted-most-likely-to-succeed kind of guy, were you? No, I was not. I was voted most likely to roll my own. Dutton, $24.95
Sarah Bird
Alfred A. Knopf (June 2006)
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As a novelist, Sarah Bird is not exactly prolific—it’s been five years since the Texas Monthly writer-at-large gave us the fine The Yokota Officers Club—but at long last she has delivered the stunning and ambitious THE FLAMENCO ACADEMY, a tale of obsession and, yes, gypsies. Against the backdrop of Albuquerque’s vibrant flamenco scene (who knew?), groupie queen Didi Steinberg and best pal Cyndi Rae Hrncir immerse themselves in the Andalusian dance after Cyndi Rae goes near-stalker-crazy over guitar phenomenon Tomás Montenegro. They learn machine-gun rhythms and graceful arm movements at the feet of grande dame Doña Carlota but, more importantly, absorb gypsy culture, a paella of persecution and passion with origins in the rude caves outside Granada. Bird’s travelogue to the little-known universe of flamenco puro and its cantaores (singers), tocaores (guitarists), and flamencas (dancers) is enthralling, sure to banish painful images of faux–flamenco guitarists flailing at an E-minor chord. Knopf, $25
James A. Mangum
John M. Hardy; 1st edition (June 30, 2006)
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Quirky doesn’t even begin to describe THE VINEGAROON MURDERS, the dust-blown supernatural murder mystery that makes up volume two of JAMES A. MANGUM’s Dos Cruces trilogy. For starters, the narrator is an angel, though decidedly not the stuff of Sunday school: Shyanne, a seraph, drops the F-bomb with alarming frequency and takes human form (the comely shape of German supermodel Claudia Schiffer, to be precise) to get a bartending gig. Then Mangum IDs the baddies who left a young couple dead on a West Texas ranch on page 33—a would-be plot spoiler of the first degree. And then there’s Jamey Maxwell, the retired customs agent pursuing the killers who hears the voice of God in his head. Mangum’s ultramoralistic bent can be wearing, but you’ve got to admire a cynic capable of imagining guardian angels as being like “every monster under the bed . . . rolled into one and on steroids, acid, and crack cocaine.” John M. Hardy Publishing, $19.95
Larry McMurtry
Simon & Schuster (May 30, 2006)
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Meet Nellie Courtright, the resourceful, charming, and enthusiastically copulating protagonist of LARRY MCMURTRY’s Wild West saga TELEGRAPH DAYS. Her father has just “suicided himself,” leaving the 22-year-old and her teenage brother, Jackson, to fend for themselves in the barren no-man’s-land north of Texas. But Nellie goes one better and acquires some measure of fortune and fame. McMurtry writes her life as a parallel of the frontier’s rapid-fire metamorphosis in the 1870’s and 1880’s: She makes the push west, finds boomtown prosperity in untamed places like Tombstone, works for a spell with Buffalo Bill Cody’s shows exhibiting an already disappearing Wild West to the world, and eventually lands in Hollywood writing “scenarios” for the big screen and immortalizing shoot-outs and outlaws. Telegraph Days is vintage McMurtry in a fine new bottle—filled with telling historical detail and atmospheric with choking dust and whiskey-breathed cowhands. Simon & Schuster, $25
