Mike Shea on the month’s new releases
Clancy Martin
How to Sell
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
(Read an excerpt)
Buy this at Bookpeople.com
Rookie novelist Clancy Martin displays a veteran’s savvy when he grabs the reader on the opening page of How to Sell: “The first time I considered jewelry was the morning I stole my mother’s wedding ring. It was white gold. A hundred-year-old Art Nouveau band with eleven diamonds.” From there, Martin never lets you go with this sordid tale of Bobby Clark, an amoral sixteen-year-old summoned by his older brother, Jim, to leave their Calgary hometown to work at the Fort Worth Deluxe Diamond Exchange. Jim gives him a job, a place to stay, and a nasty cocaine habit; Bobby returns the favor by stealing jewelry, petty cash, and Jim’s girlfriend, Lisa. He eagerly sheds his youthful innocence like a snakeskin and wraps himself in a hustler’s lifestyle awash in glitz and swindles—the dark side of the American dream. How to Sell’s juxtaposition of beautiful objects against ugly behaviors is strangely exhilarating and chilling all at once. And if Martin speaks true about the seamier side of the jewelry business, he will forever change the way you buy bling. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $24
Thomas Leveritt
The Exchange-Rate Between Love and Money
Simon & Schuster
(Read an excerpt)
Buy this at Bookpeople.com
First published in England in 2008, The Exchange-Rate Between Love and Money is the kind of inventive, intelligent fiction that now deserves to make a splash stateside for Dallas-bred Thomas Leveritt. Set in Sarajevo circa 2002, it is a sly, tragicomic exploration of commerce, politics, and romance in the chaos of postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina. Among the characters that emerge from the swarm of international agencies and peacekeeping forces are Frito Cooper and Bannerman Tedus, partners in such dubious enterprises as a mob-financed factory that produces knockoff pharmaceuticals. The two are part of a ménage à trois with Clare Leischman, an investigator for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia who spends her days interviewing survivors of wartime rape camps and obsessing about levying justice. The daunting question: Can love and happiness exist in the same world as such atrocities? Leveritt, channeling the biting wit of Kurt Vonnegut and the passion of Denis Johnson, provides an answer with this complex and remarkable novel. Simon & Schuster, $15
Hugh MacLeod
Ignore Everybody (and 39 Other Keys to Creativity)
Portfolio
In the West Texas town of Alpine, Hugh MacLeod writes Gaping Void, a cheeky blog he launched in August 2001 with the deadpan tagline “Cartoons Drawn on the Back of Business Cards.” Now a 13,000-word essay from the Web site has spawned his first book, Ignore Everybody (and 39 Other Keys to Creativity), a mishmash of career advice, pop-psych mantras, and single-panel comics that are, not coincidentally, three and a half by two inches in size. MacLeod uses self-deprecating anecdotes from his years in the online and advertising industries (he still works in both) to deliver snarky advice, and though his recommendations can veer from the pragmatic (“Remain frugal”) to the borderline saccharine (“Everyone has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb”), they frankly sound as worthwhile as any. But the real highlights are his sardonic micro-funnies. Exhibit A: MacLeod’s depiction of a bitter bar patron grousing, “Living a complete lie wouldn’t have been so bad if I could’ve just gotten more people to believe it.” Portfolio, $23.95
Zac Crain
Zac Crain
Photograph by Allison V. Smith
The former music editor for the Dallas Observer was just another Texas teen when metal rockers Pantera emerged from Arlington in the nineties and went on to sell millions of records and concert tickets worldwide. In BLACK TOOTH GRIN: THE HIGH LIFE, GOOD TIMES, AND TRAGIC END OF “DIMEBAG” DARRELL ABBOTT, he captures the essence of the band’s virtuoso guitarist, who was revered by musicians and fans alike for his outrageous skills and everyman persona—and who, in December 2004, was brutally murdered by a deranged fan at a concert in Columbus, Ohio. Crain, who has written for Spin and Esquire, is currently a senior editor at D Magazine.
Rock bands, like superheroes, have origin myths. What is Pantera’s?
There are two legends. The first: Vince Abbott came home from high school with a tuba, and his dad, Jerry, a country musician, songwriter, and producer, told him he’d never make a nickel with that thing. So he traded it in for drums. Pretty soon some kids needed a drummer for their band. Vince told them he’d join, but only if they let his little brother, Darrell, in as well, on guitar. Even though Darrell couldn’t really play. And that’s the second legend: Darrell locked himself in his room—for six weeks or six months, depending on who you believe—and when he came out, he was, you know, Dimebag Darrell. “He could play like he could play,” they say.
How did the band change when it made the leap from regional clubs to national arenas?
By then, they had come into their own musically, arriving at a sound perfectly summed up by their first major-label record, Cowboys From Hell: hard and fast and, in many ways, Texan. This made their shows less about lights and explosions, though they were still spectacles. Pantera concerts were notorious for having the biggest, craziest mosh pits. A lot of bands tried to court the modern rock audience, but Pantera never did.
What about the Dimebag nickname?
Darrell’s stage name was “Diamond” Darrell, but his friends turned it around and called him Dimebag, a play on the fact that he wouldn’t keep more weed around than he could get rid of that day. He was paranoid about getting busted and losing his career.
Did Darrell and the band deserve their populist reputation?
Absolutely. When I covered Darrell’s memorial service, everyone had a story about hanging out with him, doing shots with him, running into him at Costco. A lot of musicians who reach that level you probably wouldn’t want to hang out with, but Darrell was the exception.
As for his onstage murder, what happened?
Watching the tape of the shooting—which was caught by the band’s own camera—it’s unnerving to see how the killer, Nathan Gale, had a clear path to Darrell, who had his head down, oblivious to everything but his guitar. No one will ever know for sure why it happened, because Gale didn’t leave a note or any real clues. [He was killed by a police officer at the scene.] He had enough ammunition to shoot his way out of there, and I think that’s what he intended to do.
Lubbock has a Buddy Holly statue, and Austin has a Stevie Ray Vaughan statue. Was Darrell too far outside the mainstream to receive that kind of recognition?
Probably so. Maybe Arlington would do it eventually, but I imagine a church group or family organization making a stink, based on song titles or his nickname or something. It’s too bad, because there’s not a ton of successful people from Arlington who are proud of it and never left, you know? He was just a damned interesting guy, unique to the core, a character. Like Yosemite Sam come to life with a guitar instead of six-shooters. DaCapo, $15.95
