Buy my book for $100?

Well, not quite, but it's on sale here for $97.65. Probably when you throw in shipping it would be over $100. Um, you could always buy directly from me for a whole lot cheaper. Or might I suggest your favorite independent bookstore?

Great evening last night at the Dougherty Arts Center in celebration of Texas Writers Month (thank you for having me, Writers League of Texas). I was last up out of five writers, but got a strong reaction. Good to see some old friends there, too.

Mike Levy out at Texas Monthly

Word out today is that Mike Levy, the founder and publisher of Texas Monthly is stepping down. As a favor to a small magazine, I interviewed Levy a few years ago. It wasn't easy (but not nearly as bad as interviewing Richard Linklater! But that's another story...)). They offered me 15 minutes by phone. I said I wanted to do it in person and they promosed 10 minutes only. When I got there he was pretty much of a jerk. He raced back to his office with me trying to keep up. Then he was curt, until I found my way into the story I was writing. His walls were covered with airplane stuff. He started to loosen up, some, and maybe gave me 15 minutes. This is what I wrote for the magazine, which promptly folded. I ended up giving it to another magazine, which printed it and promptly folded. Makes you realize how tough the magazine publishing game is. Here's the story I wrote about Levy:

Texas Monthly’s Mike Levy keeps his airplane motor running

BY JOE O’CONNELL

Mike Levy’s engine doesn’t run on idle. He jets down the aisles of Texas Monthly, the award-winning magazine he founded in 1973, leaving those begging his attention practically running to keep the pace.

When he rests—momentarily—in his office, it is clear that, if the Dallas native has a role model, it is the jet airplane. The walls are lined with photos of him gleefully boarding jets. The tables covered with airplane models.

“I move fast and crash and burn at the end of the day,” Levy says before grabbing a phone call and making plans for, you guessed it, an out-of-town flight. Moments later his attention is back, if only for a short while, and he explains the allure of the metallic birds of the sky.

“We’ve been flying for 100 years,” he says and his eyes widen in delight. “We’ve gone from flying a few yards to going 15,000 miles precisely. They should fall from the sky like a toolbox. That’s testimony to the ingenuity of man.”

The son of a plumber, Levy borrowed money from his parents to create his own toolbox in the sky: a statewide magazine that has beaten the horrible odds (most magazines fall off the radar, crash and burn quickly) to earn nine National Magazine Awards, putting it in a class with Life, The New Yorker, Esquire and Harper’s.

The flight path from the kid who used to venture to Love Field to watch the airplanes rise into the sky to Texas Monthly publisher has been an interesting one. In the interim, Levy drove a taxi, worked as a jailer at the Dallas County Jail and was a student stringer for United Press International in Philadelphia while studying business at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, he sold advertising for Philadelphia Magazine, and set his sights on creating his own magazine back in Texas.

“If I’d have known then what I know now,” he admits, “I would have never tried it.”
But try he did and does. And he’s not content to rest on his laurels. In fact, Levy is known around Austin for his volunteer efforts on the committee that oversees Emergency Medical Services—to the point of obsession, some who receive his legendary mass mailings on city issues might contend.

For answer to the “why” of this jet airplane of a man, one need only look to the people he considers mentors, starting with his father.

“He taught me by example that if you want anything, you have to work for it—hard.”
Also on his short list is rabbi and scholar Levi Olan, a Ukrainian immigrant who went on to lead Dallas’ Temple Emanu-El, one of the largest Jewish congregations in the nation. More important, Olan through his regular radio broadcasts, was outspoken on issues of race and the Vietnam War. Some even called him the “conscience of Dallas.”

“His core message was, ‘If you have the ability to make a difference, and you don’t, it’s wrong, even a sin,’ ” Levy says. “He taught me not to be reluctant to say something for fear of what other people would say.”

The last mentor is a teacher at the elite St. Mark’s School (Levy’s parents scrimped and saved to send their boy there), one in the “Dead Poets Society” vein who inspired Levy to dream. He also inspired to found and edit the prep school’s literary journal. Incidentally, the literary magazine’s next editor was a fellow by the name of Tommy Lee Jones who went on to do a little acting.

So how does a guy like Levy, who sold magazine subscriptions door-to-door when he was 12 and who went on to earn a law degree from the University of Texas, lead as his mentors did?

“A leader has a vision, values he can share with his colleagues and the ability to live by those values as an example,” Levy says. “You have to have a dedication and commitment to the enterprise. You have to be willing to recognize the important contributions and say ‘I’m grateful.’ And you have to have a sense of humanity.”

Don’t worry about Levy’s sense of humanity; his three daughters (two are in the writing biz and the third is a vice president in charge of music at Miramax) keep him humble. “My daughters keep an ongoing list of my character defects and flaws,” Levy says. “They have wisdom and I listen to them.”

His other “children” are issue after issue of Texas Monthly. His goal is to keep them consistently excellent. He is just as adamant about staying out of the editorial side of the publication and concentrating on the business behind the magazine.

“I never expect my staff to do anything I wouldn’t do myself,” Levy says. “I expect them to be committed to each other and the enterprise.”

And perhaps another prerequisite is a jet engine burning in their bellies. A sense that the time to slow down is when the job is done, when the wrong is righted. Feel free to ask Air Levy as it zooms on toward another challenge. Be ready to move quickly.

Helen Ginger's readers, this post is for you!

Thanks to everyone who read the interview with me at Straight From Hel. Leave a comment to this post and tell me why you should already be a winner of a free book...

Two books will be given away. The deadline is May 18.

Taking to the highway...

A few favorite photos of Nicholas on the way back from Dallas recently. Note the disappearing shirt. He got it soaked with water.

Book critics need an EVACUATION PLAN

The National Book Critics Circle's quarterly list of recommended titles is out. I'm pleased to see my idol Charles Baxter on the list, but otherwise it's very telling. ONE university press on the list and no other independents. Reviewers: Come visit the Dalton Publishing booth at Book Expo America and my publisher will be happy to give you a copy of EVACUATION PLAN.


Heres' what America's book critics say they are reading and enjoying:

FICTION

1. Richard Price, LUSH LIFE, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2. Jhumpa Lahiri, UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, Knopf
3. Steven Millhauser, DANGEROUS LAUGHTER, Knopf
*4. Charles Baxter, THE SOUL THIEF, Pantheon
*4. Peter Carey, HIS ILLEGAL SELF, Knopf
*4. J. M. Coetzee, DIARY OF A BAD YEAR, Viking
*4. James Collins, BEGINNNER'S GREEK, Little, Brown
*4. Brian Hall, FALL OF FROST, Viking
*4. Roxana Robinson, COST, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
*4. Owen Sheers, RESISTANCE, Nan A. Talese: Doubleday

NONFICTION

1. Nicholson Baker, HUMAN SMOKE: THE BEGINNING OF WORLD WAR II, THE END OF CIVILIZATION, S. & S.
2. Drew Gilpin Faust, THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING: DEATH AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, Knopf
3. Mark Harris, PICTURES AT THE REVOLUTION: FIVE MOVIES AND THE BIRTH OF THE NEW HOLLYWOOD, Penguin Press
4. Honor Moore, THE BISHOP'S DAUGHTER: A MEMOIR, Norton
5. Susan Jacoby, THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON, Pantheon

POETRY

1. Grace Paley, FIDELITY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2. Frank Bidart, WATCHING THE SPRING FESTIVAL, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
3. Eric Gansworth, A HALF-LIFE OF CARDIO-PULMONARY FUNCTION, Syracuse University Press
4. Marie Howe, THE KINGDOM OF ORDINARY TIME, Norton
5. Robert Pinsky, GULF MUSIC, Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Jimmy Fallon in late night?

I've long been a Conan O'Brien fan, but I'm wavering. Now we get word that Jimmy Fallon will take Conan's place when Conan takes the extremely unfunny Jay Leno's place? Eek. Sure, you say, Conan came in with low expectations as well. But Conan was a writer, so we didn't know what he would do as a performer. Fallon was on Saturday Night Live in front of the camera and as a comedian he makes a great 13-year-old, slightly creepy boy.

But on to the late night shows in general. It's hard for some people to believe that David Letterman was once extremely funny and extremely innovative (said the guy with not one but two photos of himself with the late Larry "Bud" Melman). And Jay, as a guest on Dave's show, was also funny. What happened to these guys?

I've been Tivoing Conan for a long time now, as he has been my favorite late-night guy (said the guy who wears Andry Richter's bathrobe), but he's fallen into that predictable state that only the writers' strike got him out of temporarily.

The funniest of the late nighters?

+ Craig Ferguson. He monologue is a twisting, looping, goofy masterpiece.

+ Jimmy Kimmel. Unnecessary censorship on Friday nights is a must-see.

+ Conan. I'm still hanging in there with you, but you're dropping down my list.

+ Jay Leno. He steals bits from the old Letterman and is mean, but I admit it is fun to watch him make idiots out of idiots on the street (a bit that everyone steals from Steve Allen).

+ David Letterman. His old NBC show was my holy grail of funny. Now he's just some odd old dude who used to be funny, used to be mean, used to be interesting. For old time's sake I still Tivo him on my secondary Tivo...

+ Carson Daily. Will someone give this guy a sandwich?

In the words of Kinky Friedman: "Is there anyone I missed?"

'Emily' graduates...

Her real name is Elizabeth, but in my hospice-set novel-in-stories Evacuation Plan, she sort of is Emily, a young girl on the verge of being kidnapped. The real story is I spent a couple of hours talking and playing with Elizabeth when she was a little girl so I could get the voice right for the character in this story. Congrats, Elizabeth!