Kirjahaku

The author of WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG, I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC and other short story collections has kept a daily diary for forty years, since he was 18 in the summer of 1969. Here are entries from his diary for the winter of 1971-72, when he was a 20-year-old junior at Brooklyn College.

The author of WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG, I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC and other short story collections has kept a daily diary for forty years, since he was 18 in the summer of 1969. Here are entries from his diary for the spring of 1975, when he was a 23-year-old student in the creative writing MFA program at Brooklyn College.

The author of WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG, I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC and other short story collections has kept a daily diary for forty years, since he was 18 in the summer of 1969. Here are entries from his diary for the autumn of 1978, when he was 27, living in Brooklyn with his family, writing short stories and about to have his first book published by a New York publisher.

"Grayson is a born storyteller and standup talker...Highly recommended."" --Library Journal" "Grayson's stories are full on insanity, nutty therapists, cancerous relatives, broken homes, fiction workshops, youthful theatricals at Catskill bungalow colonies and the morbid wizardry of telephone answering machines." "--Ivan Gold, New York Times Book Review" "Here is an imaginative and engaging writer who breaks all the conventions of contemporary fiction with a certain devilish relish." "--Robin Hemley, Another Chicago Magazine" "Disingenuous confessions of the writer's ineptitude are suffused with the appealing confessional anxiety of a small-time writer scrabbling against odds." "--Jaimy Gordon, American Book Review"

Originally published as a recurring feature at the McSweeney's website, Richard Grayson's diary wryly chronicles the hopeless 2004 campaign of an emo-loving vegetarian fiction writer, the sole opponent to a right-wing incumbent in Florida's most Republican congressional district. Supporting socialized medicine, abortion rights, gay marriage and immediate withdrawal from Iraq, write-in Democrat Grayson jokes his way through a quixotic campaign to wind the hearts and minds of those North Florida voters who possess hearts and minds. "A fascinating diary." - Stephen Elliott

For over three decades, Richard Grayson's idiosyncratic fictions have been appearing in literary magazines, anthologies and webzines, as well as in his book-length collections, including WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG, I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ, I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC, THE SILICON VALLEY DIET, HIGHLY IRREGULAR STORIES and AND TO THINK THAT HE KISSED HIM ON LORIMER STREET. Now, in WHO WILL KISS THE PIG?: SEX STORIES FOR TEENS, Richard Grayson brings together twenty of his quirkiest fictions, from his first published story, "Rampant Burping," which appeared in NEW WRITERS in 1975, to such recent pieces as "This Person Is Already Your Friend," published online at 3:AM MAGAZINE in 2007. "The incessant familiarity of the writer's secret self makes his world entertaining and bizarre. The dialogue is consistently, even ingeniously funny...bright and keenly made." - The New York Times Book Review

Richard Grayson was born in Brooklyn and grew up there. He began keeping a daily diary in August 1969, as he was about to enter Brooklyn College. His 1979 first book of short stories, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, was called "really funny" by Liz Smith in the Daily News and "where avant-garde fiction goes when it becomes stand-up comedy" by Rolling Stone. Here are entries from his summer diaries from age 18 to 24. "Richard Grayson started writing regularly at 18. He had just spent a year in his room, scared to come out. Grayson didn't know it then, but he was suffering from agoraphobia, a nervous breakdown of some sort. When he reappeared in the spring of 1969, everything seemed fresh. It was a classic case of being rehatched." - The Miami Herald

Richard Grayson's diary of his law school years at the University of Florida, taken from the spring semesters of 1992, 1993 and 1994. ROLLING STONE called Grayson's first short story collection, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK (1979) "where avant-garde fiction goes when it becomes stand-up comedy," and NEWSDAY said, "The reader is dazzled by the swift, witty goings-on." LIBRARY JOURNAL called LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG (1982) "excellent" and said of I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ (1983) that "Grayson is a born storyteller and standup talker." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW said Grayson's I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC (1996) was "entertaining and bizarre" and "consistently, even ingeniously funny." PUBLISHERS WEEKLY called Grayson's THE SILICON VALLEY DIET (2000) "compulsively talky and engagingly disjunctive," and THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, reviewing AND TO THINK THAT HE KISSED HIM ON LORIMER STREET (2006), said, "Grayson has a fresh, funny voice." SPRING IN GAINESVILLE is his 16th diary compilation to bore readers.