BOGG Magazine has a review of Richard Grayson's Lincoln's Doctor's Dog in issue #49 (1982) by editor/publisher John Elsberg:
Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog, by Richard Grayson, White Ewe Press, PO Box 996, Adelphi, Md. 20783, 1987 pp., hdbk., $11.95.
Richard Grayson’s third collection of short stories proves that the magician’s hat is far from empty. I must confess that the lead-off story does little for me, but after that Grayson’s funnier than Steve Martin. His characters are troubled, ridiculous, and poignant with a capital P. They run the gamut from a lawyer who collects Time magazine covers, to Blanche “Spongecake” Bernstein, Patty Hearst imitators, and Sparky, Lincoln’s doctor’s dog (Sparky allows Grayson to roll that publishing canard about best sellers being books about Lincoln, doctors, or dogs, into one impossible alloy.) Grayson constantly loses control of his stories and his characters (reminiscent of Pirandello and Flann O’Brien) and they do or say things that reveal mischievous facets of their author’s personality. Or do they? Grayson is a sharpie. It’s impossible to tell how many layers we would have to peel away before we arrive at the real Grayson. We begin to believe that all of the characters are really him. We believe they are telling us the truth. That’s where the art comes in.
"Some orgasms are better than others," I tell my fiancee.
"So what?" she says.
– from “Roominations”
Grayson pumps his stories full of topical details. Everything from products (Tropicana), songs, films, t.v. shows, to news items (swine-flu shots, recipes), and all sorts of personalities (Yuri Gagarin, Van Johnson, Larry Flynt, John Gardner, Steve McQueen, et al.) to provide a cornucopia of everyday life in the US. He tops it off with outrageous puns. In this book we meet a boy who lives with a porpoise, another who goes to his first X-rated movie and falls in love with the star, still another who really gets involved with the calls he answers as a switchboard operator. But this book also contains three stories that are serious departures from anything I’ve seen in the past – “Early Warnings,” “Cross in the Water,” and “I, Eliza Custis” (the latter being the first-person story of George Washington’s granddaughter) are adventures in more traditional storytelling.
"Y'know, just living longer gives you confidence. . . That's one ting you'll find out here."
– from "18/X/1969"
The 22 stories in this beautiful black hardback do just that: we can count on Grayson to show us how to live from day to day.
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