This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's
Autumn in Gainesville. It is available in a 242-page trade paperback edition for $13.99, as well as
an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.
The promo stuff says in part:
Richard Grayson has been keeping a daily diary compulsively since the summer of 1969, when he was an 18-year-old agoraphobic about to venture out into the world -- or at least the world around him in Brooklyn. His diary, approximately 600 words a day without missing a day since August 1, 1969, now totals over 9 million words, rivaling the longest diaries ever written.
But Grayson is not merely an eccentric with graphomania. His nonfiction has appeared in PEOPLE, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE ORLANDO SENTINEL, THE SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK POST and numerous other periodicals.
ROLLING STONE called Grayson’s first short story collection, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, published in 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.”
Grayson’s other short story collections have also received acclaim. 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”; KIRKUS DISCOVERIES termed Grayson “an audacious and wickedly smart comedic writer” in its review of HIGHLY IRREGULAR STORIES (2005); and THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, reviewing AND TO THINK THAT HE KISSED HIM ON LORIMER STREET (2006), said, “Grayson has a fresh, funny voice.”
Grayson’s seventeenth compilation of diary entries, AUTUMN IN GAINESVILLE, alternates among the three fall seasons during the years he worked as a staff attorney in social policy at University of Florida law school think tank.
Taking place from 1994 to 1996, Grayson's diary chronicles his adventures as a legal researcher, college instructor, gay rights activist, candidate for Congress, local media presence on radio, TV and newspapers, and also a contributor to and columnist for New Jersey Online.
Working for a education project called Schoolyear 2000 and one of the first experiments in web-based journalism projects, fighting an anti-gay referendum in Alachua County, shaping the concept of a center for genome sciences, still questioning himself and the culture at every turn, Grayson moves into his mid-40s and by the book's end, he finds himself surprised with a book contract for a new collection of short stories and prepares to move on to the next, unknown, phase of his life.
Grayson has published the first six volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.
The second six volumes of his diaries have been published as THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, which include SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-1984; LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, 1982; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-1987; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; and EIGHTIES’ END: AUTUMN, 1987-1989.
AUTUMN IN GAINESVILLE:1994-1996 is the fifth volume of THE NINETIES DIARIES, following SUMMER IN NEW YORK: 1990, LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY: 1991, FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE: 1991, and SPRING IN GAINESVILLE: 1992-1994.
The book is also available on Lulu and
Scribd for free online reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment