Pages

Thursday, December 30, 1982

Wednesday, December 22, 1982

Library Journal reviews Richard Grayson's LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG in "Small Press Roundup: Best Titles of 1982"


In its December 15, 1982, Library Journal features a brief review of Richard Grayson's Lincoln's Doctor's Dog in its "Small Press Roundup: Best Titles of 1982":


Library Journal
December 15, 1982

LJ's SMALL PRESS ROUNDUP: Best Titles of 1982
By Susan Shafarzek

Pages 2303-2308


THE TIME is long past—if indeed it ever existed—when the small press world could be regarded simply as a haven for the beginning. True, the beginner often finds a place there, but, increasingly, so does the season talent, to whom the major publishing houses can no longer offer a venue. It appears that the alternative presses have become just that, and they are an alternative for the libraries, as well. Those interested in keeping to the front of aesthetic and literary trends will find the small press world a rewarding, supplementary source.

Not everything from the small presses is outstanding, of course. Many are still the province of the cranky and the refuge of the uninteresting, but looking over more than 300 small press books seen this year, more were found that were valuable than not. This review aims to provide a rounded sample of the best of these. (2303)

. . . .

Humor is also the hallmark of Richard Grayson's excellent collection, Lincoln's Doctor's Dog and Other Stories (White Ewe, $11.95, cloth). These range from the surreal and punning to the poignantly reflective. (2306)

_____________________________________
Susan Shafarzek, co-editor of the Washout Review, is on the staff of the Graduate Office of the State University of New York at Albany, in addition to her doctoral studies in the writing program there.

Thursday, October 28, 1982

Fort Lauderdale News & Sun-Sentinel reports on Richard Grayson at Broward Community College's "The Art Explosion: New Video"


The Fort Lauderdale News & Sun-Sentinel reports today (October 28, 1982) on Richard Grayson at Broward Community College's "The Art Explosion: New Video," a monthlong "happening" sponsored by the school's Art Department. Grayson will read his story "Inside Barbara Walters," about video literacy.

Sunday, October 17, 1982

Miami Herald reports on Richard Grayson's $3000 Florida Arts Council grant to write EATING AT ARBY'S



The Miami Herald today (Sunday, October 17, 1982) reports on Richard Grayson's $3,000 Florida Arts Council grant to write Eating at Arby's: The South Florida Stories.

Thursday, October 7, 1982

Hollywood Sun-Tattler "Names and Places" column reports on Richard Grayson's EATING AT ARBY'S: THE SOUTH FLORDA STORIES


Today, Thursday, October 7, 1982, Carol Brzozowski's Names and Places column in the Hollywood Sun-Tattler has an item on Richard Grayson's Eating at Arby's: The South Florida Stories:

IT'S TRUE: JUST TELL 'EM
READ RICHARD'S BOOK


So the folks back home don't believe your horror stories about driving on I-95?

You get a few chuckles when you spin your favorite yarns about shopping at our area malls?

Fear no more! Davie resident and Broward Community College English teacher Richard Grayson has published a book entitled "Eating at Arby's: The South Florida Stories." It puts into print those daily dilemmas only we South Floridians can truly appreciate.

Richard, known for his witty sarcasm and last March a hardly serious candidate for Davie's council, had received a $3,000 grant from the Florida Arts Council to produce a series of "documentary" stories on South Florida life.

"It's a pleasure to bring great literature to South Florida," he says. "I hope the taxpayers of Florida agree that the grant money I received was well spent."

You can be the judge of that if you care to part with $3 to buy the book.

Wednesday, September 15, 1982

Fort Lauderdale News: Gary Stein column on Richard Grayson and EATING AT ARBY'S


In the Fort Lauderdale News today (Wednesday, September 15, 1982) Gary Stein's column discusses Richard Grayson and Eating at Arby's.

Thursday, September 9, 1982

Small Press Review reviews Richard Grayson's LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG


The Small Press Review has reviewed Richard Grayson's Lincoln's Doctor's Dog on page 8 of its September 1982 issue and included the book as one of the month's selections in the Small Press Book Club:

#1905
Lincoln's Doctor's Dog & Other Stories by Richard Grayson (White Ewe Press). 5½x8½; 187 pages, $11.95/cloth.


Lincoln's Doctor's Dog & Other Stories is a collection of 22 fictions by Richard Grayson, all funny, all playful and all engaged in the shift from persona to person, from voice to voice that characterizes the wit of experimental fiction. Grayson achieves some startling effects in "A Sense of Porpoise," in which a porpoise replaces a boy's dead father. The situation produces the pun, but also some fine speculations on the relationship of child to parent. "Why Van Johnson Believes in ESP" has the character of both parody and the play that is at the heart of the new narrative technique. The complications of narrative voice become even greater, often funnier, sometimes more frightening, in the autobiographical stories about growing up in New York in the late 60s and early 70s.

Wednesday, September 1, 1982

Richard Grayson to Appear at Winthrop College Writers' Conference November 11-13, 1982




Richard Grayson will be among the writers who will be staff members at the Winthrop College Writers' Conference in Rock Hill, South Carolina on November 11-13, 1982.

Sunday, August 22, 1982

Chicago Sun-Times reports on Richard Grayson's plan for Democratic ticket of Sen. Gary Hart and Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne


In its "Public Eye" column today (Sunday, August 22, 1982), the Chicago Sun-Times features a report on Richard Grayson's plan for a 1984 Democratic ticket of Colorado Senator Gary Hart and Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne.

Thursday, June 10, 1982

Richard Grayson Letter on Japanese Haiku Invading American Poetry in June-July 1982 Issue of Small Press Review

In the June-July 1982 issue of Small Press Review, Richard Grayson has published a letter attacking the invasion of Japanese haiku in American poetry magazines.

Monday, May 17, 1982

Best Sellers reviews Richard Grayson's LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG


The May 1982 issue of Best Sellers has a page 47 review of Richard Grayson's Lincoln's Doctor's Dog:

Grayson, Richard
Lincoln's Doctor's Dog & Other Stories
White Ewe Press (PO Box 996, Adelphi, Md. 20783),
187p., $11.95


Despite my initial reservations regarding this volume when it reached me, I must confess I like Richard Grayson and his work. Yes, we are told that Grayson labored as a messenger at the Village Voice, a clerk at the Brooklyn Public Library, a delivery man for the Midtown Florist and the Canarsie Laundry; but Richard Grayson is a writer, currently transplanted to Broward Community College in Florida, but still a writer whose With Hitler in New York caused Rolling Stone to map it as the place "where avant-garde fiction goes when it turns into stand-up comedy."

These twenty-two fictions display a versatility which commands attention. And they are very much in the American grain -- that vein of autobiography which has been a constant from the beginning of our literary history down to the confessional mode of the recent mode of the recent past. The title tale, which is certainly captivating, pretends to be the biography of Lincoln's doctor's puppy who grows up to be elected to a state governorship and achieves fame as a lecturer. Grayson can parody human excess and human frailty, parent-child relationships, and recreate a 1960s scene with poignancy. There is even a dazzling memoir of George Washington's step-granddaughter. And in "Diarrhea of a Writer," Grayson exposes that pride and pain which are the nutrients of a writer's growth. The questions he wanted to ask Saul Bellow: "Did you ever doubt yourself? How do you know when you've written something important? Did you ever want to give up?" -- these all fade when the Nobel Laureate tells Grayson, "I'll look for you."

Richard Grayson has been found, at least by this reader, and found-out, too. From the evidence he is serious and comic, charming, given to outrageous puns, and a sharp-eyed observer of and participant in life's absudities. Permit me one academic correction -- it is Edwin (not Edward) Arlington Robinson, as found on page 75.

NICHOLAS J. LOPRETE, JR., specializes in American fiction at Fordham University, Bronx, New York.

BOGG Magazine reviews Richard Grayson's LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG


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.

Wednesday, May 5, 1982

Kirkus Reviews reviews Richard Grayson's LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG


Kirkus Reviews has a review of Richard Grayson's Lincoln's Doctor's Dog in its May 1, 1982 issue:

Kirkus Reviews

May 1, 1982
Grayson, Richard
LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG
And Other Stories
White Ewe $11.95
5/5 LC: 81-69117
ISBN:978-0-917976-13-1


Grayson's two story collections--With Hitler in New York (1979) and this new one--together suggest the literary equivalent of a kid's messy room: cozy for the kid, junk strewn everywhere, but a little horrifying to anyone standing at the doorway. Grayson's most constant character here is himself-as-writer: "Please: you can see I'm a sick person. What would it take, a few pages in your lousy literary magazine, to make me happy? . . . If I can't have your respect, I'll settle for your pity. . . ." And pitiful indeed are many of these stories--cheap, silly, little more than names, puns, and jokes about the author's desperation for readers (hence the title). Still, there is something boorishly, oddly charming about Grayson's ability to stop in the middle of some childishly junky piece to ask, sincerely: "When I write myself into a corner, as I have done once more, do you have to give me credit for trying?" And there are two real short stories here--"A Hard Woman," "What Guillain-Barre Syndrome Means to Me"--which, though sketchy, indicate that Grayson can be a writer when he wants. For the most part, however: juvenile literary clowning, only faintly--and erratically--amusing.

The Midwest Book Review reviews Richard Grayson's LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG


The Midwest Book Review reviews Richard Grayson's Lincoln's Doctor's Dog in May 1982:


LINCOLN’S DOCTOR’S DOG, AND OTHER STORIES. By Richard Grayson. White Ewe Press (P.O. Box 996, Adelphi, MD 20783). $11.95


The voice of Richard Grayson is not consistent in his latest collections: that much is evident from the start. Some of his stories, which may be loosely classified as avant-garde fiction, seem to blatently [sic] make social commentaries without significantly drawing reader interest. Others cultivate a tongue-in-cheek humor that engrosses the reader in whatever subject is being revealed as in, for example, the unlikely tale ‘A Sense of Porpoise’, in which a man’s experiences with a live-in, talking porpoise assume Freudian overtones.

Some stories reveal Grayson’s distinct New York background and reflect some of the modern-day attitudes of the typical inner-city inhabitant caught in incongruous chains of events. Others, such as the humerous [sic] treatise ‘Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog’, are simply drawn from Grayson’s imaginative musings.

The result: a mixed collection of droll and humerous [sic] works that New Yorkers, in particular, will appreciate.

–Diane C. Donovan
San Francisco, CA

Thursday, April 29, 1982

Kirkus Reviews reviews Richard Grayson's LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG


Kirkus Reviews reviews Richard Grayson's Lincoln's Doctor's Dog in its May 1, 1982 issue:


Kirkus Reviews


May 1, 1982

Grayson, Richard
LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG
And Other Stories
White Ewe $11.95
5/5 LC: 81-69117
ISBN:978-0-917976-13-1


Grayson's two story collections--With Hitler in New York (1979) and this new one--together suggest the literary equivalent of a kid's messy room: cozy for the kid, junk strewn everywhere, but a little horrifying to anyone standing at the doorway. Grayson's most constant character here is himself-as-writer: "Please: you can see I'm a sick person. What would it take, a few pages in your lousy literary magazine, to make me happy? . . . If I can't have your respect, I'll settle for your pity. . . ." And pitiful indeed are many of these stories--cheap, silly, little more than names, puns, and jokes about the author's desperation for readers (hence the title). Still, there is something boorishly, oddly charming about Grayson's ability to stop in the middle of some childishly junky piece to ask, sincerely: "When I write myself into a corner, as I have done once more, do you have to give me credit for trying?" And there are two real short stories here--"A Hard Woman," "What Guillain-Barre Syndrome Means to Me"--which, though sketchy, indicate that Grayson can be a writer when he wants. For the most part, however: juvenile literary clowning, only faintly--and erratically--amusing.

Sunday, April 18, 1982

Orlando Sentinel reviews Richard Grayson's LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG


Today's Orlando Sentinel-Star reviews Richard Grayson's Lincoln's Doctor's Dog:


Orlando Sentinel

April 18, 1982

Books



Grayson is more than Bellow clone

____________________________________
Lincoln's Doctor's Dog and Other Stories

By Richard Grayson

White Ewe Press: Adelphi, Md., $11.95



BY J.F. HOPKINS

Special to Sentinel Star



"Lincoln's Doctor's Dog" is the title story of a collection of 22 fictions by a highly gifted young Florida writer and English professor at Broward Community College named Richard Grayson. I say fictions rather than stories, the conventional word. Most of what Grayson writes is not conventional. (These 22 fictions/stories originally appeared in 22 publications.)

In the last piece in the book, the author confesses – I think we may assume the narrator is speaking for the author – that he yearns to be part of The New Yorker world. Unfortunately for Grayson, I am not a New Yorker editor. As such, I would have gladly accepted, among other contributions, "A Sense of Porpoise" and "Here at Cubist College."

Early in the book, I thought of Saul Bellow. It wasn't a matter of influence. I find his work and Grayson's unalike. It was something else that brought Bellow, usually cited as our most cerebral fiction writer, to mind. Grayson has a splendid command of language, he is steeped in literary history, is highly intelligent. All things that have been said of Bellow. But the 1976 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature never seems burdened by a feeling that he is but laboring in well-plowed fields, that the road to originality lies in constant experimentation.

Grayson is obsessed with avoiding those well-plowed fields. Straightforward narrative is old-hat, though to show that his hands are clean he occasionally takes time out to demonstrate that he can excel at this too. As a sort of unfair litmus test for whether you will enjoy Grayson, I quote two puns and a locker room exhortation by the Coah.

1. "There is no middle ground between us. I have led a bowdlerized life, while you have led a baudelairized one."

2. "…she had ignored all small Krafft-Ebbing warnings."

3. "Every time you think, you hurt the team. Every time you think you hurt the team you're right. Gents, get out there and win this one for Edmund Wilson!"

In still another vein, and unlike anything else in the book, is "I, Eliza Custis," written as a nineteenth-century memoir by a granddaughter of Martha Washington. I didn't find it compelling reading. But only a master of prose could have made such a narrative ring true, and it does. In the concluding piece referred to earlier, a young writer blurts out to Saul Bellow: "…your books mean a lot to me." My thinking of Bellow at the beginning of the book became more explicable.

My advice to the young writer would be to emulate Bellow in one crucial respect: Let your instinct be your guide. Don't worry about what's been done before. If Joyce took fiction as close as it can get to Yes and Beckett to No, there is still plenty of room somewhere in between for Saul Bellow. And for Richard Grayson.

_____________________

J.F. Hopkins is an Orlando novelist and short story writer.

Wednesday, April 7, 1982

Publishers Weekly reviews Richard Grayson's LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG


The April 9, 1982 issue of Publishers Weekly has a review of Richard Grayson's Lincoln's Doctor's Dog:

FICTION

LINCOLN’S DOCTOR’S DOG AND OTHER STORIES
Richard Grayson. White Ewe Press (P.O. Box 996, Adelphi, Md. 20783),
$11.95 ISBN 0-917976-13-4


These 22 brief, sometimes forced, sometimes playful stories by the author of “With Hitler in New York” are not for everyone. Grayson is not successful in all of his experiments and the uneven quality of this collection will disappoint some. However, this writer of stories is not afraid to take risks, not a bad quality, and he can be very funny indeed. Try “Here at Cubist College,” an entertaining spoof of the academic world, or the amusing title story in which Sparky, Lincoln’s doctor’s dog, becomes a successful politician and lecturer. In quite another vein, “I, Eliza Custis” tells the story of Washington’s granddaughter, and in other tales Grayson writes of the ‘60s and ‘70s and being young in New York. Grayson has many voices, plays many roles in this collection, but he seems to be a versatile, interesting experimenter with promise for the future. [May 5]

Sunday, April 4, 1982

Miami Herald publishes feature story on Richard Grayson




Today's Miami Herald has an article about Richard Grayson, "Lincoln's Doctor's Dog's Author," on the front page of its Living Today section:


The Miami Herald

Sunday, April 4, 1982

Living Today

Section G, Page 1



Lincoln's Doctor's Dog's Author


'Giving It All Up for Computers, and Other Stories'

By MIKE WINERIP

Herald Staff Writer



Thirty-year-old Richard Grayson was sitting in his furnished Davie apartment, six months into his eight-month lease, rereading the New York Times Book Review from March 14:

"Richard Grayson's first book carried the title, With Hitler in New York. Some reviewers liked the book, at least one detested it, and readers ignored it in droves. It sold only about 500 copies, according to the author, who teaches English at Broward Community College in Davie, Fla.

"When it came time to compile a new book…he decided to appeal to a broader constituency. Having heard that books about Abraham Lincoln, doctors and dogs usually sell well, Mr. Grayson is calling his new hardcover book…Lincoln's Doctor's Dog, and Other Stories."

Except for an extra sentence or two and a couple of adjectives, that was the whole thing in a nutshell.

A friend who is into Eastern culture called Grayson and congratulated him. A lady from Queens with a handicapped kid wrote asking for Grayson's autograph if he wasn't too busy.

He wasn't, though he is considering taking up computer programming this summer at the community college.

*

Richard Grayson, who has published 150 short stories in dozens of obscure literary magazines, recently was teaching a Compare and Contrast lesson to his beginning English class at Broward Community College. Something about the American Revolution versus the Russian Revolution. Only one student knew what a Bolshevik was.

Grayson was making the point that a good Compare and Contrast didn't have to be one paragraph about Russia followed by one on America (although that was one way to do it). You could have both revolutions in the same paragraph. It wasn't clear if anyone was getting this concept.

There is no other way to put it: Broward Community College does not feel like the kind of place anyone one would be doing serious writing. It feels like a place where future pharmacists, computer programmers and dental technicians will learn to write sentences without comma splices if they pay close attention. It feels very clean and scrubbed, very healthy and wholesome. Lots of tanned young people wearing very little clothing hurry up and down geometrically pleasing stairwells. You could cast Brave New World here. Almost no one looks fat or excessive or impolitic. It's the kind of place that might make one of Richard Grayson's elderly characters say: "So many sensational young people and nice teeth, too."


Graffiti from radio


The graffiti covering desks in Grayson's classroom are not literary. They're mostly from the radio. A sample desk in Grayson's class says: "Styx…Trash…For Sure…Lou Reed…Rock and Roll Forever."

More than once Grayson has thought that were Melville or Hardy around today he might go electronic.

"I know most of you, when you get the urge to read, lie down until it passes," he says, though not in a mean way. The tone is of a man being left behind.

Still, Grayson remains faithful to the course curriculum. He talks about comma splices.

"I once had a student who said, 'Don't you put a comma every fourth word?' We're going to have a very animated discussion on commas Monday…We'll have a real good discussion on the dash. The dash is wonderful. When all else fails – use the dash."

*

Richard Grayson, whose favorite food is the hamburger, likes life in Davie. He is making the most money ever in his life, $14,000 from the community college, plus a $3,000 grant from the Florida Fine Arts Council. And there are perks: Teaching at the college entitles him to take computer programming at a reduced tuition rate.

This is his ninth college teaching job. To make ends meet he has worked at places like New York City Technical College, where, his resume says, he was a substitute adjunct lecturer.

He does not consider any of this noble.

His fiction has never paid much. Taplinger Co. gave him a $500 advance for the first short story collection, With Hitler in New York. The book didn't sell enough copies to cover the advance. Nor does he expect to make anything on Lincoln's Doctor's Dog, scheduled for release in May. There was no advance for that one.

Most literary magazines that publish his stories count circulation in the hundreds, not thousands: Apalachee Quarterly, City, Writ, Shenandoah, Texas Quarterly. The big ones pay $50. The small pay nothing. Welter, the University of Baltimore's literary review, just accepted one of his stories. His compensation will be two free copies.

The story is about a painter who becomes a computer programmer.

*

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 fear of mixing with crowds. It was 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.

"I wasn't the best in my creative-writing class. I was maybe in the middle of eight. But I kept at it. I'd keep sending my stuff out when it was rejected. I sent out the same story over and over. Others gave up."

*

The absurd is on Richard Grayson's mind.

He takes major historical figures and drops them into mundane American settings like his native Brooklyn. There's absolutely nothing funny about Hitler, right? Grayson's Hitler flies into Kennedy on a Laker flight, smokes a joint on the Belt Parkway, eats Szechuan in Brooklyn Heights.

Constipation is sad and private, right? Richard Grayson wrote this about one of his characters:

"When he was very young, he was constipated. Sometimes he did not go to the bathroom for weeks. His grandmother would cry that the boy's appendix might be on fire…In the summer, people would come into his grandmother's bungalow to watch him straining at the stool. The bathroom door would be open wide and sometimes people would bring their guests for a weekend barbecue….

"When there was a bowel movement his grandmother would make a party. It was more for the adults than him."

*

His stuff is autobiographical. At times he doesn't bother to disguise it. In the middle of a short story about a lawyer he interrupts the narrative: "The 'I' of this story is really me, Richard Grayson, and not some literary device….Please, you can see I'm a sick person. What would it take, a few pages in your lousy literary magazine, to make me happy?....If I can't have your respect I'll settle for your pity."

"Pitiful," wrote Kirkus Reviews.

"I used to get rejections saying, 'Grow up.' Truly cruel ones. The kind that level with you: 'You have no talent. Give up.' They discourage you for a couple of days."

The Los Angeles Times thought he was funny; Newsday said he had a wild sense of humor, yet some telephone company official stringing reviews for the Minneapolis Tribune almost had a nervous breakdown:

"This is the worst book I ever read in my life," he wrote, "a cornucopia of crap."

The telephone review man said he planned to give Grayson's book to someone he despised.

*


In his spare time Grayson cooks up minor media events. It amuses him and brings a little of the recognition you don't get when you're trying to do something enduring in Davie. He started a campaign to run Burt Reynolds for U.S. Senate.

Burt refused.

Grayson ran for Davie Town Council as a lark last month, saying horses should be given the vote and the council should be abolished because it didn't do much. This offended local newspaper editorial writers, who have a genuine concern about the quality of leadership on the Davie Town Council.

Grayson lost.

When his grandmother, Sylvia Ginsberg, was lonely and depressed last year, he sent out press notices saying she was a superstar and that he was starting the Sylvia Ginsberg Magazine and fan club.

She died.

*

Grayson expects ts to be famous.

"I have a feeling I'll be discovered in my 70s. I can't really say why. I just feel that's the way it is. It's fate.

"I've done things a lot of people tried to do and couldn't. I've had books published by a commercial publisher. I'm young, too. Maybe I'll go on for 10 years without having a successful book, and all of a sudden I'll have one.


Wilder slept there

Two years ago Grayson was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, N.H. A small group of promising writers, composers, painters and sculptors spends the summer at a wooded retreat. You work in your cabin all day and gather for discussions in the evenings.

"You're treated so well," Grayson remembers. "Like you're important. I wasn't used to being treated well."

He lived in the same cabin where Thornton Wilder once worked. At the desk where Grayson sat, Wilder wrote Our Town.

Each year, when the summer's over, the fellows write their names on the wall of the cabin where they stayed.

As he added his to the long list, Richard Grayson scanned the other names. A few were familiar.

*

"Of course sometimes it hurts me that I have friends who make $70,000 doing what I might call trivial things.

"My best friend Linda I've known since first grade. She's the editor of a magazine. She owns two houses in Washington, D.C., as investments. She's written a book. But I have things she doesn't have. Her book's about roller skating. She's doing a story about travel in Costa Rica. The magazine she runs is for weight watchers. I don't think she has the same feeling toward her material that I do. I have the freedom to write what I want."

A couple of years ago Richard Grayson was depressed about not being known. Then a Mount Holyoke professor sent him an English 234 paper. It was a detailed analysis of "Summoning Alice Keppel." A short story. By Richard Grayson. That kept him going a couple of extra days.

And there is more:

"Linda has a friend who taught high school in Wisconsin. He was going around the class, asking everyone their favorite writer.

"And one kid said, 'You've probably never heard of him, but Richard Grayson.'"

Saturday, March 13, 1982

Florida Today reports on Cocoa Beach Book and Author Luncheon featuring Richard Grayson and Robert Tolf


Brevard County's Florida Today newspaper today, Saturday, March 13, 1982, features an article, "Authors to Speak at Cocoa Beach," about the Book and Author Luncheon sponsored by Friends of the Cocoa Beach Library featuring Richard Grayson and restaurant critic Robert Tolf.

Wednesday, March 10, 1982

South Florida Newspapers Cover Defeat of Richard Grayson for Davie Town Council


The Miami Herald, Fort Lauderdale News and Hollywood Sun-Tattler today (Wednesday, March 10, 1982) cover the defeat of Davie Town Council candidate Richard Grayson, who received only 357 votes, just 25% of the total, in yesterday's election.

Tuesday, March 2, 1982

Fort Lauderdale News & Sun-Sentinel reports on Richard Grayson's candidacy for the Davie Town Council



The Fort Lauderdale News & Sun-Sentinel today (March 2, 1982) reports on Richard Grayson's candidacy for the Davie Town Council.

Saturday, February 27, 1982

Washington Post Book World column "Book Report" features Richard Grayson and LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG


The February 28, 1982 issue of the Washington Post Book World features Richard Grayson and Lincoln's Doctor's Dog in its "Book Report" column:

Washington Post Book World column
Washington Post
February 28, 1982
Book World, page BW15

BOOK REPORT
By Michelle Slung

DOGS AND CATS


THERE USED TO BE a publishing joke, to the effect that the perfect mix of ingredients for a best-selling book would begin and end with the title Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog. Doctors are still “in,” but maybe not so much as they used to be, before one of their number got murdered, and canines have been supplanted by felines. As for Lincoln, well, for a while, anyway, he had to take a back seat to the Nixon industry. Yet that hasn’t stopped one young writer, Richard Grayson, from calling his latest book exactly that — Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog and Other Stories.

To be published in early May by Maryland’s White Ewe Press, it will join that column in Books in Print which features, among others, Lincoln’s Favorite Poets and Lincoln’s Religion, and perhaps in time a few ardent Lincoln scholars will find themselves ordering it by mistake. If so, they will encounter this sentence in the title story: “Lincoln’s doctor’s dog’s mother was a bitch.”

Meanwhile, in a contemporary variation on the same idea, Berkley-Jove has scheduled for next summer a trade paperback whose time may not have come and gone by then, The Preppy Cat. If that makes you want to stone the author responsible, you might find yourself hounded—excuse me—by the ASPCA, because the book is being listed as by Leland Stanford Cat VIII. In addition, Holt, Rinehart is proposing to bring out The Joy of Stuffed Preppies in the early spring. Here again, the authors are hiding behind fictitious identities, publishing as Randall C. Douglas III and Eric Fowler. The title, for sure, is open to a number of interpretations, and they’re probably right to protect themselves.

Wednesday, February 24, 1982

Miami Herald reports on Richard Grayson's campaign for Town Council in Davie, Florida


The Miami Herald today (Wednesday, February 24, 1982) reports on Richard Grayson's campaign for the Davie, Florida, Town Council.