Pages

Saturday, November 3, 1979

CHOICE: Reviews for College Libraries reviews Richard Grayson's WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK


The November 1979 issue of Choice: Reviews for College Libraries has a review of Richard Grayson's With Hitler in New York:


Choice: Reviews for College Libraries

November 1979


With Hitler in New York and other stories, by Richard Grayson. Taplinger, 1979. 78-20695. 7.95 ISBN 0-8008-8406-X




Fiction as joke, word play, vehicle for whimsy: these are the hallmarks of Grayson's stories. Most of these 27 stories – written over the past seven years – have appeared in little magazines. While occasionally eliciting laughter (e.g., "What really happened in Cambodia"), several stories seem to be merely cute, ingenious, alike in texture and tone. An Art Buchwald piece cannot be extended beyond a page or two without breaking down, and that is what Grayson's efforts ignore – with predictably uneven results. The celebrating of a fictional soap opera ("'Go not to Lethe' celebrates its 27th anniversary"), a conversation with a dejected (and rejected) "sick" story ("But in a thousand other worlds"), a hyperbolic rendering of conversation ("Wednesday night at our house") – together these illustrate the matter and manner of Grayson's fiction. One is left with the impression of a writer whose forte is the one-liner, a Bob Hope who would be a Saroyan.

No comments: