The Midland (Texas) Reporter-Telegram publishes article mentioning Richard Grayson's political activities

Today, Sunday, February 4, 1984, The Midland (Texas) Reporter-Telegram published "Robot, dog, 'archangel' among 170 candidates for U.S. president," an article on page 2E by Hearst Feature Service. It mentions Richard Grayson's political activities at the end of the article.

SHOW BUSINESS reports on Richard Grayson's Devil Broadcasting Company TV Network

Show Business reports today (Monday, January 30, 1984) on Richard Grayson's Devil Broadcasting Company TV network.

The Orlando Sentinel Front-Page Article on Richard Grayson's Involvement in Florida's "Legislators in Love" Scandal

The Orlando Sentinel today (Saturday, January 14, 1984) has as its lead front-page article a story on Richard Grayson's involvement in Florida's "Legislators in Love" scandal.

PEOPLE Magazine covers Jane Wyman's reaction to being named presidential candidate Richard Grayson's Vice-Presidential running mate

In People magazine this week (January 9, 1984), actress Jane Wyman responds to being named Presidential candidate Richard Grayson's running mate for Vice President.

The Gazette (Montreal) publishes article on U.S. presidential candidate Richard Grayson's plan to annex Canada

Today, Friday, January 6, 1984, The Gazette (Montreal) published a column by Thomas Schnurmacher, "Festivities are over for the season but parties live on," that has an item about presidential candidate Richard Grayson's proposal that the U.S. annex Canada.

If Richard Grayson is elected president of the U.S., we're in for a lot changes.

Thirty-two-year-old Grayson, who is an unemployed teacher, is promising to annex Canada to the U.S. He has gone so far as to file the "Committee for U.S.to Annex Canada" as a supporting group with the Federal Election Commission.

Grayson's Canadian representative is Torontonian Crad Kilodney, the well-known author of such books as Sex Slaves of the AstroMutants and Terminal Ward.

Says Grayson, "We will have more land .. . cheaper universities cheap hydroelectric power from Ontario and Canada; and we won't need to beg somebody to let us test the Cruise missile in Alberta."

"If the annexation is done very quietly, no one in Canada will notice. The U.S. Army could 'invade' dressed in grey suits and disguised as bankers."

According to Grayson, the present Canadian government could continue "in the form of a TV show on cable television. And the RCMP's only function would be to wear the red uniforms, sit on their horses in front of Parliament and pose for pictures."

We could buy cheap sheets at the Pyramid Mall in Plattsburgh without paying customs duty and the Genie Awards might disappear. Maybe it's not such a bad idea after all.

Kalamazoo Gazette Publishes Editorial on Richard Grayson's Candidacy

Today, Tuesday, November 29, 1983, the Kalamazoo Gazette published an editorial, "Good Try, But...," on Richard Grayson's candidacy for President.
 

Wall Street Journal Covers Richard Grayson's Presidential Campaign: "This Presidential Candidate Wants Jane Wyman as His Running Mate"

Today, Monday, November 28, 1983, The Wall Street Journal features a story on Richard Grayson as political activist and humorist on page 33, the first page of the second section:

By Brooks Jackson
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Q: Who formed a political action committee called “Citizens Who Think Nancy Reagan Should Eat More”?

A: The fellow who’s behind “Absent-Minded Professors for Something or Other,” “FAT CAT PAC” and “People Who Enjoy Prune Danish for Breakfast.”

All of these have been registered officially at the Federal Election Commission by Richard Grayson, 32-year-old humorist, author, unemployed English teacher and candidate for President of the United States.

Mr. Grayson, who lives in a one-bedroom apartment in North Miami Beach, Fla., got started in the political game earlier this year when he registered "The Committee for Immediate Nuclear War," touting atomic Armageddon as a cure for boredom and soap operas.

 Five New Committees

Next, he registered "The Committee to Make El Salvador the 51st State," and says he got calls from people in favor.  "They didn't realize I was in jest," he says.

More recently, he satirized anti-abortionists by registering "The Right to Be the Life of the Party." In five days, in fact, he registered five new committees. “I guess they’ll let you register anything,” he says.

The registrations have brought Mr. Grayson a flood of mail. Mostly, he gets advertisements from political button makers, stationery-supply firms and, he says, subscription offers from “newsletter that explain how to raise a lot of money.”

Mr. Grayson says he wouldn't accept contributions, even if somebody offered them.  "Think of all the reports," he says.

Mr. Grayson is in the humor business for laughs--which is fortunate, considering how little money he's making from it.  His first book, "With Hitler in New York," got mixed reviews, and sold about 500 copies. His most recent, "I Brake for Delmore Schwartz," a collection of short stories, received a mildly favorable review from the New York Times, but it's no runaway bestseller either.

 Wyman for Veep

Q: So what’s next for Mr. Grayson?

A: He’s running for president as a Democratic candidate, and accepting public financing, sort of.

“When I go down to the unemployment office I have to prove that I’m looking for work,” he says. “I figure that the presidency is a good job.”

He would like Jane Wyman to be his running mate. “She has experience dumping Reagan,” he says. The president’s ex-wife hasn’t accepted yet.

Palm Beach Post covers Presidential Candidates Debate Featuring Richard Grayson

The Palm Beach Post today (Saturday, November 5, 1983) featured an article on last night's Presidential candidates' debate at the Cross County Mall in West Palm Beach featuring Richard Grayson, Elijah the Prophet, Richard Kay and George Britt:

Four men who won’t be elected president in 1984 told tens of shoppers at the Cross County Mall in West Palm Beach last night why they should be.

“Who Else is Running for President?” said the sign in the middle of the mall, inviting shoppers to the candidates’ forum. “Who Cares?” was the clear but unspoken answer the four candidates received.

An unofficial straw poll of shoppers showed they preferred the 7:45 p.m. showing of The Dead Zone and the beckoning aroma of Mama Leone’s pizza to the ideas of George Britt, Richard Kay, Richard Grayson or Elijah the Prophet.

“Who are these guys?” was how mall publicist David Citron introduced them. Citron dreamed up the Florida Presidential Forum, which goes on the road today to Lauderdale Lakes and North Miami Beach.

“The difference between them and the Big Seven candidates,” Citron said, “is money.”

And perhaps style.

Kay, who lost the presidential election in 1980 and a North Palm Beach Village Council election earlier this year, was arrested in New Hampshire last week when he wouldn’t leave the state Democratic convention.

Britt, an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Philadelphia, has a 15-year-old campaign manager in Texas. Britt ran his mother for president in 1980.

Elijah the Prophet, from New York City, is a self-styled visionary who has a day job with Western Electric and campaigns for world government headed by himself.

“It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when people like us have to run for president,” said Grayson, an English teacher and freelance writer from North Miami Beach. He wore running shoes, jeans and a sport jacket that was too small.

Fifteen candidates promised to be there last night. Only four showed up. A candidate from Alabama got lost in Hollywood, a couple were stranded by the bus strike, one broke his foot and the mother of another died.

While the other candidates had platforms, Grayson had a routine. "Do rich people from Palm Beach shop at this mall? They don't? Then I'll have to take this line out of my speech: If it weren't for rich people, the world would be a poorer place.

The answer to all the nation's ills, according to Grayson, is "immediate nuclear war." If he is elected, he will move the capital to Davenport, Iowa. "That solves the problem of getting the riffraff out of Washington," he said.

Grayson claimed he's asked "Falcon Crest" star and President Reagan's ex-wife, Jane Wyman, to be his vice presidential running mate: "She's already dumped Ronald Reagan once and has the experience to dump him again". . .

Federal Election Commission certifies Richard Grayson's political action committee Citizens Who Think Nancy Reagan Should Eat More

Today, October 25, 1983, he Federal Election Commission certified the political action comittee Citizens Who Think Nancy Reagan Should Eat More, the group's treasurer, Richard Grayson of North Miami Beach, Florida, reported.

Des Moines Register covers Richard Grayson's plan to move nation's capital to Davenport, Iowa

The Des Moines Register today (Friday, October 21, 1983) covers presidential candidate Richard Grayson's plan to move nation's capital to Davenport, Iowa.

USA TODAY covers Richard Grayson's Presidential Campaign

USA Today has an article in its "Newsmakers" column today (October 5, 1983) covering Richard Grayson's campaign for the presidency.

Brooklyn Literary Review reviews Richard Grayson’s I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ

The Brooklyn Literary Review in its fifth issue (1983) reviews Richard Grayson’s I Brake for Delmore Schwartz:


I Brake for Delmore Schwartz
by Richard Grayson
(Zephyr Press)

Here is a slim collection of fifteen short stories, the fifth collection to be published by Richard Grayson. The style is experimental and occasionally novel.

Grayson respects the traditional approach to writing fiction: the well-wrought stories wherein every word counts. However, his education, two years of fiction writing at Brooklyn College culminating in an MFA, emphasized the experimental, and his own fictions as a result are both structured and fragmented. Such stories as “The Autobiography of William Henry Harrison’s Cold” and “Oh Khrushchev, My Khrushchev” are well-structured, and appeal to the reader on the strength of their novelty. Others are fragmented and spatial like “Different Places” and “That’s Saul, Folks.” These stories appeal too because they capture the rhythms of modern life and play them back faithfully.

Grayson’s themes are the themes of the twentieth century. The theme of isolation abounds in “Hold Me,” where the author comments, “I am living in a place with strangers. Even my family are strangers now.” Other themes covered include the disintegration of the family, helplessness, and sexual indecisiveness.

The writing is often confessional. Grayson approaches writing as a form of self-analysis through which he hopes not only to understand himself, but humanity as well. Here he only partially succeeds, because at the book’s end the reader is left with more insights into Grayson than into the world at large. Nevertheless, the writing throughout is crisp and honest, and the style versatile, making the collection worth reading.

—Tom Lane

The St. Petersburg Times reviews Richard Grayson's I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ

The St. Petersburg Times reviews Richard Grayson’s I Brake for Delmore Schwartz on Sunday, September 4, 1983:


Self-conscious writer draws strength from humor

___________________________________________
I Brake for Delmore Schwartz
By RICHARD GRAYSON
Zephyr Press, $9.95, hardcover; $4.95 paper
Reviewed by SANDRA THOMPSON
___________________________________________

Richard Grayson, author of I Brake for Delmore Schwartz, a collection of fifteen short stories with such unlikely titles as “Nice Weather, Aren’t We?” “Is This Useful? Is This Boring?” and “Oh Khrushchev, My Khrushchev,” is a displaced New Yorker who has been teaching and writing on Florida’s East Coast for the past two years.

A word of warning: Grayson is a self-conscious writer who enters into direct dialogue with his readers—that means you—but in a much different way than Henry Fielding did in his “Dear Reader” passages in Tom Jones. Times have changed since our first novelistic fiction, and Grayson will be the first to tell you so.

He begins “Nice Weather, Aren’t We?” with “You really want to read this?” Two pages later, the narrator says, “Do you realize that since the beginning of this story, about a hundred people have died? In real life, I mean.” Then he talks about a fellow student in one of his writing classes, whom he calls “Ruth.” He hates Ruth because she never changes the names of the characters in her stories. Then we learn that the fictional “Ruth” is actually real-life “Bruce,” but the narrator changes his name to Ruth for purposes of the story, especially citing his line, “Fiction’s no stranger than Ruth.” If he had said, “Fiction’s no stranger than Bruce,” he points out, “It wouldn’t have had half the impact. And I’m not sure how much impact it had.”


THEN, he tells the reader that while he was writing that, Bruce walked in—and slugged him.

Seemingly without shame, Grayson commits what some writers consider to be a professional sin: writing about writers. He even writes about a relatively new and controversial phenomenon among contemporary American writers: university creative writing program. I know from where Grayson speaks, because I am a graduate of a university creative writing program; in fact, the same university creative writing program as Grayson. Which doesn’t mean Richard Grayson is a friend of mine—that’s not why I’m writing this review. Actually, I hardly know the guy. (This is the kind of inside info Grayson gives you in his stories.) He tells us about one creative writing professor who calls himself a “post-contemporary writer” and another who teaches him that “every story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end—‘preferably not in that order.’”

Clearly, the meaning an value of contemporary fiction intrigue Grayson. In “Nice Weather, Aren’t We?” the narrator tells us, “I only write true stories. I used to be an editor at a big publishing house in New York and every day manuscripts would arrive. . . accompanied by cover letters like the following ‘Dear Sir: I am presenting a novel about a Turkish princess who became a gunfighter and a sheriff in the Old West to protect her Christian Arab people from the hostility of the Anglo-American outlaws during the days of the cattle boom after the Civil War. . .”

Grayson concludes, “They ought to give the electric chair to whoever tells people that ‘everybody’s got one good novel in them.’”


GRAYSON TAKES some chances. For instance, I can’t think of any other writer who has written in the voice of a germ—as Grayson does in “The Autobiography of William Henry Harrison’s Cold,” in which the cold sees itself as a presidential assassin.

Grayson’s great strength is his humor, and his best stories are the ones that stop a laugh short of heartbreak. “Slightly Higher in Canada” begins with this sentence: “When my aunt called to say that my father had gone to England to get married to some little tramp, I was the one to tell my mother.” The next morning their mother doesn’t wake up; after she does, the narrator and his sister take her to stay with her parents in a retirement community outside Fort Lauderdale. The mother sits out in the sun with her straps lowered, the grandfather plays poker, and the grandmother fixes starchy meals. “Altogether we were down there three months. Over the television they would always tell us the weather up North was bad. Sometimes people came down from the North and they would say the weather wasn’t all that bad, but nobody in the condominium would believe them.

So things go until this line: “After my sister drowned I didn’t think much about it until my father came to Florida with his new wife.” The narrator starts fooling around with drugs, getting high, and “seeing girls who looked like my sister from the back” until his grandfather tells him to go away. He does, to Canada—hence the title of the story.

In “Reluctance,” a young boy is told by his great-grandmother that if he doesn’t wash his fingers “the Germans will get all over them. She said then the Germans would take over my whole body, and then when I was sleeping the Germans could take over my parents’ bodies, and finally the Germans could take over her own oh so large body. . . I did not want that, so I washed.” This very short story—it’s only two and a half pages—telegraphs to us in strong prose the story of this boy’s childhood. The ending brings us up short with his adult reality.

And in “Hold Me,” while the narrator is trying to explain the New Math to his sister, his father comes into the room, crying, and tells them he can’t live with them anymore. At the end of the story, the narrator, now an adult, calls a radio talk show, saying he wants to talk about sending troops to Zaire—but what he actually says is more immediate, more personal, and sad.

Actually—and now I’m telling the truth—I was lying when I said I hardly know Richard Grayson. After reading this collection of stories, I think I know him pretty well. So will you.

SANDRA THOMPSON
______________________________________

The author is a reporter for the Floridian section of the St. Petersburg Times. She has been a contributor to numerous magazines and is the winner of the 1982 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction.

Florida Literary Arts Review reviews Richard Grayson's I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ and Raymond Federman's THE TWOFOLD VIBRATION

The current (1983) issue of Florida Literary Arts Review has a joint review of Richard Grayson's I Brake for Delmore Schwartz and Raymond Federman's The Twofold Vibration by the magazine's associate editor, Fiorella Orowan:

FICTIONS OF THE SELF

I Brake for Delmore Schwartz
Stories by Richard Grayson
Zephyr Press, 1983
95 pp., $4.95

The Twofold Vibration
by Raymond Federman
Univ. of Indiana Press, 1982 (repr)
175 pp., $10.95

by Fiorella Orowan


Aristotelian logic does not florish [sic] in Richard Grayson's stories. He instead favors the disjointed narrative:

The next day Caaron buys running shoes. They are ugly. They make her feel good. One thing Caaron has wanted to do is run outside. She runs inside to music, but not outside.

It is the patter and tone of a comic monologue wherein the writer calls attention to himself at intervals, reminding us how hard he is working to entertain:

I know people are making fun of me. But here, on the page, I can hide behind words. I manipulate words, manipulate characters, manipulate events.

Yes, but is it a story? Leaving no stones unturned, Mr. Grayson has an answer to that protest as well:

If you continue reading [this story] it will be on your head. Don't sink to my level. Read something uplifting, like Emerson.

This kind of hysterio comic speculation has pleased readers of, e.g., Tom Robbins who may discover in Grayson a new idol. Like Robbins, Grayson draws on popular culture and undergraduate sophistry to communicate with his peer audience, but his answers beg the question. To "ignore" Emerson, as he claims to do, by citing him is to demonstrate one's immunity to the System, although Mr. Grayson is very much a product of that system. Grayson's is not the nonconformist ethic of the Beats, but is rather a cozy conformity. "I'm a nice guy" he pleads repeatedly throughout the collection:

That's why I try to be witty and tell stories, using dreams and things I've heard around.

But all writers use experience. How are Grayson's characters unique?

When Robin was 16, there were no humid memories. She sang "Get Back" and "Light My Fire."

When Robin was 17, autumn leaves crunched when she stepped on them. She was nearly smothered.

When Robin was 18, she wondered what should be done on weekends.

When Robin was 19, she wrote an essay on envy.

When Robin was 20, there was still less of everything. She said nothing, she was told, but she said it well.

When Robin was 21, chapters were closed.

To the contrary, Robin is Everydebutante; her life is so dull that Babbitt and Mrs. Bridge are comparatively unique creations and this is perhaps the point: Grayson's fiction mirrors the minds of its audience, exploiting the commonplace. As his characters' memories are relentlessly ordinary, his narrative persona are always the same. Whether in first of [sic] third person, the narrator is invariably Grayson and the characters mere props for his perceptions. Consequently the shamelessly narcissistic diction flatters its readers to become the "I" of the story and thus to "write" vicariously through Grayson's creations. It is an insidious technique, but to his audience, it works.

Both the author-narrator and the jacket publicity identify Federman's novel with the work of Samuel Beckett and, in fact, the title is an excerpted quote from that playwright. "The twofold vibration" refers to a narrative technique of progressing simultaneously forward and backward in time and hence The Twofold Vibration must be classified as "avant garde." Federman is intensely self-conscious of both this and his other fictional techniques, as numerous quotes attest:

after all isn't it the role of ficiton, and I don't mean science fiction only, to alter reality for the better, the writer may not be as privileged as the scientist nowadays, or perhaps he is, who knows, for this oblique witness of reality must at the same time seek and avoid precision, he knows that the reality of imagination is more real than reality without imagination, and besides reality as such has never really interested anyone...

...it's a most puzzling piece of writing, totally incoherent and yet quite moving, I don't think it has ever been properly understood...

...[the narrators] have been introduced simply for the convenience of the narrative...to allow some shifts of point of view and some creative free play

The narrators are three: one represented simply by the first person (I), one named Moinous ("I/we") and the third is called Namredef (Federman spelled backward). Thus, all three narrators are in fact the author and the "shifts" in viewpoint are merely the author's argument with himself. The novel has no other real characters but an anonymous "old man" which the cynical reader may fairly interpret as, again, the author persona. It is the hapless old man around whom the plot weaves as he experiences various misfortunes including food poisoning and the threat of "deportation to the colonies," but the frequent allusions to Nazi concentration camps makes the futuristic aspects of the plot a mere foil for the novel's real concern, the society's systematic elimination of "undesirables." The novel is ostensibly set in the 1990s, but the only credible aspects of descriptive writing are clearly grounded in Postwar sociology with some gadget accessories very much like those in the James Bond films. Federman's narrators do have some experiences - singly and as a group - on their own, mostly as transients in Eurore, looking for sexual diversion.

The techniques of Beckett and other avant gardists notwithstanding, Mr. Federman's real interest is didactic, and his narrators deliver countless sermons on the decay of civilization, the failure of the System and the sterility of modern life. Despite his characters' defensiveness regarding style and diction, there is no distancing from the relentlessly outre form to suggest that the novel is intended as a parody; one must believe that Mr. Federman is serious in his cavalierly pursuit of Armageddon. One of his lectures, on "why it had to be written this way," provides the prototypical raison d'etre for anti-form:

...the voices on the text exist only as a sequence of cries, the voices can be extended beyond the text into history, but one can never find the door that leads to the origin or the end of the little boy's story...

The message: fictional form is artificial and is not true to the strettolike unbroken continuity of history, human experience or real life. But of course, Mr. Federman, that's why we call it "fiction."
_____________________________


Fiorella Orowan is Assoc. Ed. of F.L.A.R.

Miami News reports on Richard Grayson's campaign to make El Salvador the 51st State

The Miami News today (Saturday, August 13, 1983) reports on Richard Grayson's campaign to make El Salvador the 51st State.