Richard Grayson letter in The New York Times Magazine on Dale Peck

Richard Grayson has a letter in The New York Times Magazine today (Sunday, November 16, 2003), responding to James Atlas's article on Dale Peck.

New York Post interviews Richard Grayson, Chairman of Martha Stewart Legal Defense Fund

The New York Post today (Friday, June 6, 2003) has an interview with Richard Grayson, chairman of the Martha Stewart Legal Defense Fund.

Richard Grayson article in Broadly Speaking: "Conquering the Florida Bar Exam"

Richard Grayson has an article in the March 2003 issue of Broadly Speaking at Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center, "Conquering the Florida Bar Exam."

Richard Grayson letter in The New York Times: "When College Breaks the Bank"

Richard Grayson has a letter in the New York Times today (January 31, 2003): "When College Breaks the Bank":

To the Editor:

It is unfortunate that some college graduates, burdened by student loan repayments, feel that they must delay or forgo additional education (front page, Jan. 28).

But loan payments can be deferred while attending graduate or professional school or even going back for a second bachelor's degree in an additional field.

Indeed, I know many adults who have become perennial students, taking six credits a semester in various graduate programs, so that they can keep deferring payments. One friend has collected one master's degree after another, joking that she will probably end up as the most educated resident of an assisted living facility, paying her loans out of her pension and Social Security checks.

RICHARD GRAYSON
Davie, Fla., Jan. 28, 2003

Richard Grayson letter in The New York Times: "When Families Call a Jail Their Home"

Richard Grayson has a letter in the New York Times today (August 31, 2002), "When Families Call a Jail Their Home," about Mayor Bloomberg's policy of keeping homeless families in the Bronx House of Detention for Men.

The Express: Florida's Leading Gay & Lesbian Community Newspaper on "An Evening With Richard Grayson" at Stonewall Library

Fort Lauderdale Eastsider reports on Richard Grayson's Appearance in Stonewall Authors Series

Eastsider, greater Fort Lauderdale's arts & entertainment weekly this week (April 25, 2002) reports on Richard Grayson's appearance in the Stonewall Authors Series on May 10 at 7 p.m. at the Stonewall Library inside the Gay and Lesbian Community Center, 1717 N. Andrews Avenue in Fort Lauderdale.

Richard Grayson to be Featured Reader at Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow's "Poetluck"

Richard Grayson will be the September 2001 featured reader at Poetluck, the monthly literary salon at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Richard Kostelanetz's DICTIONARY OF THE AVANT-GARDES features entry on Richard Grayson

An entry about Richard Grayson appears in the second edition of A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes by Richard Kostelanetz, published on August 15, 2001.

In the late 1970s, Grayson was the most prolific and interesting young fiction writer in America. . .

Richard Grayson & John Domini reading at Quimby's Bookstore

John Domini and Richard Grayson will be reading on Saturday, June 22, 2001 at 7:30 at Quimby’s.

John Domini is the author of Highway Trade: Short Stories and a Novella (Red Hen Press). “Streetwise and pain-acquainted, John Domini’s new short-collection is a good rich read indeed.” - John Barth

Richard Grayson is the author of The Silicon Valley Diet and Other Stories (Red Hen Press). “Where avant-garde fiction goes when it turns into stand-up comedy.” - Rolling Stone

Quimby's Bookstore
1854 W. North Ave.
Chicago, IL 60622
tel. 773/342-0910

Graduate Coursework at Arizona State University

Richard Grayson earned 9 graduate credits in theater and media law at Arizona State University in the fall 2000 and spring 2001.

American Book Review reviews Richard Grayson's THE SILICON VALLEY DIET

The March-April 2001 issue of American Book Review has a review of Richard Grayson's The Silicon Valley Diet:


American Book Review
March-April 2001

Defiant on Thin Ice
Henry Grinberg

The Silicon Valley Diet. Richard Grayson.
Red Hen Press, PO Box 902582, Palmdale, CA 93590.
182 pages; paper, $14.95.

Richard Grayson’s ninth collection of short stories achieves many goals, and he is clearly a master of the genre. It it equally clear throughout the twelve tales that, although the characters have different names, they are essentially the same – without strenuous attempts at disguise. They are young gay men trying to survive in a hostile or marginally accepting world. They conduct themselves with manic cheer. They possess a grace and courage that have to substitute for the acceptance and love that most people look for. Their successes in this sphere are meager; their disappointments, many.

Yet, despite a seeming similarity in their drives – and palpable coincidences of character and action – Grayson rarely palls. His young men are imbued with a sweet, endearing nuttiness that serves both to energize and individualize. He depicts our cyberspace and e-mail age, so convenient for rapidly dissolving and re-forming associations, invariably against a backdrop of the search for sincere love and the deaths that ravage gay men and their partners.

There’s more. Wherever Grayson casts his gaze, he manages to isolate panoramas of city and small town life in America from the 60s to the present, detailing not only the particular rebelliousness of these “outsiders,” but also the general collapse in the national fiber, of which they are part. These are connected to public events, such as the uncertain outcome in Korea and defeat in Vietnam, and are reflected in a spate of fragmented families, step-siblings galore, and a never-ending specter of impending divorces and split-ups. You get a picture of a psychologically maimed, dysfunctional society, some of whose members don’t give up trying for happiness.

Four of the stories employ a similar, interesting technique, that of alternating narrative with what at first seem like droningly dull passages from textbooks – a political-economic history of part of the former Soviet Union; a treatise on how to write; another on the invasion of ruinous, alien vegetation onto prairie land; and an excruciatingly obsessional description of a diet. These particular stories, “Boniatos Are Not Boring,” “Moon Over Moldova,” “Mysteries of Range Management,” and “The Silicon Valley Diet” (the title story of the collection, perversely presented last), are unusually effective.

But the effect is quite different from story to story, despite the shared technique. “Boniatos” achieves a wonderful sense of humanity, hovering brilliantly between the tragic and the wildly funny, by wickedly employing a deadpan, soulless mock-treatise on how to write that manages to crush the life out of the ostensibly creative act. “Moldova” is a little masterpiece, told by indirection. It tells of young gay man attracted to both partners of a homosexual relationship. Interspersed by chunks of a history of the former Soviet republic, the action is magically reinforced by what appears to be nothing other than a tedious narration. But that history manages to reflect, by means of the author’s plays of subtle implication, the pathos of a man absurdly drawn to both members of a couple, neither one of whom he may claim.

“Mysteries of Range Management” takes place in the wide open spaces of Wyoming, where we learn a gay life is possible too – not only in big cities. As with “Moldova,” we have another story together with interpolated extracts from a textbook. This time it is one describing the relentless spoliation of the cattle ranges by a non-native vegetation called “leafy spurge.” Again, the text interacts with the human story in richly ironic and half-crazy ways. More somberly than he did in “Moldova,” Grayson makes leafy spurge – the pest-plant, an insidious encroacher – symbolic of the workings of both anti-gay social contagion and the action of AIDS itself. He makes specific references to the recent murder in Wyoming of Matthew Shepard. This provides tangible menace in an outwardly tranquil tale.

“The Silicon Valley Diet” is yet another story that builds its effects by means of interspersed tutelaries – this time instructions for a weight-loss diet, so humorless and condescending in presentation as to be maddening if the effects were not so – I say again – wildly funny and compelling. And, again, it is another tale of the kinds of startling partners that gay relationships can involve. At times, it seems there’s nothing too grungy when one’s in love or in lust, as in many a straight relationship.

The remaining stories here are accomplished and make their points with enviable skill. They don’t come off with quite the same impact, in my judgment, as those I have described. They present similar explorations into the bittersweet frustrations of life, missed chances for meaningful connection, and the perceived necessity for choking off one’s real feelings. But they are very good, nevertheless.

In these and the other stories in the collection, Grayson makes one aware of how vulnerable his characters are. Beset by mortality, even as they seek affirmation, they truly remind us of those flying summer insects that extinguish themselves in a brief act of love. Everything is poignant. Much hurt is to be sensed beneath the wise-guy, tough-cookie exteriors. It’s Grayson’s way, moreover, that many of the pieces in the book are preceded by what you may think are charmingly bizarre preludes that anticipate the main action, but which turn out, slyly, to be the main show itself.

There are many layers to this detailing of the techno-ridden superficialities of our contemporary life, with its bar codes, microwave ovens, and cyberspeak. These are truly sagas of man versus machine. The fact that these are gay men serves to render them even more poignant because one senses that these characters may have hoped for some protection from the brutalities of modern life, through technology. Perhaps, even redemption.

Richard Grayson column in Arizona Republic: "Bronzes Are 'White' Only"

Richard Grayson has a column in the Arizona Republic today (: "Bronzes Are 'White' Only," about the lack of racial diversity in J. Seward Johnson's statues on display in downtown Mesa.

Orlando Sentinel features Richard Grayson's Platform in Campaign for U.S. Senate

The Orlando Sentinel today (Sunday, November 5, 2000) presents Richard Grayson's platform in his write-in campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Arizona Republic features Richard Grayson's State Lines column, "On Living Where There's No There"

The Arizona Republic today (Sunday, November 5, 2000) features a State Lines column by Richard Grayson, "On Living Where There's No There."


ON LIVING WHERE THERE'S NO THERE THERE

By Richard Grayson


A few weeks after moving to Arizona last spring, I was sitting in the café of a Valley megabookstore, staring out the window at the multiscreen theater and big-box stores on the other side of the shopping center. About to drive home, I fretted about the heavy traffic I'd be facing on the Florida Turnpike.

Then I noticed the mountains.

Shaken, I realized I was in the Ahwatukee Foothills and not in Boca Raton.

Less than a year away from official AARP-dom, I had just experienced my first "senior moment."

Upon further reflection, however, I recognized that my mistake was quite natural, considering I was in a "power center" which almost exactly resembled one I frequented near my former home in South Florida - down to the layout of the Barnes & Noble and the number of theaters (24) with stadium seating in the AMC megaplex.

Actually, everything was pretty much the same as in other shopping centers I'd been to in recent years, from Saratoga, Calif. and Garden City, N.Y. to Billings, Mont. and Willow Grove, Pa. Oh sure, the misters cooling off outdoor diners at the trendy restaurants should have clued me in as to the desert locale, but the slight variation from the norm only seemed to emphasize the similarity.

That was the moment I knew Arizona was home.

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like every other place.

I live in a garden apartment in Mesa, just off the Superstition Freeway at Dobson Road. It is very similar to the garden apartment I lived in last year in Davie, Fla., just off an exit of Interstate 595. As in Florida, my "rental community" here has swimming pools, a tennis court and a clubhouse. Nearby are subdivisions of "executive homes" on cul-de-sacs and artificial lakes. Palm trees line the wide, traffic-clogged streets. My day-to-day environment is essentially identical to the one I experienced 2,300 miles away: a suburban neighborhood whose density has made it de facto urban. There's a bus stop nearby to use in case my car breaks down, and a Starbucks is literally our next-door neighbor. I live amid the stucco and concrete of what architecture critic Melvin Webber, describing emerging metro areas of the West, has called a "non-place urban realm."

I can walk to the same supermarket (Albertsons) and bank (Bank of America) as I could in my former suburban Fort Lauderdale neighborhood. I'm still within a five-minute drive of a regional mall, golf course, library, park, and dozens of strip malls - though I must admit that in Florida I did live a lot closer to the local branch of the University of Phoenix.

If I'm in need of "shoppertainment" in the form of outlet stores, video arcades, foreign tourists, mall TV and dining amid mechanical denizens of the rain forest, I can take myself to nearby Arizona Mills, a carbon copy of the Sawgrass Mills by my old stamping grounds.

In Scottsdale I can use my Neiman-Marcus credit card and find that once exclusively Southern confection, Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

I now get my hair cut at the same worldwide chain that I've patronized in Gainesville, Fla., and Sheridan, Wyo. A short drive to Tempe and I can purchase my gourmet frozen dinners at the same Trader Joe's where I've shopped in Silicon Valley and on Long Island, and I pick up organic produce at the same Whole Foods Market I've patronized in South Florida, as well as in the suburbs of Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia. Although I subscribe to a different local paper here, I also continue to get home delivery of The New York Times.

Adjusting to life here was a snap. After all, not only did I already own a pair of Arizona jeans and regularly consume AriZona Iced Tea (the diet green variety, mostly), but when I lived in Manhattan in the 1980s, I'd eaten at the fabulously fashionable Arizona 206. In our global economy, what more needs to be done? After all, on Planet Consumer, whatever is unique to a region is reduced to mere buyable kitsch - like the saguaro-shaped pencils on sale at the local Walgreens.

But if you're expecting a lecture filled with terms like "soulless interchangeability," "unremitting déjà vu," and "sterile artifice," you won't get it from me. The sameness is exactly what I love about my part of Arizona. I like the fact that the only way I can tell I am entering a new neighborhood is when the fast-food outlets and chain stores start to repeat themselves. To a guy who's moved around as much as I have, the uniformity represents stability. The conformity makes me comfortable.

Of course it wasn't simply a familiar environment I craved. An important reason I chose to move to Phoenix was its diversity. Before coming here, I looked at Valley phone directories to check for ample numbers of Patels and Nguyens, Rodriguezes and Changs. I need a place where supermarkets carry kimchi and kasha, quinoa and collard greens, platanos y boniatos. Where there is a large enough gay community to accommodate lesbian Scrabble leagues, gay Realtors councils, and bitter longstanding feuds. Where there are synagogues representing all major branches of Judaism, including atheism. Where I can find an Ethiopian restaurant, Caribbean music, Iranian movies, an active Green Party and local punk and hip-hop scenes.

When a childhood friend from Brooklyn, who is Sikh, informed me that within a few blocks of her Coronado district home there were two different gurudwaras, I knew the Valley had the diversity I wanted.

Whatever natural beauty Arizona has to offer is not evident in my daily life. It would probably be lost on me if it were. Having grown up in New York City, I would not care if the whole world were paved over.

My formative years occurred in an environment not altogether different from the "non-place urban realm" of Sun Belt suburbia. Our house was in a remote part of Brooklyn, a 15-minute drive to the nearest subway stop; an hour's trip to Manhattan was always called "going to the city." We had a backyard swimming pool, and I was eager to learn to drive as soon as possible.

Although our neighborhood did leave me with a sensibility equidistant between that of Seinfeld and The Sopranos, it was also a neighborhood that didn't have a name until the 1970 opening of Kings Plaza, the Big Apple's first enclosed mall, just a three-block walk from our house. It featured the same anchor department stores I can find at Fiesta Mall.

Although I loved living in Manhattan as an adult, my annual visits confirm that even that quintessential urban locale is morphing into something else. The sleazy but vibrant honky-tonk of Times Square has been replaced by an environment as safe and artificial as Main Street in Walt Disney World. Other once-distinctive neighborhoods are looking more and more like everywhere else as they are invaded by the same chain stores all around me in Mesa.

Three years ago, in order to write a new book, I left a job as an attorney in Gainesville - where I lived off an interstate highway exit in a garden apartment across the street from a series of power centers complete with the mandatory Albertsons, Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, T.G.I. Friday's, and Red Lobster. For a while I lived at artists' colonies and mooched off suburban friends, mostly women I knew from my 1970s undergraduate days and their tolerant husbands. In exchange for being a charming conversationalist and doing such genuinely enjoyable tasks as picking up dry cleaning and dinner sushi, looking in on elderly grandparents at nursing homes, walking Yorkshire terriers, and accompanying third-graders on class field trips, I got a spare bedroom ("the Lincoln bedroom," my friend Nina calls it) or a futon in the den. I did my writing at Burger Kings and Borders bookstores across Power Center Nation.

The artists' colonies - Villa Montalvo, the Ucross Foundation, the Ragdale Foundation - generously gave me the luxury of time and a room of my own to write. While I enjoyed being close to such fine examples of the natural world as the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the majestic landscape of Wyoming's high plains, and one of the last pieces of pristine prairie in the suburbs of Chicago, I often found myself abandoning nature in favor of the coffee bars of Silicon Valley, the McDonald's counter at the Wal-Mart in Sheridan, or the food court in the Northbrook Mall - places where I would sit with my iced tea or Diet Coke and scribble away to my heart's desire. The truth is I did my best work in these palaces of conspicuous consumption. Writing about American culture circa Y2K, I need bland commercial conformity for inspiration.

Arizona provides me with more than enough inspiration.

So I am happy to be an Arizonan. For now.

Like many other state residents, I don't expect to be living here for the rest of my life. On the other hand, I'll probably be moving to a place that looks just about the same.