Summer In Brooklyn

Richard Grayson was born in Brooklyn and grew up there. He began keeping a daily diary in August 1969, as he was about to enter Brooklyn College. His 1979 first book of short stories, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, was called "really funny" by Liz Smith in the Daily News and "where avant-garde fiction goes when it becomes stand-up comedy" by Rolling Stone. Here are entries from his summer diaries from age 18 to 24. "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 nervous breakdown of some sort. When he reappeared in the spring of 1969, everything seemed fresh. It was a classic case of being rehatched." - The Miami Herald