Richard Grayson, who read from his book, To Think He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street, at Brooklyn Reading Works last fall got a really nice review of the book in the Philadelphia Inquirer by reviewer Susan Balée. Here it is:

"Richard Grayson is a funny guy from Canarsie, Brooklyn, and he’s been writing short fiction for decades. He’s also a lawyer and a teacher, which doubtless does a better job of paying the bills. Which isn’t to say he’s not a wonderful fiction writer – he is – but his kind of metafiction, mixing his memories (numerous main characters are named Richie Grayson) with his inventions about pansexual borough dwellers dealing with minor and major crises, read like stand-up comedy routines. Only a few of the tales in this book (including the title story) are fully realized short stories in a traditional sense.

"At first I wished he’d pen more of the longer, less autobiographical stories, but when I got into the rhythm of his riffs, I changed my mind. Here’s his kind of shtick, from "In the Sixties": At the beginning of the Sixties women were girls and girls were chicks. By the end of the Sixties girls were women and chicks were poultry… . In the Sixties… I raised money for a black classmate indicted for murder. I raised money for a Chinese friend to have an abortion. I raised money for Chicano migrant workers I had never met, or expected to meet. Most of the money I raised originally belonged to other people’s parents. This is very funny stuff, but it’s a comic monologue rather than a story with the traditional elements of plot, characters, setting, and so forth.

"Grayson has hit upon a good formula, though, to generate a piece of writing: the annotated list. Hence, he has "Seven Sitcoms," "Branch Libraries of Southeastern Brooklyn," "The Lost Movie Theaters of Southeastern Brooklyn and Rockaway Beach," and so on. But like Grandma’s beef brisket, a little of this goes a long way. In these tales of places that mostly aren’t there anymore, the main feeling induced in the reader is nostalgia. Unfortunately, if you’re not from Brooklyn, much of it is nostalgia for something you never knew in the first place." READ MORE HERE…