Funny story.

I met author Rudy Delson last night at a super fun apartment-without-a-garden-garden-party on Fourth Avenue. The building does have two hibiscus plants on their front stoop.

Rudy Delson’s novel, Maynard and Jennical, is coming out in the fall and he will be the featured author at the first Brooklyn Reading Works of the new season on Thursday, September 19th at 8 p.m.

We started talking and he told me a funny Gersh Kuntzman story. And since I love Gersh Kuntzman, editor of the Brooklyn Paper, and I love a good Gersh Kuntzman story, here goes. There are three chapters.

CHAPTER ONE

Rudy Gelson writes,

I once met Gersh Kuntzman. It was years ago, at the Park Slope Food Coop. He was working at the check-out register, and he bruised my bananas. I am certain however that he doesn’t remember me.

Rudy told me last night that when he complained to Gersh that he’d bruised his bananas Gersh said, “I like bruised bananas.”

CHAPTER TWO

About a year and a half ago, Rudy noticed that Gersh was the editor of the Brooklyn Paper. He enjoyed reading Gersh’s articles but he took issue with the fact that Gersh mentioned his book, Chrismakah. frequently in the Brooklyn Paper. Rudy wrote an email to Gersh, which Gersh insisted on publishing as a letter to the editor, lambasting him for his shamless self-promotion.

Okay.

CHAPTER THREE

More recently, Gersh used a woman in a bikini photograph to illustrate a story on new books by Brooklyn authors. The article listed Maynard and Jennica. Rudy had to chuckle. Now he was the one who was being shamelessly promoted in the Brooklyn Paper. With a woman in a bikini shot, no less. He writes: “Who but Gersh could put a bikini shot into the book review section of a free neighborhood weekly? Perhaps you, Boris Kachka?”