BEST SELLERS review

Best Sellers
May 1982
Vol. 42, No. 2
May 1982

Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog and Other Stories
Richard Grayson
White Ewe Press (P.O. Box 996, Adelphi, Md. 20783)
ISBN 0-917976-13-4
$11.95


Despite my initial reservations regarding this volume when it reached me, I must confess I like Richard Grayson and his work. The twenty-two fictions in Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog and Other Stories display a versatility which commands attention. And they are very much in the American vein—that vein of autobiography which has been a constant from the beginning of our literary history down to the confessional mode of the recent past. The title tale, which is certainly captivating, pretends to be the biography of Lincoln’s doctor’s puppy who grows up to be elected to a state governorship and achieves fame as a lecturer. Grayson can parody human excess and human frailty, parent-child relationships, and recreate a 1960s scene with poignancy. There is even a dazzling memoir of George Washington’s granddaughter. And in “Diarrhea of a Writer,” Grayson exposes that pride and pain which are the nutrients of a writer’s growth. The questions he had wanted to ask Saul Bellow at a dinner honoring the novelist all fade when the Nobel Laureate tells Grayson, “I’ll look for you.”

Richard Grayson has been found, at least by this reader, and found-out, too. From the evidence he is serious and comic, charming, given to outrageous puns, and a sharp-eyed observer of and participant in Life’s absurdities.

—Nicholas J. Loprete, Jr.