I Survived Caracas Traffic: Stories from the Me Decades [Paperback]

Richard Grayson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1996 | ISBN-10: 1888105046 | ISBN-13: 978-1888105049 | Edition: 1st

Richard Grayson's new book of short fiction features previously uncollected stories by the writer Publishers Weekly has called "a versatile, interesting experimenter" and Library Journal has termed "a born storyteller and standup talker." The author is known primarily as a satirist and humorist, and the stories in this, his eighth collection, will not disappoint those fans who have come to expect mordant wit and barbed humor, but Grayson here shows that the true comic writer, as Flannery O'Connor once observed, deals with matters of life and death.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Social tropes and individual types from the "Me Decades" (here, really just the late 1970s and early '80s) run through Grayson's eighth story collection. The stories are riddled with self-absorbed baby boomers, T-shirt slogans, Henry Kissinger, silicone implants, Saturday Night Live, the AIDS crisis, quarreling roommates and psychotherapists. Most are written in a flat first-person, but in others Grayson (Lincoln's Doctor's Dog) shows a sense of humor and an appreciation of the weird. The costs of survival in the AIDS retrospective title story, and the isolating entropy of depression in "Where the Glacier Stops," manage to imbue their drained narrators with some emotional weight. On the whimsical side, "Twelve Step Barbie" sees the doll in a midlife crisis, and "A Clumsy Story" artfully diagrams and parodies MFA-quality fiction. But whatever Grayson's approach-whether the troublesome roommate is a Wisconsin Lutheran ("My Plan to Kill Henry Kissinger") or the Pontiff ("With the Pope in Park Slope")-most of his characters carry only a faded familiarity, not an invigorating shock of recognition.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Comic fiction crammed with details adopted from pop culture and the daily news. -- Kirkus Reviews

Social tropes and individual types run through Grayson's collection. . Grayson shows a sense of humor and an appreciation of the weird.

-- Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 139 pages
• Publisher: Avisson Pr Inc; 1st edition (February 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1888105046
• ISBN-13: 978-1888105049
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,456,602 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars a solid collection, April 16, 2004

By 

Lauren Baratz-Logsted (Danbury, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: I Survived Caracas Traffic: Stories from the Me Decades (Paperback)

I don't usually love story collections, because the quality can be so uneven. But Richard Grayson's work consistently pleases here. These post-modern stories are by turns funny ("I Don't Want No Education"), heretical ("Twelve Step Barbie") and blindsidingly moving (the title story). Readers looking for something both well-written and quirky will not go wrong with this one.