With Hitler in New York

An underground classic, Grayson’s debut short story collection introduced readers to the author’s quirky, funny postmodern fiction and such characters as Buddy’s grandfather, who wonders why no Jewish people ever win on “Bowling for Dollars” and thinks that Farrah Fawcett has a foreign accent; Sarah Lawrence of Arabia, who hides under a college student’s bed while his mother and her maid won’t stop cleaning his room; “Chief Justice Burger, Teen Idol”; the depressed superhero Ordinary Man, whose sinus problems cause him to spit phlegm at his arch-enemy Professor Should; and the cast of the 27-year-old TV soap opera “Go Not to Lethe,” including the actress who once played Richie’s girlfriend and who will not return to the show unless it will get her father out of a Nazi concentration camp; in the title story, Hitler himself arrives at Kennedy Airport via Laker Airlines and proceeds to endear himself to the residents of Brooklyn. The Los Angeles Times said, “Grayson is shaking funny ingredients like dice,” and Rolling Stone called it “where avant-garde fiction goes when it turns into stand-up comedy.”