The Boy Who Could Draw Dr. King

In this collection of autobiographical essays, award-winning short story writer Richard Grayson (WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ) contemplates some seminal experiences: selling his teenage drawings of Martin Luther King Jr. from a downtown Brooklyn clothing store in the mid-1960s; watching another well-known African-American minister, Louis Farrakhan, unwittingly play Cupid for his friends; avoiding an overly friendly Kevin Bacon on the streets of their Upper West Side neighborhood in the 1980s; childhood TV watching of such sitcoms as "Amos & Andy," "Beulah" and "The People's Choice"; dodging the Vietnam-era draft and hanging out with LSD-taking hippies in Greenwich Village; and making his 80-year-old Jewish grandmother one of Miami's most glamorous celebrities. These wry, funny, thoughtful pieces use the medium of memoir to explore American history of recent decades and attitudes toward race relations, sexual behavior, and popular culture in an entertainingly offbeat way.