My Plan to Kill Henry Kissinger

In these ten quirky, strangely compelling Richard Grayson stories — all of them first published in literary magazines and anthologies in the late 1970s — young people in their late teens and early twenties learn how to live in a world of weirdness: A young man's mother hides under the bed while he has sex with his girlfriend. A young woman claims her TV set won't work properly even though an attractive repairman assures her there's nothing wrong with it. A famous bodybuilder remembers his chronic childhood constipation. A 16-year-old boy tells an interviewer he aspires to be "a friend to the friendless." And in the title story, the roommate of a boy who couldn't stand anyone to say the word "Stanford" in his presence explodes in rage at former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, with surprising results.