A Year in Rockaway

Richard Grayson, author of such acclaimed short story collections as WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG and I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ, has kept a daily diary for over 41 years, since the summer of 1969, when he was an agoraphobic Brooklyn teenager. The year in Rockaway is 1980. Grayson is broke and living in a beachfront studio. His first book, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, published the year before, received good reviews but has earned him no more money than his many published stories in literary magazines. Grayson - along with his friends also in their twenties in a year of rampant inflation, widespread unemployment, and a New York City beset with crime, drugs, and seemingly unstoppable decay - wonders where to go next.