ROLLING STONE called Richard Grayson's first short story collection, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, published in 1979, "where avant-garde fiction goes when it becomes stand-up comedy," and NEWSDAY said, "The reader is dazzled by the swift, witty goings-on." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW said Grayson's I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC (1996) was "entertaining and bizarre" and "consistently, even ingeniously funny." PUBLISHERS WEEKLY called Grayson's THE SILICON VALLEY DIET (2000) "compulsively talky and engagingly disjunctive"; and THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, reviewing AND TO THINK THAT HE KISSED HIM ON LORIMER STREET (2006), said, "Grayson has a fresh, funny voice." Grayson's diaries from August 1969 to December 1977 were published in a number of previous volumes. LUNCH AT JUNIOR'S covers the first half of 1978, when the 26-year-old author, having published over fifty stories, teaches college English classes in downtown Brooklyn and dreams about having his first book published.