Richard Grayson has been keeping a daily diary compulsively since the summer of 1969, when he was an 18-year-old agoraphobic about to venture out into the world - or at least the world around him in Brooklyn. His diary, approximately 600 words a day without missing a day since August 1, 1969, now totals over 9 million words, rivaling the longest diaries ever written. Excerpts from his diaries have appeared online at McSWEENEY'S and THOUGHT CATALOG. Grayson's diaries from August 1969 to June 1978 were published in a number of previous volumes. MANHATTAN BEACH covers the second half of 1978, when the 27-year-old diarist, having published over seventy stories in little magazines, teaches remedial writing at a community college in Brooklyn and unexpectedly gets a hardcover book contract from a New York commercial publisher.