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. ROLLING STONE called 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." 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." The diary in OVER THE VERRAZANO covers Grayson's year in graduate school at Richmond College in 1973-74.