The Price of His Thoughts: Just $5,000 a Book

A tale of two Robert Graysons.

One is the author of “From Left to Right,” a limited edition, accordion-bound book of 80 aphorisms that sells for a staggering $5,000. This Robert Grayson declares, “Thought has become a luxury item. My thoughts are precious. They are priced accordingly,” and sniffs: “This is the future of literature.”

Then there is the Robert Grayson who sits at Yanks, chomping on a grilled chicken salad, taking a long lunch break from his job selling pricey clothes at Valentino. He nervously runs his hand through his gelled hair and says he can’t believe the public’s reaction to the book.

“It’s my first book,” he says with a shrug. “I guess I started out with a bang.”

Guess he did.

Only 26 Copies

There are only 26 copies of “From Left to Right,” printed on expensive handmade Inomachi paper imported from Japan. The pages are encased in glass bookends etched with the title on one side, the author’s name on the other. Each copy comes with white kid gloves (to protect the paper while reading) and is guaranteed to be hand-delivered to the buyer by the author anywhere in the world except South Africa and Afghanistan. The book is on view only at the Torie Steele boutique in Beverly Hills.

A sample of the aphorisms (one to a page) include: “When in doubt, cross your legs and sigh”; “New York is where the insane rub elbows with the eccentric,” and “Actions speak louder than words, and are practiced by the illiterate.”

“I keep hearing that I wrote this book for the rich,” he says between bites of chicken. “It’s not written of the rich and it’s not written for the rich. I think it’s written for the man or woman who has everything, including a sense of humor. Then people say, ‘Well, what did you write for the average person?’ And I say, ‘Well, the average person thinks average thoughts.’ Which sounds real cocky, but it has some truth to it.”

With an outsize price tag and advertisements in upscale national magazines that tout the book as “For the select few,” it’s little wonder the 30-year-old Grayson has been wrongly tagged as an elitist from a wealthy family who’s having the last laugh on all of us.

“People say, ‘This is a first-time author? $5,000?! What’s going on here?’ I just keep saying the medium is the message.”

The Homeless Question

His favorite response so far was the letter he received from someone wanting to know: “What about the homeless?”

“That makes a lot of sense,” he says. “I think the road to hell is paved with people who have asked the question, ‘What about the homeless?’ What about them? This is a very real problem that needs a very real answer, but it doesn’t need people asking me, ‘What about the homeless?’ ”

He says he is neither wealthy nor elitist, explaining that he saved for three years to afford the paper and printing costs for his book. “It sounds like something that someone who is very wealthy would do and just have fun with it as a lark. It’s a very serious venture.”

But Grayson can’t keep his claws in all the time. “I look at all the writing today and I think that Bret Easton Ellis and Tama Janowitz couldn’t turn a phrase properly even if it came equipped with power steering. That’s basically my line on it. So I look at their works and they’re $4.95. I write a thousand times better; therefore, the book is $5,000.”

The concept for this cross between a book and “a beautiful little art piece” came while Chicago-born Grayson was staying at the Plaza Athenee in Paris six years ago. “I said I’m going to do a spectacular book, and I knew the concept, but not the complete concept,” he says. “I’ve never, ever had any doubts about it.”

The epigrams were culled from eight years of journals, started when Grayson was a model sent to do work in Europe. Instead of modeling, he hooked up with bands that needed someone to write English lyrics to German songs. He started singing, recorded some songs and moved to France where he performed “new wave Jacques Brel,” then “kicked around” and did odd jobs.

He eventually moved to New York, took writing workshops and worked at the Museum of Modern Art and the Valentino boutique. Not willing to endure another East Coast summer, he moved to Los Angeles (“A great neon sign announcing vacancy”) a year and a half ago.

A little worried that he’ll be late getting back to his job, Grayson nevertheless keeps talking as he lingers over his iced tea.

A Joke on the Author

“Some of the aphorisms I don’t agree with,” he continues. “I probably agreed with them when I wrote them. I wanted to be provocative. It’s not meant to be a very kind book. Because it’s a little joke on me. It’s a book that has a lot of things about sex, but you read it with kid gloves. It’s definitely making a statement all its own. It definitely shaped itself.”

Grayson is excited that he has sold three copies so far (he declines to name his patrons) and looks forward to upcoming parties in his honor in New York and Chicago. He is working on a “decadent, naughty” novel “for fun” and hopes to sell more copies of the book and not go broke delivering it.

There’s one more job he could do. “I think I should teach a course in ‘How to Sell Your $5,000 Book.’ ”