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As the first decade of the new century was getting underway, Spalding Gray worried that the joy he’d finally found with his wife, stepdaughter, and two sons would fail to fuel his work as a theatrical monologist the way anxiety, conflict, doubt, and various crises once had. Before he got the chance to find out, however, an automobile accident in Ireland left him with the lasting wounds of body and spirit that ultimately led him to take his own life. But as his dear friend novelist Francine Prose notes in this volume’s foreword, “Even when his depression became so severe that he was barely able to hold a simple conversation, he was, miraculously, able to perform.”
As was always his method, Gray began to fashion a new monologue in various workshop settings that would tell the story of the accident and its aftermath. Originally titled Black Spot—for what the locals called the section of highway where Gray’s accident occurred—it began as a series of workshops at P.S. 122 in New York City and eventually became Life Interrupted.Gray died in early 2004, and though never completed, Life Interrupted is rich with brave self-revelation, masterfully acute observations of wonderfully peculiar people, penetrating wit and genuine humor, an irresolvable fascination with life and death, and all the other attributes of Gray’s singular and unmistakable voice.
In the final performance of Life Interrupted, Gray read two additional pieces: a short story about a day he spent with his son Theo at the carousel in Central Park and a brief, poignant love letter to New York City that he wrote after the terrorist attacks in 2001. This volume includes these pieces as well as many of the eulogies that were delivered by his friends and family at memorial services held at Lincoln Center and in Sag Harbor.
[If you had to reduce all of Spalding’s work to its essence, its core, if you wanted to locate the subject to which, no matter what else he talked about, he kept returning, I suppose you could say that his work was a profoundly metaphysical inquiry into how we manage to live despite the knowledge that we are someday going to die. . . .
If there is a consolation, it’s what he left behind: the children whom he so loved and, of course, his work. Reading the unfinished pieces in this volume . . . we hear his voice again and feel the happiness we felt when he sat on stage behind his wooden desk, took a sip from his water glass, transformed the raw material of his life into art, and the crowd applauded each brilliant, beautiful sentence.] —Francine Prose, from the Foreword
Also available as an eBook
As was always his method, Gray began to fashion a new monologue in various workshop settings that would tell the story of the accident and its aftermath. Originally titled Black Spot—for what the locals called the section of highway where Gray’s accident occurred—it began as a series of workshops at P.S. 122 in New York City and eventually became Life Interrupted.Gray died in early 2004, and though never completed, Life Interrupted is rich with brave self-revelation, masterfully acute observations of wonderfully peculiar people, penetrating wit and genuine humor, an irresolvable fascination with life and death, and all the other attributes of Gray’s singular and unmistakable voice.
In the final performance of Life Interrupted, Gray read two additional pieces: a short story about a day he spent with his son Theo at the carousel in Central Park and a brief, poignant love letter to New York City that he wrote after the terrorist attacks in 2001. This volume includes these pieces as well as many of the eulogies that were delivered by his friends and family at memorial services held at Lincoln Center and in Sag Harbor.
[If you had to reduce all of Spalding’s work to its essence, its core, if you wanted to locate the subject to which, no matter what else he talked about, he kept returning, I suppose you could say that his work was a profoundly metaphysical inquiry into how we manage to live despite the knowledge that we are someday going to die. . . .
If there is a consolation, it’s what he left behind: the children whom he so loved and, of course, his work. Reading the unfinished pieces in this volume . . . we hear his voice again and feel the happiness we felt when he sat on stage behind his wooden desk, took a sip from his water glass, transformed the raw material of his life into art, and the crowd applauded each brilliant, beautiful sentence.] —Francine Prose, from the Foreword
Also available as an eBook
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Hardcover
Sadly the last of Spalding Gray however he is given a further outing in 'Lubin Tales II'.Lubin Tales I found this an interesting book and I've always been a fan of Spalding.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Spalding gives us something to think about, and departs.
18 Aug 2006
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
A celebrity is someone whom you've never actually met, but think you know; not just know about, but know. The celebrity press offers us little bits of enticing, patently untrue information about these imaginary friends every day. Part of our agreement with the idea of celebrity is that we believe these things while knowing (after all, we're not crazy) that they aren't true.
It was easy to slip into thinking of Spalding Gray, who after all never pretended to be anything but an actor and a sort of amateur writer, as a celebrity. Since his confessional monologues included much that was embarrassing and painful, it was easier that way. Apparently, though, every word of it was true. His sadness, his eerily prophetic but still crippling fears, his inability, like so many children of suicides, to get on with his life -- it was all there. It was all, or at least mostly true, and we really knew him after all, and the guilt at not having been able to save him, at having been not an imaginary friend but a real one, and not a very good one, is real as well.
His monologues were surprisingly layered, nuanced and durable works of art, considering he never claimed much for himself as a writer. They are like Chekhov plays without villains -- not so dark, or so funny, and a bit sweeter than you'd like, maybe, but still great, and this is the last of them.
It was easy to slip into thinking of Spalding Gray, who after all never pretended to be anything but an actor and a sort of amateur writer, as a celebrity. Since his confessional monologues included much that was embarrassing and painful, it was easier that way. Apparently, though, every word of it was true. His sadness, his eerily prophetic but still crippling fears, his inability, like so many children of suicides, to get on with his life -- it was all there. It was all, or at least mostly true, and we really knew him after all, and the guilt at not having been able to save him, at having been not an imaginary friend but a real one, and not a very good one, is real as well.
His monologues were surprisingly layered, nuanced and durable works of art, considering he never claimed much for himself as a writer. They are like Chekhov plays without villains -- not so dark, or so funny, and a bit sweeter than you'd like, maybe, but still great, and this is the last of them.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
A beautiful swan song for a loving man, husband, father & human.
30 July 2007
Format:Hardcover
The amount of compassion in this book is simply amazing. Spalding was a normal individual living through extraordinary events that he wove into some of the best monologues & humor to ever grace our eyes & ears. The finality of his decision can never be compromised by our tremendous feeling of loss. He was entitled to save himself from his pain in any manner he sought & I respect him for that. While the hole in our hearts will never be filled, I would only encourage his friends & loved ones to look back on the best of times. I have a feeling He would have wanted it that way too...
I miss Spalding
31 May 2012
Amazon Verified Purchase
I have enjoyed Spalding Gray's writings and one man shows for many years. His observations of people and events is unique and funny. I miss him and feel so sad for his family. I want to thank them for sharing him with all of us for so many years.
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