Kirjahaku

Riveting, funny, heartbreaking, at once raw and lyrical: these journals reveal the extraordinary inner life of the actor-writer who invented the autobiographical monologue and perfected the form in such celebrated works as "Swimming to Cambodia." Begun when he was twenty-five, Spalding Gray's journals reflect on his childhood; his craving for success; the downtown New York arts scene of the 1970s; his love affairs, marriages, and fatherhood; his travels in Europe and Asia; and throughout, his passion for the theater, where he worked to balance his compulsion to tell all with his fear of having his deepest secrets exposed. "The Journals of Spalding Gray" gives us a haunting portrait of a creative genius who we thought had told us everything about himself--until now.

In middle age Spalding Gray has entered "the Bermuda Triangle of Health," that place where the body begins to break down in alarming and humiliating ways. His immediate problem is an eye complaint that could be corrected with minor surgery. But for the high priest of high anxiety, nothing is ever minor. And so Gray embarks on a crazed crusade for wellness that takes him from a Native American sweat lodge to a dictatorial nutritionist and, finally, to a gory session with the "Elvis Presley of psychic surgeons" in the Far East.Exquisitely timed, unfettered in its intelligence, and funny enough to push readers to the brink of cardiac arrest, Gray's Anatomy is a surreal tour de force of body and soul. "Gray has turned his trademark navel-gazing into looking himself in the eye -- literally...A witty tour through the world of alternative medicine and his own anxieties." -- Washington Post"One of the funniest travelogues of the human landscape [Gray] has yet spun out...As close as he has ever been to becoming a stand-up comedian. God bless him for it." -- Chicago Tribune"Spalding Gray may be the nation's most outstanding storyteller. Nothing eludes his eye or the sureness of his satire. The secret of his success is the skewed angle of vision -- his eccentric wit and ruthless candor." -- Los Angeles Times

Within a year, the familiar boundaries of Spalding Gray's existence have been altered by betrayal, love, lust and loss. He suddenly marries his longtime companion, and divorces her just as quickly; he moves in with his girlfriend, Kathie, who bears him a son; and he learns, against all odds, to ski. But not even his mastery of the much-feared right turn can prepare him for the exhilarating experience of fatherhood. A brilliant improvisation with as many twists and turns as a double-diamond course, "It's a Slippery Slope" explores how one man survives a mid-life crisis by finding his balance on skis.

A hilarious monologue about fatherhood by a unique comic voice In Morning, Noon and Night that master of the confessional, Spalding Gray, tells the event-filled, emotionally charged, and outrageously funny story of one day of his life in October 1997, after the birth of his son Theo. Horrified by the prospect of having another son, considering what he and his two brothers did to their father, and ambivalent about the idea of living in a small, quaint town on eastern Long Island that seems an odd detour for a man destined for California, Gray comes to feel, of course, a profound affinity for his baby boy, born with the looks of a "wet, blue beaver." But this is not merely a father's account of an infant son; it's the story of his new life with his girlfriend Kathie; his regally precocious eleven-year-old stepdaughter, Marissa ("Please don't let me die a virgin "); and his older son, Forrest, who stymies Gray time and again with his metaphysical inquisitiveness-"Daddy, what's behind the stars?" "How do flies celebrate?" A richly comic work about parenthood, about adults who don't grow up and children who do, Morning, Noon and Night stands as Gray's most mature work to date.

This is a collection of six monologues by the master of one-man drama. Included are "Sex and Death at the Age of 14," "Booze, Cars, and College Girls," "47 Beds," "Nobody Wanted to Sit Behind a Desk," "Travels through New England," and "Terror of Pleasure: The House." Also includes a preface by the author.

Having detailed the agonies of writing a book in his monologue Monster in a Box, Spalding Gray now gives us the monster itself: a convulsively funny, unexpectedly moving novel about a man eternally searching for a moment of protected pleasure even as he is permanently incapable of finding it. Brewster North witnesses his mother's madness but misses her suicide; searches frantically for enlightenment in the Poconos and zipless sex in India; suffers family ennui in Rhode Island and a nervous breakdown in Amsterdam. In the process he emerges as a hilariously complex everyman. And as Gray narrates his hero's free fall, he confirms his own stature as one of our funniest, most eccentric, and most engaging storytellers.