Spalding Gray

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A Storyteller's Attempt at a Novel

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SOURCE: "A Storyteller's Attempt at a Novel," in The Wall Street Journal, May 18, 1992, p. A8.

[In the following review, Lescaze offers a tempered assessment of Impossible Vacation.]

Spalding Gray is a comic storyteller in the rich tradition of American naifs to whom amazing things happen. He is a spinner of tales for the angst-bitten and the confused, for whom a part of life's basic joke is that they understand what's happening, they just don't know how to cope with it.

He became known first on stage and then on screen with his witty theatrical monologues, notably Swimming to Cambodia, relating his adventures as a bit player in the powerful Roland Joffe movie The Killing Fields.

Now, Mr. Gray has written his first novel, Impossible Vacation. The book has much in common with his works for the theater, and at its best it is sharply observed and amusing.

Impossible Vacation begins as though it were to be Mr. Gray's version of the coming-of-age novel. But it soon abandons structure in favor of the rambling—often charming—technique Mr. Gray has used with such success in the theater.

Funny things happen. Brewster North, the protagonist, joins an experimental theater group that takes its show on the road to the St. Louis suburbs. For its trouble, the group is judged obscene and banned from Missouri for life. There were too many rips in the impoverished cast members' leotards and too much physical contact for the Show Me State's taste.

Brewster's retreat to a Zen center in the Poconos goes no better. During daily sessions of staring at a white wall, Brewster sees it come alive with pornographic images. When he finally achieves a moment of the sought-for "big mind," it quickly vanishes, leaving him back with the "small mind" of porn.

A Fourth of July barbecue with Brewster's father, stepmother and girlfriend is a nightmare out of Cheever by way of Bunuel. Dad and stepmother sniff the air expectantly as cocktail hour arrives. A barbecue turns into a blood ceremony.

"The more I chewed, the more I wanted. The more I ate, the less satisfied I felt. It was chew, chew, chew, angry chew, and then big gulps, swallow, wash down with more and more Lite beer … Dad drank the steak blood from a serving spoon. Babs killed flies."

In Mr. Gray's hands, the barbecue would make a great theater piece. So would Brewster's first LSD trip or his efforts to save drowning bugs from a swimming pool, or his venture into acting in X-rated films.

Sex, death and travel are Mr. Gray's major preoccupations. His tone, as in his monologues, is friendly, almost puppyish. The typical Gray protagonist avoids making accusations, never gets angry. He is a mostly good boy who sometimes does bad things in order to experience the sweetness of being forgiven. (This is often not a swell deal for his female companions.)

Mr. Gray has a gift for comic detail. When Brewster lands a job supervising a bunch of moving men, he finds they ignore his instructions until he takes to smoking cigars. When an Ohio woman tells her life story, it turns out the critical moment came when her husband learned about free love. How? By reading an article in that swingers' bible, Time magazine.

Perhaps none of Brewster's experiences would play better in a Spalding Gray monologue than the moment he and loyal companion Meg arrive at Agra to see the Taj Mahal, only to have Meg collapse, suffering the worst pain of her life. Does Brewster run for a doctor? Call the police? Seek out the nearest U.S. Consulate?

Hey, he's come a long way to see the Taj. He dashes off to sneak a look, leaving Meg moaning on the ground. "Of course I couldn't enjoy it. With the thought of Meg lying out there in a sick heap on the lawn, I could hardly see it."

By the time Brewster gets back, an Indian holy man is trying to force-feed Meg a dirty glass of vile liquid.

The good boy has been truly bad. But he is very charming about it—mostly to us, his readers, less to Meg. Meg sticks by him and we chuckle and smile.

Still, writing novels is very different from writing monologues. A novel needs characters and character development. A novel requires complexities. But make a theater piece too complex and the audience loses contact. Once in a while, a monologuist is well advised to throw his audience an obvious bit of summation just to make sure it is keeping up. On the page, such lines seem awkward and unnecessary.

A talented actor like Mr. Gray might be able to send an audience home with a smile after a resolution no greater than he gives his novel. After all, what structure Swimming to Cambodia has comes from Mr. Gray's claim to be searching for a "perfect moment." Mr. Gray has a fondness for water-based therapeutic moments, not so much a return to the womb as a return to the Leboyer birthing tub. In Impossible Vacation, he would have you believe that after 35 or so years of manic-depressive and immature behavior Brewster is cured by a soak in the chilly stream at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Not only cured, but filled with a new determination to take hold of his life and become a writer.

If you find that easy to believe, you'll trust that Thelma and Louise's 1966 T-bird convertible is still floating over the Grand Canyon just as you saw it last.

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Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia and the Evolution of an Ironic Presence

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