Life interrupted : the unfinished monologue

Resource Information

The work Life interrupted : the unfinished monologue represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in San Francisco Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Audio, Nonmusical, Sounds, Music.

Label

Life interrupted : the unfinished monologue

Title remainder

the unfinished monologue

Statement of responsibility

Spalding Gray

Creator

• Gray, Spalding, 1941-2004

Contributor

• hoopla digital
• Prose, Francine, 1947-
• Shepard, Sam, 1943-2017

Subject

• Gray, Spalding, 1941-2004
• Performance artists -- United States -- Biography
• Traffic accident victims -- United States -- Biography
• Depressed persons -- United States -- Biography

Genre

• Biography

Language

eng

Summary

Life Interrupted was the monologue that Spalding Gray was working on when he died in the early winter of 2004. Famous for his often manic and always humorous monologues, Gray was, by the late 1990's, in a happy marriage living in Long Island, doing yoga every day. But his life became unhinged after a devastating car accident in Ireland in 2001, which fractured his skull and crushed his hip. It sent Gray into a deep and unremitting depression. But the fact that Spalding had begun performing a new piece in October of last year gave his friends and family reason to hope that he was emerging from his despair. The monologue recounts the story of the accident and Gray's hospitalization in Ireland with gallows humor: "The following day I slipped into a depression and I didn't know whether to tell the Irish about it, whether they would acknowledge this depression. I mean, does a fish know it's swimming in water? It's indigenous to the rainy culture. "The last time Gray performed his work-in-progress "Life Interrupted" at PS 122, he also read a short story called "The Anniversary," about the afternoon he spent with young Theo at the Carousel in Central Park on the tenth anniversary of the day he met his wife, Kathie Russo. Like the unfinished monologue, this piece is also much darker than Gray's early work. The third piece in this collection is a very short, remarkably poignant letter Spalding wrote about the terrorist attacks of September 11, titled "Dear New York City. "

Accompanying matter

technical information on music

Cataloging source

Midwest

Dewey number

• 812/.54
• B

Form of composition

not applicable

Format of music

not applicable

Literary text for sound recordings

other

PerformerNote

Read by Sam Shepard, with a foreword by Francine Prose

Target audience

adult

Transposition and arrangement

not applicable