Morning, Noon and Night by Spalding Gray
Life Interrupted by Spalding Gray

Spalding Gray committed suicide in 2004 by jumping off the Staten Island ferry. I still remember being stunned by the news, being a casual admirer of his work and having no knowledge of the car accident in Ireland that left him in so much pain. Reading Morning, Noon and Night with the specter of his death was odd—because it’s ostensibly a celebration of family life at a point when Spalding was welcoming the arrival of his second son, Theo. Spalding never thought he’d have kids or become a family man, and he says at one point in the book that he thought that if he did have children it would be late in life so that he would die before they became teenagers. Sadly, he got his wish. But Spalding brought great wit, thought and energy to his life while he lived and was clearly a great father. Reading Life Interrupted afterwards just made me cry copiously—it includes the last monologues he was working on and the eulogies that were read at the services in New York and Rhode Island.

I need to go re-watch “Swimming to Cambodia” and “Monster in a Box” very soon.