Morning, Noon and Night - Hardcover

Gray, Spalding

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374299854 ISBN 13: 9780374299859

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999

Synopsis

The hilarious new monologue about fatherhood, by the author of It's a Slippery Slope

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, Spalding 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 Spalding time and again with his metaphysical inquisitiveness: "Daddy, what's behind the stars?" "How do flies celebrate?" Cosmic questions that for Gray are reinforced by the view from his bedroom window-a seventeenth-century graveyard-a cold reminder to the author of the impermanence of things, the transient nature of his life, the strange calling of his profession, which brilliantly confirms Wordsworth's dictum that the child is father to the man.
A richly comic work about parenthood , about adults who don't grow up and children who do, that stands as Spalding Gray's most mature work to date.

About this title

About the Author

Writer, actor, and performer, Spalding Gray is the author of It's a Slippery Slope (Noonday, 1997), Swimming to Cambodia, and Monster in a Box, among other works. He has appeared on PBS and HBO, and in numerous films, including Roland Joffe's The Killing Fields, David Byrne's True Stories, and, most recently, Steven Soderbergh's Gray's Anatomy. He lives with his family in Sag Harbor, New York.

From Kirkus Reviews

Gray (It's a Slippery Slope, 1997, etc.) is an indefatigable talker. That's how he makes his living. Here he talks some more, a lot more, as he muses his way through one recent day. It's no Bloomsday, this day in the life of Spalding Gray. It starts slowly and works its way up to pedestrian speed. Eventually, though, he gets moving with deep thoughts about love, death, and related matters. The flowing discourse concerns home life in Sag Harbor, New York, with patient Kathie; Marissa, her daughter by an earlier liaison; their young son, Forrest; and baby Theo. There are, naturally, diverse thoughts about family life, its joys and terrors. This domestic field has been plowed before and Gray does as well with it as the next self-absorbed 56-year-old with a fear of sons. There is, to be sure, some humor. He attempts to teach his boy the semiotics of the word ``shit,'' follows with a riff on ATMs and thence to thoughts of bank tellers' underwear. On and on he goes, offering vagrant comments on hand-propelled lawn mowers, his late mother's flatulence, churches, and, perforce, sex. Like a latter-day George M. Cohan, he's not above waving Old Glory, ``the most beautiful of all the flags in the world.'' Sometimes he's an artful old philosopher and sometimes he's Al Bundy. (Kathie calls contractors; her family name is Russo ``and I figure that's good, because so many of the contractors are of Italian-American descent.'') Gray's shtick is to seem to let it all hang out in an excess of introspection. Sporadically, there is a universal quality. At other times, it's a lot, a surfeit, a plenitude of unilateral conversation. While others may be ready to cry ``uncle,'' his many fans will consider the talk just fine. As a performed monologue, the words are probably charming and strong in the sentiment department. On paper, it's light, light entertainment as Gray disrobes again. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0374299854
• ISBN 13: 9780374299859
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112