It's a Slippery Slope - Softcover

Gray, Spalding

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374525234 ISBN 13: 9780374525231

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Writer and actor Spalding Gray was best known for writing and starring in autobiographical monologues like Swimming to Cambodia, Monster in a Box, and It’s a Slippery Slope where he humorously integrated his anxieties and experiences into stage performances. He was a co-founder of the Wooster Theatre Group in New York City and also appeared in films such as The Killing Field and Kate & Leopold.

Reviews

An avalanche of shallow solipsisms as the veteran monologist takes to the slopes and learns to ski. Artists who plumb their lives for their work run the grave risk of using up all their best material and being reduced to diary trivialities and fire-sale reminiscences. Gray (Impossible Vacation, 1992, etc.) has seemed to be headed in this direction for a while; now he is finally there. He tries to freight everything with meaning--weighing skiing down with a series of pompous metaphors about existence--but this only amplifies the base banalities that threaten at every turn. ``In order to be in control, you have to be out of control. . . . It's the first leap of faith that I've ever had in my life.'' As he stumbles along, he tries to drag in his mother's suicide, his unexpected fatherhood, and the breakup of his long-term relationship/marriage. The descriptions of this last item are as painful as any skiing injury, as Gray alternates self-justifying contrition with the kind of analysis you'd expect from a third-rate shrink. After he fathers a child with the ``other woman'' and his marriage disintegrates, Gray has an epiphany on the slopes that is almost startling in its egocentrism and moral obtuseness: ``I thought I was going to self-destruct and instead I helped bring new life into the world. I gave myself a big high five, and I thought, You know, I've returned to New England and I'm no longer a puritan.'' The monologue style, with its frequent repetitions and digressions, makes all this even more awkward. What may work well before an audience just seems uncontrolled on paper. This snow job should shake the devotion of even Gray's most steadfast fans. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gray is our premier monologist, best known for Swimming to Cambodia (Theatre Communications, 1988) and Gray's Anatomy (Vintage, 1994). He is to drama what the confessional poet is to poetry; but his writing is much more precise than most confessional poets, and he has a liberating sense of amused bemusement about himself too often lacking in most modern poetry. Though not a play exactly (the author is writing deep autobiography here and then performing it himself on stage), this piece does have a three-act play structure. The outer two units are about the exterior life and learning to ski and to love its freedom and risk, hence "slippery slope." The center of the piece is also about freedom and risk, but it is inner and personal in an honest and painful way, chronicling marriage, divorce, and fatherhood. Gray has a gift for being directly in touch with his subconscious, with little censor function to cloud his vision. The hilarity and joyousness of the beginning and end is exactly countered by the seriousness and terror of the middle. Highly recommended.?Thomas E. Luddy, Salem State Coll., Mass.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374525234
• ISBN 13: 9780374525231
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112