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January 27, 2004

Where's Spaulding Gray?

I have a special affection for three men who most profoundly affected my desire to be a writer. I associate them all with urbane wit and a lot of good things in a world gone stupid. They are Joe Frank, Henry Jaglom and Spaulding Gray.

Of the three, Gray is the one I considered least likely to commit suicide. Yet it stands to reason that he may have done just that. Nobody has heard from him in over two weeks and folks fear that he has gone off swimming to that big Cambodia in the sky.

It was Swimming to Cambodia, but after 'The Killing Fields', which alerted me to this astounding man. He was having the conversations in public of the sort I have with myself, the sly allusions, the jumping from subject to subject, the right word at the right time. For me, Gray defined what narrative could be and why storytelling will always be superior to journalism - why it has lasted allthe centuries. Gray is why I put myself into all of my writing, why the first person is important.

Now he may be taking us all into his tragedy, but who could tell the story?

Posted by mbowen at January 27, 2004 10:56 AM

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Comments

maybe he went to the local staten island birth & death registrar office after diving off the ferry & filed a death certificate to fool people he's suicidal & made a break to live his golden years in the fijian islands with many a concubine!! i hope at least...

t

Posted by: toddy at February 1, 2004 09:14 PM

The morning after I proposed to my wife, we had breakfast in a Burlington, VT, hotel. Seated across the aisle were Gray, his wife and small children. My wife mistook him -- how, I'll never know -- for Garrison Keillor, the Wobegon guy from Minnesota. Gray was in town after doing a week of his one man show. This was very early in 1996. What a beautiful family he had, and how hard this must be for those young kids.

Posted by: Andrew at February 11, 2004 12:00 PM

I just caught him on Black Starz in a flick called 'Bad Company' with Laurence Fishburn and Ellen Barkin (damn!). He played a great whiney rich guy - very unlike his own character yet once seen you can't see how anyone else could have done it. A fine performance indeed.

Posted by: Cobb at February 11, 2004 12:14 PM

Is there any information about Mr. Gray? I have followed his work for many years. I would like to know the end to this mistery.

Posted by: Susan Sandys at April 25, 2004 04:55 PM

Posted by: Cobb at April 26, 2004 07:40 AM

Toddy said on 2/1/04 >>maybe he went to the local staten island birth & death registrar office after diving off the ferry & filed a death certificate to fool people he's suicidal & made a break to live his golden years in the fijian islands with many a concubine!! i hope at least...

This idea was>> Posted by: toddy at February 1, 2004 09:14 PM

IMPORTANT Q? how did "toddy" know 3 months before his body washed up that Spauld dove off the Staten island ferry? when NOBODY else did but the diver?

Posted by: jules at April 27, 2004 02:56 PM