The king is dead. Long live the king. Sigh.

"For some time now, writer-actor-performance artist Spalding Gray has been carrying around with him a monster: a manuscript of a novel called Impossible Vacation, a book that at last sighting weighed in at about 1,800 pages. Monster in a Box, Gray's latest monologue, is a guided tour between the stations of his writing block, which include a field trip to Nicaragua, a disastrous guest appearance at the Moscow film festival, and a stint in Los Angeles hunting down the fabled few who have never written a screenplay."

It was really fun to read this monologue. The ending is a tad abrupt, like you were walking through his life/diary and he walked off/got to the end of the note book but I don't know if that takes away from it:) I think my favorite part is from the preface. Three days after performing this monologue he got a call from the National foundation from Mental Health, " what we'd like the propose, and don't get me wrong about this, is that you become our national spokesman....we feel that we've never heard anyone so articulate about their mental illness."

I found it interesting how his mental issues are discussed in basically the same tone as finding people for a theatre production and visits to disaster areas of the world. AS I was reading this book a complete stranger on the bus approached me to talk about his movie, Swimming to Cambodia. It must be good so I'll have to find it:)

Gifted to Chickadee a few Christmasses ago. I don't remember much of the book but I saw his 1 man show where he was talking about filming movies and the Killing Fields of Cambodia. It is a very hypnotizing voice.