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    Impossible Vacation

    Part of Vintage Contemporaries

    Author Spalding Gray
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    Paperback
    $19.00 US
    Knopf | Vintage
    On sale Apr 27, 1993 | 240 Pages | 9780679745235
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    Having detailed the agonies of writing a book in his monologue Monster in a Box, Spalding Gray now gives us the monster itself: a convulsively funny, unexpectedly moving novel about a man eternally searching for a moment of protected pleasure even as he is permanently incapable of finding it.

    Brewster North witnesses his mother's madness but misses her suicide; searches frantically for enlightenment in the Poconos and zipless sex in India; suffers family ennui in Rhode Island and a nervous breakdown in Amsterdam. In the process he emerges as a hilariously complex everyman. And as Gray narrates his hero's free fall, he confirms his own stature as one of our funniest, most eccentric, and most engaging storytellers.
    Spalding Gray was born and raised in Rhode Island. A cofounder of the acclaimed New York City theater company the Wooster Group, he appeared on Broadway and in numerous films, including Roland Joffé’s The Killing Fields, David Byrne’s True Stories, Garry Marshall’s Beaches, and as the subject of the 2010 Steven Soderbergh documentary, And Everything is Going Fine. His monologues include Sex and Death to the Age 14, Swimming to Cambodia, Monster in a Box, Gray’s Anatomy, and It’s a Slippery Slope. He died in 2004. View titles by Spalding Gray
    "Quintessential Gray, unique in [its] rueful blend of curiosity, self-mockery and panic."

    -- The New York Times Book Review

    "Beautifully written, with all the visually organic wit of Gray's best monologue writing, as well as...emotional power [and] loopy nobility." -- Newsday

    "An intimate, casual voice, capable of discussing anything from pornographic films to Chekhov's 'Sea Gull,' from acid trips to family holidays, with lightly ironic candor. One finishes the book impressed by how readily Gray's narrative voice transfers to the page."

    -- The New York Times

    About

    Having detailed the agonies of writing a book in his monologue Monster in a Box, Spalding Gray now gives us the monster itself: a convulsively funny, unexpectedly moving novel about a man eternally searching for a moment of protected pleasure even as he is permanently incapable of finding it.

    Brewster North witnesses his mother's madness but misses her suicide; searches frantically for enlightenment in the Poconos and zipless sex in India; suffers family ennui in Rhode Island and a nervous breakdown in Amsterdam. In the process he emerges as a hilariously complex everyman. And as Gray narrates his hero's free fall, he confirms his own stature as one of our funniest, most eccentric, and most engaging storytellers.

    Author

    Spalding Gray was born and raised in Rhode Island. A cofounder of the acclaimed New York City theater company the Wooster Group, he appeared on Broadway and in numerous films, including Roland Joffé’s The Killing Fields, David Byrne’s True Stories, Garry Marshall’s Beaches, and as the subject of the 2010 Steven Soderbergh documentary, And Everything is Going Fine. His monologues include Sex and Death to the Age 14, Swimming to Cambodia, Monster in a Box, Gray’s Anatomy, and It’s a Slippery Slope. He died in 2004. View titles by Spalding Gray

    Praise

    "Quintessential Gray, unique in [its] rueful blend of curiosity, self-mockery and panic."

    -- The New York Times Book Review

    "Beautifully written, with all the visually organic wit of Gray's best monologue writing, as well as...emotional power [and] loopy nobility." -- Newsday

    "An intimate, casual voice, capable of discussing anything from pornographic films to Chekhov's 'Sea Gull,' from acid trips to family holidays, with lightly ironic candor. One finishes the book impressed by how readily Gray's narrative voice transfers to the page."

    -- The New York Times

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