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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2011 > October > 14 > Entry
Spalding Gray archive at UT to open; Editor of Gray’s notebooks at Texas Book Festival Oct. 22
Spalding Gray made an artistic career by mining the achingly private details of his tumultuous personal life and using them as the subject matter for his monologues, the autobiographical nature which came to define what’s arguably now a literary genre until itself.
Not all memoirs of neurosis-riddled inner life have been as entertaining as Gray’s and his work stands alone for the deft manner in which Gray wove his personal issues into reflections on art and current events, wrapping it all together in humorously poignant well-told stories.
Last year, UT’s Ransom Center acquired Gray’s archive which included his many journals and notebooks he kept over several decades. Read the American-Statesman story here.
Having now been processed and organized, Gray’s archive opens to researches next week, just in time to coincided with the Austin appearance of Nell Casey at the Texas Book Festival. Casey — who had access to Gray’s notebooks before they were sold to the Ransom Center — is the editor of the just-published, “The Journals of Spalding Gray” (Knopf).
Casey speaks at 4:15 p.m. Oct. 22 at the Texas Book Festival.
Image: Cover of Gray’s performance notebook for “Swimming to Cambodia.” Gray is seen using this notebook in his performance of “Swimming to Cambodia” in the 1987 film by Jonathan Demme.
Image courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center.
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