The Death of a Writer

Hearing on the radio today an interview with an author who is writing about David Foster Wallace's last, unfinished book and suicide reminded me of Spalding Grey. This comes late to the latter's death, but now works well for me. Are you available now?

There's a common sentiment that suicide is the most selfish of acts. Whether or not that holds, i always think of Grey's death in terms of his family (a wife, two boys, and a step-daughter). For some reason, his alleged suicide (his body was pulled from the East River) strikes me as most sad in light of the family of which he was part.

This post isn't about suicide, though. Rather, i thought smashingly of Grey and his monologues, so lament the loss of the artist. One could say something about the fire that burns so bright, but Grey's life wasn't exactly brief, so i'm not sure that holds.

Specifically, Grey was a storyteller, and spun his monologues with such craft that you forget you're listening to a man, sitting at a table, talk. You see instead the scenes he'd built up, just as good literature transports you past the medium and on into the message. Witness that you can rent Swimming to Cambodia or Monster in a Box-- that these are selling movies with repeat audiences.

But other forces were at work, as well. The dynamism of his monologues usually lofted into mania. His book Impossible Vacation painfully describes an individual struggling to exist. And it tells too of his family in detail.

So we have to look among ourselves. For i doubt there are many here who have not seen dementia, nor witnessed addiction, nor ever felt so feverishly elated as to be accused of unchecked exaltation. And we know that these conditions do not grow in a vacuum, that they have a persistent history. We grow up with them, around them, learning to abide and adapt.

I often think of my life and actions in terms of a trajectory, but there was no clear target at the outset here. Only that i miss Spalding Grey and had possibly forgotten to mention it. But i think i see from where this thread was borne now. Grey is gone. Our knowledge and memories of his influence weave together our own experiences. They bear a warp against the surface of our thoughts. Be well, at the falling of the light.

Tom Bombadil

My dear friend LD and I were talking once about the Peter Jackson movie of the Fellowship of the Ring. She was disappointed by the movie because it left out her favorite character in the whole LOTR saga. There are many things that make the books far better than any trilogy of three-hour movies made of the stories (though Jackson's movies have some profound moments).

The most pervasive element not present in the movies is the language Tolkien uses. He develops a form, a kind of dialect of English, which represents the age and complexity of the world he is writing about. It's a sort of reflexive modifier on the actual content of the story.

And in content, indeed there is so much which was left out of the movies. I vaguely remember something about giants throwing rocks in the high frozen pass which, in the movie, the party must turn back from only because of a wizard-induced avalanche. Here, then, is an entire species of middle-earth which gets not even a nod in the celluloid casting.

Doubtless, thick tomes and entire dissertations and theses have been expounded on Tolkien's stories. I will content myself to say that the small party, just out from the Shire, is rescued from a sticky situation before they've hardly gotten their walking shoes on by a very old soul living peacefully aloof with his partner Goldberry in a small and ancient forest just across the Barrow Downs from Bree.

It might be nigh time to read the entire series again, but perhaps i will content myself with just chapters six and seven of book I. It is a more manageable piece and really i only need to see how old Tom looks at frodo when that foolish hobbit for the first time does something which later becomes so contested. It's such an idle, casual act while they're talking around the fire in the living room that you'd almost miss it. Indeed, Jackson completely missed it and, so doing, rewrote the history of middle earth in at least some small part. It puzzles me every time why this happen just so, unless it is to give us clear indication that old TB knows what he's about and chooses not to get involved in the ways of men and hobbits.