Sex and Death to the Age 14

by Spalding Gray

This is a collection of six monologues by the master of one-man drama. Included are "Sex and Death at the Age of 14," "Booze, Cars, and College Girls," "47 Beds," "Nobody Wanted to Sit Behind a Desk," "Travels through New England," and "Terror of Pleasure: The House." Also includes a preface by the author.

Genres: Memoir, Humor, Nonfiction, Plays, Essays, Drama, Literature

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 12, 1986

About the author

Spalding Gray was an American actor, screenwriter, performance artist, and playwright.

Reviews

[Tim]

This is a collection of some of Gray’s early (and best) monologues. These are the yarns that made his reputation as a story-teller in the 1980s: Sex and Death to the Age 14; Booze, Cars, and College Girls; 47 Beds, Nobody Wanted to Sit Behind a Desk, Travels through New England, and Terrors of Pleasure: the House. At his best, Gray brings together several tendencies in American narrative arts – the good-old down east yarn, contemporary New York theatre, and modern “warts and all” confession. He is the cheery wiseacre sitting by a pot-bellied stove on a snowy day, sipping cocoa and telling stories – but he is not talking about catching fish or kids playing with dogs; he is talking about sex, both straight and gay, relationships, obsessions, excessive alcohol consumption, being a peripatetic artist in the free-wheeling 1970s, and being a kid in 1950s Rhode Island.

I remember going to see him at the Performing Garage in Soho, and he was a revelation. He sat at a table and sipped a glass of water, and just told his apparently true tales (this was the Sex and Death monologue, I believe) to an audience of around 50 people. Later on he became famous and did one successful filmed monologue (Swimming to Cambodia) and a less successful one (Monster in a Box). He also wrote a so-so novel, which covers some of the same ground as the monologues, and acted in plays and movies. But this book contains his best stuff, the stuff that made me a fan of his. The first two monologues are classic youthful reminiscences, simultaneously subversive and wholesome. 47 Beds, Nobody Wanted to Sit Behind a Desk, and Travels Through New England recount some of his wanderings in America and Europe, characters he encountered and experiences he had. The last monologue, about buying a troublesome country cabin, is the weakest. He was a terrific story-teller with only one weakness – he could only write about himself. There is no one else like him, and he is missed - but you can see his influence all around, in all the first person monologues and stories that are around these days, and in events like The Moth series.

[Arda]

Love the way this begins: "Stories seem to fly to me and stick. They are always out there, coming in. We exist in a fabric of personal stories. All culture, all civilization is an artful web, a human puzzle, a colorful quilt patched together to lay over raw indifferent nature. So I never wonder whether, if a tree falls in the forest, will anyone hear it. Rather, who will tell about it?"

I hadn't heard of Spalding Gray before Hannah lent me this book, but upon finishing the last pages I pressed on some youtube links and heard Spalding personally narrate "Terrors of Pleasure" (about the house he bought which had no foundation, and about how awkward his gigs as an actor in Hollywood were going, etc). And yeah, I get it: there's something remarkable about re-telling one's own stories with a funny and creative take.

I really enjoyed "Sex and death to the age 14" so was in for a bit of a disappointment because some of the following chapters weren't as much fun (in fact some of them were a little dull at times). Still, the last chapter pulled through again and I was reminded of the 14 year-old boy in the first chapter, which in turn got me curious to go check out the youtube links and hear more from the man. Comedy is best when it is clever and original, and this is.

[Theo Logos]

Currently there is no audio version of this material. Spalding Gray’s monologues were meant to be performed, ideally in his uniquely talented style and voice. Reading them from the page can drain his material of its magic. That, and the fact that these are among his earliest monologues may account for the fact of how unsatisfying I found them. Several of them just seemed to drag on indefinitely, with no particular justification. Likely, Gray’s voice and delivery would have enlivened them, but they felt dead on the page.

The book wasn’t a total bust. Most of the pieces had some of Gray’s clever phrasing that made me smile at points. And a couple of the monologues were enjoyable all the way through (Terrors of Pleasure: The House and 47 Beds). But compared to his work that is available performed on audio, this was a major disappointment. Two and a half stars rounded up.


Sex and Death to the Age 14
A litany of doomed pets, cringy, clueless preadolescent body/sex exploration, fathers with drawers full of sex postcards and nudie playing cards, and mothers without sensible intimacy boundaries. Mix thoroughly with Christian Science nonsense and you have a fascinatingly uncomfortable portrait of lower middle class suburban life in the early 1950s.

Booze
Tales of mindless, underage drinking and drunkenness, almost as stupefying to read as it must have been to experience.

Cars
Dreams of hot rods, cars, wrecks, learning to drive. Teenage car culture — yawn.

College Girls
This was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when, after Kennedy’s speech, all the Emerson College girls ran out of the dorms, screaming, “Take me. I don’t want to die a virgin! Please take me!”

I had this fantasy that Adrianna and I would commit atomic hari-kari together. I would have an atom bomb under my bed and just as we were about to come together, I would trigger it and the whole city of Boston would come and go with us.

47 Beds
I was about to be 40 and I needed a spirit guide. I needed someone to tell me where to go for a vacation, just a good spirit guide travel agent would’ve done.

Travels, anxiety, enlightenment, and weirdos.


Nobody Wanted To Sit Behind A Desk
Road trip across America, including the prerequisite characters, domestic turmoil and make-up sex.
”Renee went into a big funk and launched into a long diatribe about how I’m a control freak and how it’s my trip. She said she felt like she was just driving me to work, only my work was 3,000 miles away in San Francisco and she wasn’t even doing any of the driving.”


Travels Through New England
Losing patience with these pieces. Quick skim, and nothing to add.

Terrors of Pleasure: The House
I was feeling a little guilty for going out with the same agent and not buying anything. I mean, it was like we were going steady, but I had no intention of marrying her.

The house was furnished in a tacky kind of Sears Roebuck, Ethan Allen decor. I thought it would be a cozy place to write the great American novel, you see.

[Sabra Embury]

I picked this up after randomly flipping through Gray's Monster in a Box (1992) and subsequently finishing the book in the next hour or so without a break. After that was Swimming to Cambodia, followed by the Swimming to Cambodia DVD on Netflix, then finally Sex and Death...

One explanation for the binge is a crush on Gray; his personal monologues; his WASPY narcissism, his brutal honesty, embedded into whatever embellishments--make his tales of life and career hilarious. Reading his stories, for me, was much being there to hear Gray telling them, to dozens of hundreds of audiences in New York. A singular character telling you how his day went, glorifying misadventures and exposing his soul in the process.

[C.S.]

even better is a 1986 random house audio cassette -- now very, very difficult to get hold of. i used to have it, lost it, searched for a couple of years and couldn't find it anywhere on the internet. i finally contacted the gray estate and begged. i had to make a donation to Gray's scholarship fund to get a dub out of them. the recording is just as hilarious as i'd remembered it being.

gray reads selections from sex and death--which is wonderful enough on its own, but the cassette also includes gray's monologue about the maddening exchanges he and his girlfriend endured with a neurotic real estate agent while purchasing a cottage in the catskills.

not to be missed.

[David]

Spaulding Gray,I think came closest to a recent century Mark Twain. I say that in the sense of while Gray's monologue material was personal and sometimes self absorbent as opposed to Twain who looked at society as a whole,there was a fascinating story that would illustrate the human condition.

A chance meeting with Spaulding Gray,led to my own autobiographical work, "Black Hippie Chronicles"

Sex and Death to the Age 14 is one of the early works of Spaulding Grey. In that sense,it is more "raw" than his later material.

I think with many writers,one gets a truer sense of the essense of the writer in their earlier work. This book is no exception.

[RandomAnthony]

A heck of a lot of fun...Gray was a trailblazer, as far as I'm concerned, for this generation of monologists (is that a word?)/first-person essayists. This book flows well...light and smooth. I pull it off the shelf about once a year. The section about his drinking is probably the best...worth picking up cheap and reading on public trans.

[Lora]

GOOD BOOK, MISLEADING TITLE

Don't expect the book to stay true to its title. I liked the chapters about his childhood best, but he also writes about his adult life - with varying success. I ended up putting the book down for several weeks because I lost interest in the second to last chapter "Travels through New England." The last chapter (about home ownership) worked better for me.

[C C]

I just really like Gray's use of nouns. He's the kind of guy who remembers that what Fats Waller song was on the radio when he was spying on his best friend losing his virginity. Even if he's making it up, he's smart to know it's a necessary detail.

[Robin]

This is actually a book I'm re-reading or listening to again. I used the paperback edition so I could show the cover rather than the audio version which a friend made into a CD for me a few years ago. Listening to Spalding Gray is an experience that everyone should have. He is missed.

[Bonnie]

Recommended by Michael C. Hall
Michael C. Hall’s 10 Favorite Books - New York Mag
https://apple.news/AXLq1cuY8R9W4_aKcB...

[Huemoou]

I really enjoyed watching his monologues. I had hoped it would translate to the written word, but it doesn't really work. Even the author admits that this was a challenge in writing this book.

[Gina]

I liked this one more than "Swimming to Cambodia."

[Will]

"Soon we began to collect a little group of odd people who would drink with us every cocktail hour. Brigitte, who was a 22-year-old German, very beautiful, could have been on the cover of Stern magazine. Her boyfriend Volker was one of the most beautiful men I'd ever met - people said he looked like James Hunt, the English racecar driver. He was like Billy Budd. He was from Germany and had been a cowboy in Wyoming. Then there was Elford Elliot from England, who had something to do with producing garden gnomes. He was tripping on acid all the time and going out to Delos, this little island off Mykonos, chipping little pieces off the ancient ruins, which he then brought back in the pocket of his jumpsuit. Then there was Bryan, an IBM operator from Australia, who fancied himself as a kind of Oscar Wilde figure. I don't know why. The only story of his I remember was about some Australians who stole a garden gnome from the front lawn of a very elegant mansion and took it for a trip around the world. They would send postcards back to the owner saying things like, 'Having a lovely time in the Fiji Islands' and sign it, 'The Garden Gnome.' After six weeks, they brought the garden gnome back and left it on the lawn with little suitcases full of tiny clothing they'd knitted for it."

[Brett]

My favorite by him so far, the childhood stories in particular.

[Olivia Hunter]

Really great accidental find! Can't believe it only has a few hundred ratings. Hilarious, short monologues that make you think. Definitely recommended. I looked him up, sad he passed away.

[jcad]

Reasons I loved this book:
It is an hilarious account of episodes in the early life of Spalding Gray, many incredibly awkward and embarrassing, all told with his incredible dry wit. It makes you uncomfortable and it makes you laugh out loud.
Spalding Gray is from Rhode Island, and many of these stories take place there. I am also from Rhode Island, and love pretty much everything that takes place there.
I read it when I was very young, and as a result it was very interesting because it is a lot about sex. It was one of the first, and now that I think about it potentially only, things that I have read about sex in a way that seems real and has a sense of humor. I haven't read it in many years, so I'm nut sure what I would rate it now, but those five stars reflect the impression it made on me at the time.

[Tim]

I've really enjoyed Spalding Gray in the past. Swimming to Cambodia in particular was enthralling, but reading this made it so clear how much of it is in the delivery. I can try to infuse my reading experience with his singular style of monologue, but in the end it just doesn't hang together in the same way. After reading this, I listened to recordings of some of this material being read, and it confirmed my suspicions. When I do it, it feels like a rambling string of amusing anecdotes, but when he does it he makes it somehow seem like something more. All of the profundity is implied by cadence and the length of pauses. I didn't enjoy this book that much, but it had the effect of giving me even more respect for the man.

[Matthew]

I read this book on the train and on the plane and it was great the whole ride through.
But then I saw "Swimming to Cambodia" on DVD and it was awful, which confused my whole impression of Grey. This reads like he wrote it in a very clear, streaming state of mind and seems to be the type of book that young guys write where and when their creativity is at a very strong place.
Amazing book to read if you can find it.

[Eve Lyons]

not spalding's best work, but it is his earliest published work. as someone who owns most of the spalding gray canon, i like the pieces in this collection in part to see his development as a writer and a performer. [return][return]to understand the full depth of gray's psyche and neuroses and humor, you must have seen him perform.

[Sandra Clark]

This book reads fast with lots of wry, sarcastic bubbles of laughter rising every few paragraphs. Spuddy, as his mom called him, was phenomenal. This book captures his first series of monologues, beginning with a lengthy meditation on all his memories of sex and death up to turning 14. Read it.

[Kye Alfred Hillig]

Not Gray's best, but, just as with his other books, well worth the read. Anyone who has ever suffered from anxiety or neurosis will be able to relate to Spalding's fears and adventures. He travels the world searching for inner peace and perfect moments, occasionally finding them. He is an artist that I will always wish I had met.

[Dave]

Spalding has an authentic voice and tells things straightforwardly. He is focused on having real experiences and seeing what is important in them. Really what appealed to me about beat generation without the agenda and the -isms.

[Alison]

This book re-sparked my obsession with Spalding Gray, and even though it's always more fun to see and hear him than read him (like Sedaris) he's so out there and yet trapped in his head that it's endlessly entertaining. One of the most engrossing things I read this summer.

[Steven Spector]

However egocentric, no one could spin a non-fiction yarn better than 'ole Spauld. The stories contained within are no exception. A must read by anyone with at least one neurotic bone in their body, which if you're honest, means you too.

[Mary!]

This is a compliation of Gray's early work - funny and wry, if a bit uneven.

[Kate]

Hysterical!

[Brian]

Spalding Gray monologues are funny and full of details. Reading them helps me relax.

[Susan]

Spalding Gray is sort of hit and miss for me. This was a miss.

[Steven]

Long before This American Life, there was Spalding Gray. Very funny stuff.