Editing Spalding Gray (section)

===Legacy===
Theater historian Don Wilmeth noted Gray's contribution to a unique style of writing and acting: 
{{quote|The 1980s saw the rise of the autobiographical monologue, its leading practitioner Spalding Gray, the WASP from Rhode Island who portrays himself as an innocent abroad in a crazy contemporary world. . . others, like Mike Feder, who grew up in Queens and began telling his life on New York radio, pride themselves on their theatrical minimalism, and simply sit and talk. Audiences come to autobiography for direct connection and great stories, both sometimes hard to find in today's theatre.<ref>Wilmeth, Don B.; Miller, Tice L. (1996). ''Cambridge Guide to American Theatre''. [[Cambridge University Press]].</ref>{{rp|293}}}}

Describing the play-film monologue, theatre director Mark Russell wrote: 
{{quote|He broke it all down to a table, a glass of water, a spiral notebook and a mic. Poor theatre—a man and an audience and a story. Spalding sitting at that table, speaking into the mic, calling forth the script of his life from his memory and those notebooks. A simple ritual: part news report, part confessional, part American raconteur. One man piecing his life back together, one memory, one true thing at a time. Like all genius things, it was a simple idea turned on its axis to become absolutely fresh and radical."<ref name=Swimming/>}}

Journalist and author [[Roger Rosenblatt]] described Gray as 
{{quote|Spalding the storyteller... Spalding the mystical. Spalding the hilarious. Spalding the self-exposed, the professionally puzzled, the scared, the brave. Spalding the supporting actor. That's what he was in the movies. But as a writer and a stage performer, he changed the idea of what a supporting actor is. He supported ''us''... He played our part... We tacitly elect a few to be the chief tellers of our tales. Spalding was one of the elected. The specialty of his storytelling was the search for a sorrow that could be alchemized into a myth. He went for the misery sufficiently deep to create a story that makes us laugh... In so doing, he invented a form, a very rare thing among artists. Some called it the 'epic monologue' because first it was spoken and then it was written, like the old epics, and because it consisted of great and important themes drawn from the hero's life...And the one true heroic element in his makeup was the willingness to be open, rapidly open, about his confusions, his frailties."<ref name=Swimming>Gray, Spalding (2005). ''Swimming to Cambodia''. Theatre Communications Group.</ref>{{rp|Intro}} }}

Director Jonathan Demme said of Gray, "Spalding's unfailing ability to ignite universal emotions and laughter in all of us while gloriously wallowing in his own exquisite uniqueness will remain forever one of the great joys of American performance and literature".<ref name=Swimming/>

"He took the anarchy and illogic of life and molded it into something we could grab a hold of," said actor and novelist [[Eric Bogosian]]. "It took courage to do what Spalding did, courage to make theatre so naked and unadorned, to expose himself in this way and to fight his demons in public."

Theater critic Mel Gussow wrote of Gray's ''Swimming to Cambodia'' and ''Terrors of Pleasure'', "Through a look or a comment, he offers intelligent analysis. Though the narrative is entirely centered around Mr. Gray himself, it never suffers from self-pity or self-indulgence. He remains the antihero in his own fascinating life story, the never ending tale of EverySpalding."<ref>{{cite news|last1=Gussow|first1=Mel|title=Theatre: Spalding Gray. Review of Terrors of Pleasure, by Spalding Gray|work=The New York Times|date=May 15, 1986}}</ref>