Spalding Gray: Swimming to Cambodia and Rolling Stone article

I am amazed that Spalding Gray has the same voice in both the article and the monologue, though he says very different things. Reading the Rolling Stone article after Swimming to Cambodia, I can definitely recognize his personality and his mannerisms in the second work. I had grown so comfortable with his voice that it took me until after I finished to article to realize this seemed to be a very different Spalding Gray even though he sounded the same. In Swimming to Cambodia, Gray seemed completely lost. He rambles on humorously enough, and recounts Perfect Moments as well as exotic adventures, but he is not a man at peace with himself or his surroundings. Without warning, he is struck by moments of intense grieving and guilt for Cambodia: “How could I think of my pleasure when the world still suffered so? How? How? Oh, the shame of it! I needed to get back to give my old sweaters away to the Cambodian refugees in Far Rockaway” (124). His paranoid freak-outs result from stress, fear and anxiety about whether the life he has chosen for himself is in fact the right one: “Renée, it was a mission, a mission! I was on a mission. I’m not supposed to be back here” (108). When he talks about fame in the monologue it is only in comparing himself to John Malkovich and talking about the envy he feels for “the huge party” the film cast and crew held “when Craig T. left” (97). He calls Craig T. Nelson a “Professional Actor” and Malkovich “a good storyteller” (97). He discusses fame through his lack of it in the monologue, but in the article he relates his own anecdotes about dealing with his newfound fame. He talks about getting limos and private jets sent for him, going on The David Letterman Show and bowling for People magazine. He is witty and biting, but he is more confident. Gone are the stories of empty promises and fights with Renée. He has finally made a decision and seen it through. His experiences in Cambodia have now opened creative doors as well as financial ones, whereas before they isolated him: “But instead I ended up in Krummville with Renée and it was horrid. Horrid because I didn’t want to be there and I saw all the hardwoods as palm trees. At night I dreamed of taking the magic mushrooms and scuba diving with Ivan on a perfect enchanted isle somewhere in the Indian Ocean” (107). And his “semistardom” turned out “to be a lot more humbling than total obscurity”, so this new self-confidence has developed out of humility rather than egocentrism (Rolling Stone 31).