"I used to think diversity was my best friend marrying a black guy."

"But the guy graduated from rich-kid private schools and has tenure at UCLA and, at this point, I think diversity is not skin color but rather social upbringing."

Writes Penelope Trunk, the Brazen Careerist blogger, who married a farmer. The link post is actually about remodeling the farmhouse, or that's the factual context anyway. It's titled "How to cope with diversity." There's a list of 7 tips for coping with diversity, all explained in remodeling-the-farmhouse stories.

***

Here's a spoken-word performance that I love on the subject of home-remodeling: "Terrors of Pleasure," by Spalding Gray. God, I miss Spalding Gray.

And we missed Penelope Trunk, when she went almost a month without blogging after writing that post.

Alice Walker's daughter writes about her motherhood.

I'd never heard of Rebecca Walker before, but today I see two articles about her in the NYT. The first thing I read -- this piece in the Style section -- is that she's the "estranged" daughter of the radical feminist writer Alice Walker. Then I see there is also this article in the Arts section. So, presumably, you don't get an article -- certainly not two articles -- just for being the estranged offspring of someone famous. There must be a book.

The book is called "Baby Love" -- which must piss off Joyce Maynard (if not Diana Ross) -- and subtitled "Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence."

The Arts section article, by New York Observer editor Alexandra Jacobs, has a deliciously grouchy first paragraph that blames birth control for the genre of "mom-oirs." If it's a choice -- Choosing Motherhood! -- you've got a story to tell, right? Good for you. I support free choice about motherhood, but that doesn't mean I want to hear the details of how you made the very mundane choice. The details of a commonplace story can be worth reading. It might even make the best reading -- if you're the best writer. Just as motherhood is not destiny, however, having a mother who is a writer doesn't automatically make you a writer.

Jacobs clearly detests Walker's book, which she calls "merely a paean to pampering."

A Tibetan doctor, the daughter of one of the Dalai Lama’s private physicians, offers her 'little silk bags of herbs”; hovering in the background, meanwhile, are an osteopath, doula, pedicurist and masseuse....

Not to begrudge the author such luxuries, but there was no need to make the world privy to them.

But that could be good if brilliantly described, self-aware, and hilarious, don't you think? (I'm thinking of this Spalding Gray book.) Maybe Jacobs is jealous. [ADDED: And maybe -- maybe, baby -- the book sucks.]

I'd rather hear Walker tell about that estrangement from the famous writer/mother. That's an inherently more interesting subject, and not just because we love celebrities. The desire for an infant has nothing to do with a particular individual. Even if you honor your unborn child as an individual, that individual is an abstraction. It's when that baby develops a mind of its own that the story gets interesting.

So let's check out the Style piece. It's called "Evolution of a Feminist Daughter," and that title caught my attention. Yet there's nothing in this article that connects the mother's feminism to the daughter's estrangement. The most interesting thing here is that before becoming a mother, Rebecca Walker wrote about how the relationships you make are just as important as blood connections, but in her new memoir she takes it back. Confronted on the contradiction, she says she came upon the first idea to deal with her own problems with her parents, and that having a child changed her mind.

“To grapple with how my parents raised me I had to come up with a philosophy that could sustain me. Having my own child gave me the opportunity to have a completely different experience. So hence a different view.”

This shaping and reshaping of ideas to go along with one's condition in life is thoroughly human, but it unless the writer is sharp and funny and self-aware about it, why would you want to read her?

"You gave me a sense of humor because you are so absurd."

So wrote Spalding Gray, the brilliant monologuist, who (so sadly) killed himself last year:

For 34 years I lived with you and came to love you. I came to you because I loved theater and found theater everywhere I looked. I fled New England and came to Manhattan, that island off the coast of America, where human nature was king and everyone exuded character and had big attitude. You gave me a sense of humor because you are so absurd.

Are you done talking about the New York Times yet? Well, I wanted to talk about the philosophy therapist and Al Franken and Spalding Gray, but I've been sitting in the café too long, the cappucino is severely frazzling my nerves and I'm getting hungry... And yikes, someone just knocked over a chair and I completely overreacted. So it's time for me to go. Let me leave you with a Madison picture, as I disengage from the newspaper from New York and return to my real environs:

Gray's Anatomy. We watched Gray's Anatomy last night. My son had rented it a few days ago, before the news came out that Spalding Gray's body had been identified. His (presumed) suicide changes the way I could see the movie: all the closeups compelled me to try to see into that face to find reasons for what happened. Statements in that film about the terrible effects his mother's suicide had on him cannot be heard the same way any more, because he had children too, though one resists blaming the unfortunate man.

The theater performance of Gray's Anatomy, which I saw at the Union Theater here years ago, was far better than the Steven Soderbergh film that is on the DVD. The Soderbergh film is full of extra scenes, interviews with various people who've had eye injuries. These are actually great interviews, beautifully photographed, and worthy as documentary film, but I want to see Gray's theater performance, which has the static, stark visual of a man at a table with a notebook and a glass of water. When Soderbergh does show Gray in his chair, he propels the chair across the screen in front of various projected images and restlessly moves the camera and changes the lighting.

Though he can claim to be trying to express something about failing vision, Soderbergh's implicit message is that the theater piece is not interesting enough for a film, but in fact it's far more compelling--and much funnier--without all the extra embroidery. I'd like to see a deluxe collection of Gray's work on DVD that would include as many of his performance pieces as exist, including both the official films, like Soderbergh's, and films or tapes that have been made of live theater performances. I'd also like to see--if it exists--a filmed performance of the play Our Town that he talks about in Monster in a Box (with or without projectile vomiting).

A front page obituary for Spalding Gray in today's NYT. He deserves it. (When there's a front page obituary, it makes the inside page obituaries seem hidden away. There's one today on the inside for Paul Winfield, who is fondly remembered, especially for Sounder.)

Here's a quote from the Gray obituary:

In addition to his writing, Gray enjoyed skiing and drinking; he once told an interviewer that a 6 p.m. bloody Mary was a staple of his routine.

That's the second Times obituary in less than a week to mention the decedent's interest in Bloody Marys. The subject of drinking is usually suppressed in obituaries. Perhaps there is an artist exception.

Spalding Gray. I've written about him before--here, here, and here. I can't say how sad I am to know he's dead. What a brilliant man. There are many monologuists, including one I love as much as Spalding Gray, but there is no one else at all like him. I have driven all over the country listening to my tapes of Monster in a Box over and over. Also The Terrors of Pleasure. Everyone should see Swimming to Cambodia. We saw him perform Gray's Anatomy here at the University Theater years ago, with his plain table and chair and notebook and glass of water. From the NYT:

It was a muted end for Mr. Gray, whose singular talent was closely observed autobiography, performed in a style that alternated between conspiratorial whispers and antic screams as he roamed through topics large and small.

Very, very sad. Hearing his monologues, I always found it hard to believe he could have been as sad and he was saying he was, because he was so funny and so deep. I'd like to think he wouldn't have left us if he hadn't also been in physical pain. Love to his wife and children.