Sam Shepard was an American artist who worked as an award-winning playwright, writer and actor. His many written works are known for being frank and often absurd, as well as for having an authentic sense of the style and sensibility of the gritty modern American west. He was an actor of the stage and motion pictures; a director of stage and film; author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs; and a musician.
The stories are full of: love and longing, the desire to reach the boundaries that partake of existence, the longing for a gap that distinguishes men and women, and a much deeper gap that separates even men from themselves. The stories in this series are full of biting humor, cruelty and grief.
Sam Shepard is a natural storyteller.听 And I do have my doubts over where he might have learned his craft.听 In other words, I think he may be self-taught.听 Comparisons have been made to Raymond Carver, but Shepard hasn鈥檛 had the sharp blade of editor Lish cutting on his page as Carver did.听 Shepard simply tells his short story.听 He sidesteps all the fancy adjectives, and he even tends to avoid unnecessary adverbs. He is succinct and never wordy.听 Rarely do his stories ever run above ten pages.听 He writes over a wide range of rugged individualist and portrays stereotypes in order to carefully make fun of them.听 There are always plenty of lonely people in a Sam Shepard story.听 And characters are generally in the business of looking for something they cannot find, or have. In these tales it is always better to be a self sufficient independent than a person who might be in need of something.听 It is also advised to keep in constant motion so as to keep the sea legs from collapsing. 听
I came to this book directly from his first, but that being the result of reading Shepard鈥檚 letters back and forth to his ex father-in-law Johnny Dark.听 I had already seen some of his plays including and back in 2000-2001.听 I had also seen him act in several films. So I was familiar with his work in the arts. I had no doubt the man could write. And where I have read some criticism that Shepard fails at prose I had rejected these stupid comments as most likely made by some idiot who hadn鈥檛 a clue about truth and what a bit of honesty reveals in your fiction. Shepard is certainly unpretentious in his writing, but I would assume he is rather particular about who he keeps company with.听 Not surprisingly, the more writing I read by Shepard the more I wanted.听 That is a good problem to have as it appears he never tires of having something he will someday have get entered onto the page.
Shepard is an American treasure. A homegrown and homespun hero to me. A person more at ease with horses, dogs, and cattle in bucolic settings.听 Unspoiled. Unchained.
Tal vez el mejor dialoguista de todos los que he podido conocer. Sam Shepard, lejos de pretender abarcarlo todo, crea situaciones en las que la vida pareciera disolverse por la rendija de las puertas, la luz de las persianas, las palabras que se despiden de las bocas. El gran protagonista de sus cuentos es lo inabarcable, la experiencia que es imposible de sujetarse hasta hacerla aprehendible.
Para Shepard, considero, al final lo 煤nico que queda es vivir. Marcar el propio camino...y desconfiar de las se帽ales que se divisan sobre la carrera. Uno es el que lo sabe todo. Uno es aquel que queda al final del camino...
I have been a fan of the actor Sam Shepard for decades. He died in 2017, at the age of 73. I loved his work in Days of Heaven and The Right Stuff, among many other films. I knew he was also a playwright but I had never seen any of his plays. So, I was very excited to learn that he had also written short fiction and really wanted to give one of his story collections a try. It did not disappoint and really grew on me, as I read along. I LOVE literary surprises and this one ranks right up there.