in True West , Sam Shepard's method is a kind of allegorical realism, where the use of everyday items such as golf clubs, houseplants and toasters is not at all intended to suggest us reality.
In this play, Shepard illustrates the duality of human personality, and our primitive instincts for violence against the unavoidable family ties that usually discourage an individual from acting as wanted. In this case, two brothers, Austin and Lee, who experience the typical good boy vs. bad boy sibling rivalry unexpectedly meet. As a result a series of emotional angry outbreaks take place as Austin can't defined himself: Is he frightened of Lee or does he admire his brother's willingness to break the rules? Austin graduated college, got married, has a family to whom he will return soon. He is disciplined, striving and ambitious. Quite the opposite, Lee is uneducated, violent, envious and resentful.
Austin, a Hollywood screenwriter, is housesitting his mother's home while she is on a sightseeing trip to Alaska. His brother, Lee, has appeared all of a sudden and wants to share the house. Lee is a tramp and small-time criminal, who has just spent the previous six months in the Mojave Desert with their alcoholic father.
The filthy and foul Lee invites Austin's Hollywood producer for a round of golf, and ends up selling him on a story idea for a modern Western film, totally displacing his hard-working brother, who as a result crumples into a chaotic and violent wreck.
Shepard's focus is not on verisimilitude, but on the intensity of the conflict that is revealed. For instance, the main action in the play is the reduction of the mother's neat household into a garbage dump. This includes the destruction of Austin's typewriter with a golf club, vomiting into the desiccated remains of a philodendron and squashing fresh toast into the linoleum. Additionally, Lee had stolen several toasters from the neighborhood, "There's gonna be a general lack of toast in the neighborhood this morning..." he says.
In various occasions, Austin seemed to be afraid of his brother as he winds up doing what Lee asks him, such as lending him his car or typing the script of his imaginary screenplay. However, what Austin mostly seems to fear is not Lee, but his own deep-set, self-destructive impulses as he lives out the paranoiac nightmare of being displaced by his brother. "You think you are the only one in the brain department?" Lee questions him.
When Lee is dictating Austin the lines of his screenplay, he narrates the story of two characters that are running after each other -- actually referring to themselves. He says: "The one who is chasing, doesn't know where the other one is taking him, the one who is being chased, doesn't know where he is going." The two brothers are constantly competing with each other; even though, they head in opposite directions in life. Austin has a career and a family while Lee doesn't but he has the ability to break the rules, his brother strictly follows.
Towards the end of the play, both brothers who are very intoxicated from having being drinking alcohol the night through, start to act both wild and silly at the same time. Under the influence of alcohol, repressions and taboos are forgotten and one acts and says things that would not normally do. As in Fool for Love, the protagonists confess their deepest fears and feelings when drunk, in True West, Austin reveals how he feels lost and lonely despite of his accomplishments, he says:" there's nothing real down here... streets look like a postcard..." He is living his dreams (he is becoming a playwright, has a wife, etc) but he seems not to get acquainted with his reality and does not know anymore what is real and what is not.
Then, decides to "try" the toasters and make some toasts, which Lee steps over and smashes on the floor as he criticizes him: "you're making that toast like salvation or something...I don't want any toast..." to what Austin replies: "...I love the smell of toast...it's salvation...". While this argument goes on, their mother comes back doesn't surprising much when finding out the disaster her sons had made to her house. But, she tells them they'll both end up in the same dessert.
At the end of the play the phrases: "...Something to keep me in touch" and "It's easy to go out of touch" made me realize that one must hold onto something that will keep one focused in order to go on -- either focus on one's reality or on one's dream(s). Everyone needs that toast of salvation!

this play is great, buy it!

Shephard's 1995 revision of his play that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 builds tension for two acts and dissipates it in the third. If it is "symbolic," the symbols are opaque. There is the trademark Shephard old crank (Dodge), sons who don't get along (Tilden and Bradley), outbreaks of smashed crockery, and a young man unsuccessfully seeking recognition (Vince). There is also a blatantly unfaithful wife (Halie) and a nervous younger woman (Vince's girlfriend Shelly). Their ennui and ambivalences are on the family's "old home place" in Illinois rather than in a desert that mirrors the desolation of the fissioned nuclear family.

The play can be read(/performed) as comedy rather than existentialist tragedy, especially since it sputters out rather than achieving catharsis. It seems to me that Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming" is a more effective vision of a similar return "home" to a viper's next and that the third act of "Buried Child" would be better if Shelly established her dominance rather than Vince inheriting the place after Dodge's (perhaps unreliable) confession.

There might be some people who tend to think of Buried Child as an elusive play, for there are a lot of actions they don't quite understand. Nevertheless, I think something is weird because Shepard's focus is not simply on the realistic level, but on the symbolic level as well. The backyard in this play, for one, is conveying this two-fold level. On the one hand, it is physically a backyard as many people have in real life. It is, on the other, a mysterious place inasmuch as there is no detailed description of the place, yet a few significant events all so happen to take place at the backyard. That is, growing crops and burying the child is all relating to the backyard. In my opinion, there are many other actions and events that have such a two-fold meaning in this play.

Buried Child is a story of coming home and coming to terms with the past. Sheppard's use of visual imagery and his mastery of simple, stark, but powerful dialog make this one of the better modern American plays. 5 men, 2 women, one set.

a great intro for a character on the stage and a car explosion, that's about it for this revamped soap reset in a modern texas backdrop. take one's consciousness and have him appear with an empty stryophome cup every couple of scenes and, bang, he's the Shepard play

In Fool for Love , Sam Shepard analyzes the complicated relationship between May and Eddie who are involved in a love-hate, fascination-repulsion 15-year-long relation which is once more in the 'on again' phase.
Set in a low-budget motel room on the edge of the Mojave Desert, May and Eddie play out an unpredictable encounter. Traveling close to 2,500 miles to come back into her life, Eddie attempts to once again declare his faithfulness and commitment to the unconvinced May, who tells him: "You gotta give this up. You've been jerking me off like this for fifteen years. Fifteen years, I've been a yo-yo for you". May screams for Eddie to leave yet pleads for him to stay upon his repeated exits. Through their arguing, the chemistry and history the two have shared becomes apparent and it is obvious that the characters are deeply in love. "We've got a pact...we've made a pact", Eddie said to May. "You know we're connected, May. We will always be connected...that was decided a long time ago", he added.
A bottle of tequila blends the couple's arguing into the narration of a story that deepens on May and Eddie's past revealing how the two were already completely in love when the truth was learned about their true relationship. At this point of the play, Shepard had gotten illusion and reality finely combined that it takes a while to understand that the Old Man observing, and occasionally interacting with the characters, is just their distant father's ghost.
Shepard has done an amazing job in this play managing illusory conversations naturally flow within the real ones. May and Eddie seem to have both independent and joined conversations with the Old Man.
A fourth character, Martin comes into the story, as the shy, naive date of May to reminds us that the conversation between the protagonists is "real". As Eddie, now drunk, continues his story of how he came to know May, the old man yells for him to stop the story, but ends up discovering facts of his own past as well -- which confused me since his presence is not real but illusory only.
The fact that at the end of the play, the motel gets burned down by Eddie's mistress, -- as May refers to her -- May is forced to move away again, suggesting us that the vicious cycle in which the characters live, will be repeated once again following what Eddie once told May: "You'll never get rid of me. I'll track you down no matter where you go".

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results. We learn of Eddie, Mae, their father, and a "Man" (Martin) coming for a date blind to the status of the relationship of his date and her brother and their father. I am a Senior at Lindenwood University in St. Charles Missouri, double majoring in Theatre and Mass Communications. This April, I will be directing "Fool For Love" as my senior project. This play, as analyzed in a previous modern drama class and in my current working analysis, is highly identifiable with anyone who has ever been involved in a severely dysfunctional relationship that won't go away. Mr. Shepard creates four intricate and powerful characters sharing both realistic and ethereal existances. I would appreciate any input to my e-mail address on your opinions or be happy to share in depth commentary on this brilliant work. JesterLK@aol.com

"Great Dreams of Heaven" is a quick read at a breezy 142 pages. Some of these stories would jump alive in an oral reading because they are essentially prose dramas. "Betty's Cats" is a wonderful example of a lady who just refuses to see that a trailer full of cats, even if they stink and complaints have been made to the health department, could be a nuisance to anyone. "Living the Sign" is a great little drama about a guy who stops into a fast food shop, sees a handwritten sign, "Life is what's happening to you while you're making plans for something else." He proceeds to grill the counter clerks until he find out who wrote the sign. After the long investigation, he finds his answer in the geeky Dicky; the piece ends with a little profundity about plans. My favorite story is "It Wasn't Proust" which is essentially an argument between a husband & wife over past romances in France; the dialogue sparkles with the banter having edge & wit. While a couple stories are too short to gain momentum and a couple are puzzle pieces, overall this a wonderful blend of prose and drama. Enjoy!

Shepard, the well-known playwright and actor, has written eighteen brief stories that are filled with unforgettable images. They deal with the unexpected reactions of human nature, especially sex and the yearnings for things that no longer exist. Shepard is at his best with these stories as he clearly and effortless describes the sorrows, joys, and fallibility of everyday life.

I enjoyed all of Shepard's stories in his second collection of fiction. It would be hard to choose any one favorite, but 'Blinking Eye' is one I will never forget. It will leave an unforgettable image on your mind. It is about a young girl driving cross-country bearing an urn containing her mother's ashes when she encounters an injured hawk on the side of the road. She decides to take the injured hawk to a veterinarian for help. What happens after she places the hawk in her car will definitely leave a vivid image in your mind forever.

Shepard's gift of writing is effortless to read for he brings all of his stories to life in a clear, concise, and beautifully detailed matter. This is a book not to be missed!!

Joe Hanssen

Readers should not approach Shepard's book with expectations of reading traditional short stories. Rather, in this collection of eighteen condensed fictions, Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright and Oscar-nominated actor, Sam Shepard shows us a dreamlike country populated with troubled cowboys, fast-food workers, suburban gun owners, and lonely gas station employees. And he doesn't waste words. While some pieces of Shepard's HEAVEN shine brighter than others (like the title story of two old friends driven apart by a Denny's waitress and the collection's first story, "Remedy Man," about a fixer of bad horses), all of them offer up truths as real as earthly dirt. He has it as an actor. He has it as a playwright. And with this collection, Sam Shepard proves that he has the right stuff as a fiction writer.

G. Merritt

This is not a horrible play, but it is a horrible play to see on a first date. I made that mistake. I saw it back in the 80s off broadway in New York. I scored great tickets, first row. The theater was small and the stage was not set in an arch or elevated.

One of the charactors/props in the play was a live orphaned baby lamb kept in a baby playpen at the front of the stage. The lamb kept licking our fingers during the play and was very cute. So far so good, this first date was going ok. I was scoring points with the girl I was with.

Then the drama started. The family portrayed is disfunctional and under incredible stress. The violence increases and increases. Yelling, fighting--I don't want to spoil things for you, but things don't turn out well for the lamb at the end (for you PETA folks out there--through the use creative F/Xs no living lamb was hurt in the production). End result for me--not a very good first date. It was a better read.

Sam Shepard has created a beautiful story of a poor family struggling to keep their home, relationships, and sanity. His amazing symbols keep the reader thinking, and this proves to be a play that is much more than surface deep. I especially enjoyed his themes on class and destiny, as well as his ideas on family and rebirth. For me, this book was amazingly written and intriquingly complex; its tragedies make the reader reevaluate his/ her own life. It made me laugh out loud, but in addition to being funny, it was enlightening, symbolic, provocative.

This is a rather eclectic anthology that includes critical analyses of Shepard's plays (written between 1963 and 1981) as well as first-hand accounts by some of the actors and directors who collaborated with Shepard on various productions. Taken as a whole, the critical essays address most of the plays Shepard wrote during those seventeen years. They do, however, vary wildly in quality. Editor Bonnie Marranca's opening essay, while often quite perceptive, occasionally falls prey to simplistic generalization. Jack Gelber's essay, The Playwright as Shaman, is marred by interpretive inaccuracies. The best of the bunch are Robert Coe's "Image Shots are Blown" : The Rock Plays which presents an illuminating analysis of The Tooth of Crime, Florence Falk's Men without Women: The Shepard Landscape which reveals how certain male and female character-types appear and reappear (in slightly different dress) in a fair number of Shepard's plays, and William Kleb's Worse Than Homeless, a beautifully written examination of True West from a Langian perspective. Also of note, are Shepard's own critical writings which define, albeit obliquely, his aesthetic and creative methods. Finally, it need be stated that despite its uneveness (which, after all, is endemic to anthologies), this book is essential reading for anyone interested in Shepard's work. It is certainly one of the most comprehensive examinations of this playwright and his plays presently in print.

I think this book was very interesting. The way Sam Shepard had the characters set up and there atitiudes about the whole situation was brilliant. I thik it was delightful

As a theatre major and a huge fan of Sam Shepard's body of works, I was excited to read "Lie...." The play has gained popularity recently, especially in academic theatre circles. The characters, however rich, never seem to truely develop. The plot is stalled from the first scene -- the whole piece seems to be nothing but one loud, emotional outburst after another. If you want to be exposed to the greatness of Shepard, stick with "Buried Child" or "Fool for Love" -- even "Curse of the Starving Class" shines far above this work.

This wonderful drama is a great example of the imperfect quality of human nature. Even the characters that seem to be the most put together have their own weaknesses and foibles. Shepard has done a very good job of constructing the scenes in a logical manner, appropriately switching between the homes of two different, yet strongly connected families. One of the crowning achievements of this drama is that it draws you in and makes you feel for the characters of the two midwestern families, especially Beth, the now-mentally damaged wife of Jake. I have not seen this play performed but if the written play can draw you the reader in so deeply, I can only imagine what the performed piece can do to the audience. I highly reccomend this drama to anyone who loves to read well-written plays.

In almost every playwriting class I have taken the teacher has asked the participants to go around the room and discuss their favorite plays. A Lie of the Mind is always everyone's favorite Shepard play. I have curiously never heard playwrights mention Fool for Love, Buried Child, or Curse of the Starving Class which are much more popular with actors and directors (and the Pulitzer Committee). True West is sometimes a favorite for its tight X-shaped structure. But, A Lie of the Mind has a gorgeous ensemble feel, interwining the lives of two troubled families into an alcoholic and violent aria of tortured love. I have seen it performed twice and seen actors work on each individual scene as class work so it haunts me a lot and never fails to astonish. The play has a heartbeat and sweet warm flesh. It also has one of the most dramatic and involving beginning scenes ever penned. A must read for playwrights interested in writing ensemble pieces.

The book held plenty of information, and is therefor quite useful. However, it could have been written in a somewhat easier to digest way.

I didn't like TRUE WEST. But there's nothing wrong with it that could be blamed on this particular production of the play. The actors are good considering the flimsy material that they have to work with. The music is used sparingly, but is very effective at setting the scene. I just couldn't get over the shallow development of the characters and a script that was constantly attempting to be deeper than it was.

The story has one location. Two brothers sit in their mother's house, yelling and screaming at each other until the parental unit herself appears near the end of the play. I like the idea behind the story, which is to put two people in a confined area and see what happens to them. Unfortunately, most of what we learn about these two is quite dull. One brother is a moderately successful screenwriter while the other makes his living as a petty burglar. I had hoped that we wouldn't get soppy scenes of each brother revealing that he secretly envied the other's lifestyle, but that's exactly what we get here. The successful brother is the one without good people skills and the streetwise brother really wants to make it big, but doesn't have the proper school learning to do so. You've probably seen this sort of thing played out in films, television and theatre thousands of times before; I know I have. The problem here is that there is virtually nothing else going on in the script to distract from the banality of the characters.

The humor comes across as being forced -- very forced -- especially in the second half. The play is billed as a tragicomedy, but the transition from the funny scenes to the dramatic is shockingly jarring. You can almost hear the goofy, "Hey, this is funny!" music in the background every time a supposedly lighthearted moment comes up. It's possibly attempting to be a black comedy, but I just can't really see it that way. People who moan and whine and complain constantly could very well be hilarious, but I just wasn't amused by them. The comedy didn't flow naturally from the drama, and the drama just hung limply by itself out in No Man's Land.

If you already know that you like the play, then you will probably enjoy this particular staging of it. The various sound effects and music are used in moderation, and are very efficient at placing the audience right inside that house. The script does have one or two nice lines about the falseness of the Hollywood lifestyle and the boundary between the life that we see in pop culture compared to the reality that we drive through every day. They aren't the most original observations that you'll ever hear, but the wording of them and the acting of the principals really make those short sequences work. It's a pity that the rest of the script wasn't as sharp as these moments, because they really had me longing to hear more.

At one point near the end, the hardened brother (who is attempting to write a screenplay, just like his sibling) asks, "What do you call it when something's been said a thousand times before?" The answer that he receives is, of course, "a cliché". And unfortunately that sums up almost this entire production. Other dramas that have utilized these rather basic elements haven't made the mistake of not including anything else. But TRUE WEST is just one big cliché.