Sam Shepard and Walter Kirn
Can’t say I’ve been a big fan of Sam Shepard’s, but this review by Walter Kirn does as much as a book review can to make you feel well disposed towards Shepard’s new book,
Using fanciful anecdotes, lyric riffs, seemingly lifelike reminiscences and quotes from our nation’s founding thinkers, he drills down through the strata of our history into the bedrock of American myth. He sinks his wells at random, in offbeat spots, taking core samples from all over the country that often contain fossils of shared experience, some of them heavily crusted over with legend. His words have a flinty, mineral integrity, especially when he describes the people around him, who come off as distinctive individuals but also have an enduring archetypal feel, like the iconic figures in Whitman poems. His crackpot vagabonds, working-class survivors and footloose fellow wanderers have been with us always and probably always will be.
Talk about good writing, that Walt Kirn sure can write.
