Sam Shepard

February 15, 2017
A journalist who has devoted years to Shepard's life and works debuts with a comprehensive account of the life of the prolific playwright, poet, fiction writer, musician, and more.Although Winters, who has written for the Boston Globe and numerous other publications, tells us that he's not writing an extensive description and assessment of Shepard's work, he does just that. Readers who are not aficionados of Shepard's work will be surprised by his vast output and range. The story begins in 1964 in Greenwich Village, when Samuel Shepard Rogers (he later dropped the surname) was beginning to see his revolutionary works produced. Then Winters goes back to Shepard's birth in 1943 and marches steadily forward until the present. Using his unsurpassed knowledge of the various Shepard archives and the contents of his interviews of those involved in Shepard's life and career, Winters shows us connections between the playwright's life and works and provides details about his various relationships with women--including the rise and fall and mild rise again of his involvement with actress Jessica Lange. Shepard himself, however, did not participate in the publication. Throughout, the author emphasizes his subject's prolific output, including plays, film scripts, performances in films, and music, which he frequently has integrated with the texts of his plays. Winters also reveals the extent of Shepard's friendship with collaborator Joseph Chaikin and his work with Bob Dylan. We don't learn much about how Shepard works except that, early on, he preferred to work at night and remains computer-less. Winters is generally nonjudgmental, though he does disdain a few works and declares A Lie of the Mind (1985) as Shepard's greatest. Though not always gracefully written, the book is unquestionably well-informed and -researched. A thorough, admiring work that is nonetheless honest about what the author views as Shepard's late-career decline.

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April 1, 2017

A Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright for Buried Child, Sam Shepard (b. 1943) is an enigma in the world of theater and film. Nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, he is also accomplished in other performing arts, notably music and songwriting. Several of Shepard's plays have been on Broadway, including Buried Child as well as True West. The first part of journalist, critic, and Shepard scholar Winters's book discusses Shepard's early years and his stormy relationship with his father while growing up in Illinois and California. It delves into Shepard's romantic relationships, including with singer-songwriter Patti Smith, and the great love of his life, actress Jessica Lange. Although Shepard was fiercely private about his relationship with Lange, this volume details their romance and the journals they would write to each other. Other interesting people making appearances include the playwright's former father-in-law and best friend Johnny Dark, with whom Shepard filmed the documentary Shepard and Dark. VERDICT Highly recommended to theater and movie lovers.--Holly Skir, York Coll., CUNY

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Starred review from February 15, 2017
A deep vein of autobiography runs through Shepard's daringly imaginative and darkly funny plays, short stories, and novels, including his newest, The One Inside (2017), but it is countered by myth and misdirection. First-time biographer Winters, a journalist and critic, meticulously presents the facts of Shepard's complex life along with incisive descriptions and analyses of diverse productions of Shepard's demanding and innovative plays, from his early off-off-Broadway one-acts to his profound family dramas, including Buried Child and True West, to works he feels have been unjustly underrated. Winters traces the Shepard family's struggle with alcoholism and Shepard's traumatic battles with his abusive father. He reports on Shepard's devotion to breeding horses (as a kid in California, he wanted to be a veterinarian but ran away to Greenwich Village in the early 1960s instead) and chronicles Shepard's extensive film acting career, reluctantly launched by his need to earn money, and long relationship with actor Jessica Lange. Winters explores Shepard's influences, from jazz and rock 'n' roll (he plays the drums) to Samuel Beckett, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Joseph Chaikin, and, most intriguingly, the teachings of the Russian mystic George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. Ultimately, Winters portrays Shepard as a magnetic, enigmatic, and multitalented artist drawing on a deep well of loneliness and self-questioning, keen attunement to the zeitgeist, and penetrating insight into human nature.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)