What do you think?
Rate this book
Day Out of Days: Stories
From one of our most admired writers: a collection of stories set mainly in the fertile imaginative landscape of the American West, written with the terse lyricism, cinematic detail, and wry humor that have become Sam Shepard’s trademarks.
A man traveling down Highway 90 West gets trapped alone overnight inside a Cracker Barrel restaurant, where he is tormented by an endless loop of Shania Twain songs on the overhead sound system. A wandering actor returns to his hometown against his better instincts and runs into an old friend, who recounts their teenage days of stealing cars, scoring Benzedrine, and sleeping with whores in Tijuana. A Minnesota family travels south for a winter vacation but, caught up in the ordinary tyrannies of family life, remains oblivious to the beauty of the Yucatán Peninsula. A solitary horse rancher muses on Sitting Bull and Beckett amid the jumble of stuff in his big country kitchen—from rusted spurs and Lakota dream-catchers to yellowing pictures of hawks and galloping horses to “snapshots of different sons in different shirts doing different things like fishing, riding mules and tractors; leaning up against their different mothers at radical angles.”
Made up of short narratives, lyrics, and dialogues, Day out of Days sets conversation against tale, song against memory, in a cubistic counterpoint that finally links each piece together. The result is a stunning work of vision and clarity imbued with the vivid reverberations of myth—Shepard at his flinty-eyed, unwavering best.
From the Hardcover edition.
A man traveling down Highway 90 West gets trapped alone overnight inside a Cracker Barrel restaurant, where he is tormented by an endless loop of Shania Twain songs on the overhead sound system. A wandering actor returns to his hometown against his better instincts and runs into an old friend, who recounts their teenage days of stealing cars, scoring Benzedrine, and sleeping with whores in Tijuana. A Minnesota family travels south for a winter vacation but, caught up in the ordinary tyrannies of family life, remains oblivious to the beauty of the Yucatán Peninsula. A solitary horse rancher muses on Sitting Bull and Beckett amid the jumble of stuff in his big country kitchen—from rusted spurs and Lakota dream-catchers to yellowing pictures of hawks and galloping horses to “snapshots of different sons in different shirts doing different things like fishing, riding mules and tractors; leaning up against their different mothers at radical angles.”
Made up of short narratives, lyrics, and dialogues, Day out of Days sets conversation against tale, song against memory, in a cubistic counterpoint that finally links each piece together. The result is a stunning work of vision and clarity imbued with the vivid reverberations of myth—Shepard at his flinty-eyed, unwavering best.
From the Hardcover edition.
306 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 15, 2009
65 people are currently reading
886 people want to read
About the author
Sam Shepard
227 books665 followersSam 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews
September 7, 2010
Lately I find myself baffled by the hyperbolic responses of my female friends and relations to the book (now Julia Roberts vehicle) Eat, Pray, Love. However, after hearing some of their descriptions of said narrative, I get the sense that the comforting notion of finding some vestige of spirituality in this earthly realm is comparable to the feeling I get from reading Sam Shepard. In my case, substitute "West Texas" for "Bali" and "driving a Chevrolet Impala through the Chihuahua Desert" for "eating your way through Tuscany at sunset." I confess, I'm not anywhere near Mr. Shepard's target demographic, but being unaccounted for on the marketing bar graph hasn't kept me from buying all these late-period Lou Reed albums, either. I don't ride horses, write plays, drink hard liquor, or date movie stars, but I heartily endorse this book. In fact, one of the pieces in this collection, entitled "Chatter," is currently taped to the wall above my writing desk. It concerns the protagonist's inability to focus, and the difficulty of finding some quiet space in the mind. My favorite lines are these: "I have no idea what it's really like with other people. Actually, I have no idea what it's really like with me, when you get right down to it." Here, substitute "understated realization of emotional truth" for "fucking some Spaniard at an ashram."
November 29, 2014
http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/1038821...
It is unlikely that the evolution of Sam Shepard as an accomplished writer of short fiction comes as any great surprise to those of us who read him. Each book throughout the course of his life ages right along beside him. By 2010 his voice has become wizened and mature, and with it he acknowledges his own frailties as a human being in his attempts at getting along in the world and with others. His personal relationships, though long, are somewhat disruptive and not without a revolving wheel of baggage that certainly seems the cause of all his repeating issues. But Sam is such a comfort for me to read. I can relate to almost all he has to write about, and even his wildest imaginations on the page seem to carry me places I have always been willing and perhaps subconsciously intending to go.
It is possible that Sam Shepard will have much more to say as he continues to practice his craft by his doing it almost constantly. Unlike myself, who manages to find writing time in longish spurts when I block out the time to commit myself to a serious attempt at forging something of consequence, Sam takes his notebook along with him wherever he goes and jots down what he sees and thinks about things, it seems, relentlessly. He appears to never rest from this literary labor. I am so envious. I wish I were a different sort of man who might conduct this same practice and discipline in my own life. But then, that would presume I had something to say of note and matter. I am afraid I am more of a listener who then enjoys reporting on things he has learned from mistakes he and others have made. I am not good at making things up from scratch, nor do I think Sam is either. But thank goodness for his notebook and journals.
After viewing the documentary Shepard and Dark and then reading their selected letters to each other I like to think I have come to know these two guys intimately. When I came upon the story early in this collection titled San Juan Bautista (Highway 90 West) I immediately already knew the three characters involved in the tale. Sam Shepard, Johnny Dark, and Dennis Ludlow had all been previously introduced to me in other writings I have read. The story was so much fun as I could see and hear Sam and Johnny throughout. Of course a few of the earlier stories in this collection were in their way preparing me for this more personal take on friendship and aging. Grief, sadness, and despair never take a back seat in any of these short tales. A person in his own state and age for reflecting back on a life and what it has meant would be best served by being prepared, well-rested, and warmly fed before taking on the reading of these texts. The absolute certainty of embarking on a long haul with Shepard is not for the feint of heart, nor somebody having weak knees.
One of the most memorable shorts came nearer to the end. It was a more longish piece detailing a trip the family made to their favorite winter destination. Land of the Living portends the trouble and eventual breakup between partners and parents. It was all too real, and still, I miss it. Having finished reading this book I feel a bit out of sorts, as my Sam Shepard fest has come too near to its close. But I am not sure I would have appreciated the stories of Sam Shepard as much had I not first seen the film and read the letters between Johnny and Sam. Their back story is more important than anything I have read, and with some luck, it just might continue.
It is unlikely that the evolution of Sam Shepard as an accomplished writer of short fiction comes as any great surprise to those of us who read him. Each book throughout the course of his life ages right along beside him. By 2010 his voice has become wizened and mature, and with it he acknowledges his own frailties as a human being in his attempts at getting along in the world and with others. His personal relationships, though long, are somewhat disruptive and not without a revolving wheel of baggage that certainly seems the cause of all his repeating issues. But Sam is such a comfort for me to read. I can relate to almost all he has to write about, and even his wildest imaginations on the page seem to carry me places I have always been willing and perhaps subconsciously intending to go.
It is possible that Sam Shepard will have much more to say as he continues to practice his craft by his doing it almost constantly. Unlike myself, who manages to find writing time in longish spurts when I block out the time to commit myself to a serious attempt at forging something of consequence, Sam takes his notebook along with him wherever he goes and jots down what he sees and thinks about things, it seems, relentlessly. He appears to never rest from this literary labor. I am so envious. I wish I were a different sort of man who might conduct this same practice and discipline in my own life. But then, that would presume I had something to say of note and matter. I am afraid I am more of a listener who then enjoys reporting on things he has learned from mistakes he and others have made. I am not good at making things up from scratch, nor do I think Sam is either. But thank goodness for his notebook and journals.
After viewing the documentary Shepard and Dark and then reading their selected letters to each other I like to think I have come to know these two guys intimately. When I came upon the story early in this collection titled San Juan Bautista (Highway 90 West) I immediately already knew the three characters involved in the tale. Sam Shepard, Johnny Dark, and Dennis Ludlow had all been previously introduced to me in other writings I have read. The story was so much fun as I could see and hear Sam and Johnny throughout. Of course a few of the earlier stories in this collection were in their way preparing me for this more personal take on friendship and aging. Grief, sadness, and despair never take a back seat in any of these short tales. A person in his own state and age for reflecting back on a life and what it has meant would be best served by being prepared, well-rested, and warmly fed before taking on the reading of these texts. The absolute certainty of embarking on a long haul with Shepard is not for the feint of heart, nor somebody having weak knees.
One of the most memorable shorts came nearer to the end. It was a more longish piece detailing a trip the family made to their favorite winter destination. Land of the Living portends the trouble and eventual breakup between partners and parents. It was all too real, and still, I miss it. Having finished reading this book I feel a bit out of sorts, as my Sam Shepard fest has come too near to its close. But I am not sure I would have appreciated the stories of Sam Shepard as much had I not first seen the film and read the letters between Johnny and Sam. Their back story is more important than anything I have read, and with some luck, it just might continue.
October 2, 2010
Day Out of Days by Sam Shephard is unlike most short story collections I've read. It's a place of voice. Set mainly along the rural highways of the Midwest, Great Plains, and Western states, the stories speak from and of people who have watched their towns decay, given up on their dreams and settled in for the slow passing of time. Voices fill the pages. Voices enter the readers head. At times, these voices run together, loose their form and are lost in a cacophony of sound. Still, there are instances where they stand out, and weave together a narrative that holds the reader's attention. As in "Haskell, Arkansas (Highway 70)":
Even the dead and speechless have a voice in the Shephard's stories. What I like about this story is that it's as if Shephard is speaking to the reader. We are the man by the side of the road. The head contains all the voices, all the stories. We pick them up, travel a bit with them. See what happens.
In Day Out of Days, you see a writer having fun with language and story. Not everything works. There are snippets that seem like they belong more in a writing journal than in a published book, but who cares. Overall, it adds to the effect. One result though is that this collection is slow to read. It's best to give the voices space and let them reside within you a bit before moving on. Restless, but not aimless, Day Out of Days will leave you with a glimpse of America through the windshield of a dusty truck passing through.
Sunday, midday. Not many cars. Man's out for a stroll. He comes across a head in a ditch by the side of the road; walks right past it, thinking he hasn't seen what he's just seen; thinking it's not possible. He stops. His heart starts picking up a little. His breath gets choppy. He's shaking now and he's never understood why his body always takes over in moments of panic like this; why his body refuses to listen to his head. He turns and goes back. He stops again and stares down into the ditch. There it is. Big as life. He's staring straight at it. A severed head in a wicker basket. He picks up a stick and pokes it likes he's done before with dead dogs or deer.
Suddenly, the head starts to speak to the man in a soft, lilting voice. The eyes of the head don't open; the lips don't move. The voice just seems to be floating out the top of the skull. It's a humble, quiet kind of voice with no accent that the man can make out. Maybe the islands. The head asks the man if he'll kindly pick up the basket and carry it to a place it would prefer to be. A tranquil place not too far from here, away from the pounding sun and the roar of traffic.
Even the dead and speechless have a voice in the Shephard's stories. What I like about this story is that it's as if Shephard is speaking to the reader. We are the man by the side of the road. The head contains all the voices, all the stories. We pick them up, travel a bit with them. See what happens.
In Day Out of Days, you see a writer having fun with language and story. Not everything works. There are snippets that seem like they belong more in a writing journal than in a published book, but who cares. Overall, it adds to the effect. One result though is that this collection is slow to read. It's best to give the voices space and let them reside within you a bit before moving on. Restless, but not aimless, Day Out of Days will leave you with a glimpse of America through the windshield of a dusty truck passing through.
January 1, 2012
Loved this one a lot. At first glance I was a little disappointed to find that the collection was made up of lots of quite short pieces - the longest one is about five or six pages but generally they don't go on for more than three with the majority not even filling a page - but it's telling that the subtitle of the book is 'stories' rather than 'short stories'. Instead of lots of separate stories what you get here is a collection of narratives from the strange - the story of a talking severed head from the perspective both of the head and the man who finds it - to the banal - a group of middle aged men on vacation without their wives on a roadtrip across America - that fade in and out, interweaving over the course of the book. The pieces that punctuate and are separate from these narratives are not just filler though; some of the shorter prose pieces are beautifully lyrical in their depiction of landscape. Some parts are set out like poems but it would be a mistake to read them as such on their own as they only make sense as part of the whole. I loved the scattered, unconvetional even experimental way in which Shepard has constructed this book. I know it's unhelpful if not just plain wrong to compare works of literature to cinema but in form alone it kind of reminded me of Robert Altman's adaption of Raymond Carver's Short Cuts. loved it, just loved it!
October 26, 2016
As an actor, artist and writer trying to combine all of my influences into my first novel, it has become increasingly evident that I actually want to write a series of short stories that echo and tease the structure of a novel, a set, a stage, and life experience. This is why I love Sam Shepard's short stories so much. He plays the games in writing, experience and wonder with which I identify. In my 20's, when I began writing, it was with the influence of reading Motel Chronicles and Cruising Paradise. To read this now is both an inspiration and an attribution of growth. Shepard is probably most well known as a playwright, most visible as an actor, but the crux of his honest experience, humanity and growth is clear in these pages and the years that pace them. I can't recommend this book without recommending that all of his others are read prior. Simple, game playing, and clear.
August 17, 2016
Well now: This was one of the more unusual, fascinating, interesting reading experiences I have had in a while. Ostensibly, this is a collection of short stories. Some are very short, one or two sentences. There are some poems. Some of the stories recur here and there throughout the book. This is one of those instances where the reading experience is all that matters; trying to attach a "meaning" or "theme" to these pieces is simply not important. These pieces of course do have meaning, there is a great deal to them, but willfully trying to understand is not necessary. Just participate in the phantasmagoria. I am quite certain that I will be carrying these things around in my head for years to come. I like or love Sam Shepard unreservedly. I consider him a singular genius. This is one of those books I just happened to find and bought it solely because he wrote it. Reason enough. More than reason enough.
August 29, 2025
Written as if the present were some scorching past set in the old red clay of America where skulls can still be found on the side of the trail
May 21, 2010
I remember when I first read Hemingway's In Our Time , the little click I felt at the end when I realized that Hemingway's stories and vignettes had the same unifying integrity that his novels had, how threads of connectivity run throughout that book.
I remember finishing Cormac McArthy's Blood Meridian , and feeling as if I had just been gut-punched by an ultra-violent opera, an American west teeming with Valkyrie--with teeth.
I also remember one Christmas night when I read Beckett's Waiting for Godot for the first time, the (literal) gallows humor, the rapid patter between characters, the bleak landscape which offers no hope--and yet somehow, Beckett's two little hoboes find ways to wring hope out of despair.
I've been remembering these books because I've been reading Sam Sheppard's latest story collection Day out of Days. Sheppard opens the book with an epigraph from Beckett ("That's the mistake I made . . . to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough")and then gives us dozens of stories, many of which are no longer than a single page, poems, and mini plays populated by a recurring cast of characters (the three meth-addled companions traveling down America's west coast, the decapitated head who convinces a passerby to take it fromt he ditch in which it lies and toss it in a nearby pond, the famous actor failing to travel incognito, the man with the yellow dog. These characters criss-cross America and Mexico, often encountering unexpected violence or more devastating their own unquiet minds.
Day out of Days is not the Great American Novel, but it is great, and it is American, and it speaks in a novel voice of the isolation and longing for connection which defines much of America at this moment.
I remember finishing Cormac McArthy's Blood Meridian , and feeling as if I had just been gut-punched by an ultra-violent opera, an American west teeming with Valkyrie--with teeth.
I also remember one Christmas night when I read Beckett's Waiting for Godot for the first time, the (literal) gallows humor, the rapid patter between characters, the bleak landscape which offers no hope--and yet somehow, Beckett's two little hoboes find ways to wring hope out of despair.
I've been remembering these books because I've been reading Sam Sheppard's latest story collection Day out of Days. Sheppard opens the book with an epigraph from Beckett ("That's the mistake I made . . . to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough")and then gives us dozens of stories, many of which are no longer than a single page, poems, and mini plays populated by a recurring cast of characters (the three meth-addled companions traveling down America's west coast, the decapitated head who convinces a passerby to take it fromt he ditch in which it lies and toss it in a nearby pond, the famous actor failing to travel incognito, the man with the yellow dog. These characters criss-cross America and Mexico, often encountering unexpected violence or more devastating their own unquiet minds.
Day out of Days is not the Great American Novel, but it is great, and it is American, and it speaks in a novel voice of the isolation and longing for connection which defines much of America at this moment.
April 8, 2019
The friend who gave me this book gave it one star and described it as a cheap non-"The Road" Cormac McCarthy knockoff. As I haven't read anything by McCarthy besides "The Road", I can't comment. I'm far more familiar with Shepard as a dramatist than a book author, and his dramatic ear for distillation and essence of dialogue is strongly present here. He covers familiar territory: petty criminals, fucked-up relationships, and the mythos of the Old West. Themes of aging and death, the mind-body relationship/dichotomy, paranoia, American machismo, the performative aspects of being human, wrongdoing and repentance and what those things mean, and what true freedom really entails also abound. The book is fragmented into bits of poetry, dialogue, stories only a paragraph long, and longer stories (4-5 pages at most). An enjoyable, fast, and easy read; Shepard shows his trademark wry, self-aware insight into the dark and awkward aspects of human existence, ultimately arriving at a thankful acceptance for all of it.
June 1, 2016
Normalmente questo tipo di libro non incontra i miei gusti di lettore: tantissimi pezzi (133), alcuni brevissimi altri più lunghi, e molto vari (dialoghi, racconti, poesie, abbozzi). Alla fine però in “Diario di lavorazione” di Sam Shepard, tra alti e bassi, il senso di unità si percepisce chiaro e forte. C’è l’America, del passato e del presente, soprattutto quella parte a sud-ovest che a volte finisce per confondersi o sconfinare direttamente nel vicino Messico, e c’è tanto movimento, su e giù per le Highways, abbinato all’attenta solitudine delle soste lungo il viaggio, siano esse in cittadine spettrali o Motel. C’è una sorta di sottile disperazione che si (e ci) accompagna nella costante ricerca, se non della felicità, almeno di una tregua definitiva.
August 17, 2017
I happened to be reading this collection of stories when I got the news that Sam Shepard had died. Without really thinking about it, I'd assumed he's always be there, always be writing and acting. The stories in this collection (and in his recent New Yorker [Dec 6, 2016] story "Tiny Man") are classic Shepard: enigmatic, compelling stories of men struggling for purchase, of lives lost, of opportunities ungrasped.
My daughter Margaret--also enamored of Shepard--and I were fortunate to see an excellent production of Fool for Love at Bethesda's Round House a couple of years ago. My wife and I have seen Buried Child, A Lie of the Mind, and Geography of a Horse Dreamer. We all look forward to more productions in and around DC, a wonderful area for the theater.
My daughter Margaret--also enamored of Shepard--and I were fortunate to see an excellent production of Fool for Love at Bethesda's Round House a couple of years ago. My wife and I have seen Buried Child, A Lie of the Mind, and Geography of a Horse Dreamer. We all look forward to more productions in and around DC, a wonderful area for the theater.
December 1, 2010
Finished it on the stroke of midnight. Long time, if ever,
since I stayed awake effortlessly/compulsively with a book,
to take it all in. The audacity of it!
since I stayed awake effortlessly/compulsively with a book,
to take it all in. The audacity of it!
May 23, 2025
Sam Shepard, yes, him - I loved this collection of stories for its rawness; for its uncensored and twisted imagination. There is a stream of consciousness here that delves into the absurd as much as the possible. Through Shepard's writing we feel the pulse of a man's experience - maybe - of the American west. His view of it, anyways. Day out of Days - it made me laugh, it made me wonder. It made me miss the man.
December 6, 2019
Had always hear that Sam Shepard was a multi talent, and was a excellent story teller/writer. It is hard to classify this as a book of short stories, some of the selections are just a few paragraphs long. Each one is interesting, and somehow at the end of the book he pulls all the thoughts together. If you want to "mix it up a little in your reading" you will enjoy this.
March 2, 2010
I felt a sense of guilt as I started reading this collection of short stories by Sam Shepard. It seemed as if I was reading someone’s journal, their diary, with all their personal ramblings being exposed to me, a stranger. I got over that, and went on to really enjoy this collection that contains very short stories, snippets of conversations, memories, poems, observations, and random musings. Shepard writes in the voice of a distant loner, hardened by truth and reality but still seeking, looking for a kind of lost artifact or talisman.
Some of the poems have titles, but most are simple and unadorned. Without the title (and sometimes without punctuation) you are left to figure out the point, and each reader could likely come away with a different impression.
Horses racing men
Mummies on the mend
What’s all this gauze bandaging
Unraveled down the stairs
Has come apart
In here
Something without end (p. 126)
In “Rosebud, South Dakota (Highway 83 North)” he describes a deceptively simple scene:
Lakota church, “Open to Anyone”, it says, but no one’s here. Not a single sorry soul. And it’s the Sabbath too. Imagine that. Sunday abandoned. Just constant wind ripping across the tattered yards and buried fences. Constant endless prairie breath. Like it’s always been. Now and evermore. Unrelenting. Raw. And could care less about the state of the Union.
Shepard’s subjects are dry, tired, lost, searching, guilty, sarcastic, sardonic, and grim. They inhabit truck stops, rest stops, desert paths and windy valleys. Remarkably, reading these doesn’t feel depressing or dispiriting. Instead, it’s almost like putting a story behind that stranger you noticed outside the diner’s plate glass window, or hitchhiking outside of town, or passing you on the open rural road in that old dirty Ford pickup.
Some of the poems have titles, but most are simple and unadorned. Without the title (and sometimes without punctuation) you are left to figure out the point, and each reader could likely come away with a different impression.
Horses racing men
Mummies on the mend
What’s all this gauze bandaging
Unraveled down the stairs
Has come apart
In here
Something without end (p. 126)
In “Rosebud, South Dakota (Highway 83 North)” he describes a deceptively simple scene:
Lakota church, “Open to Anyone”, it says, but no one’s here. Not a single sorry soul. And it’s the Sabbath too. Imagine that. Sunday abandoned. Just constant wind ripping across the tattered yards and buried fences. Constant endless prairie breath. Like it’s always been. Now and evermore. Unrelenting. Raw. And could care less about the state of the Union.
Shepard’s subjects are dry, tired, lost, searching, guilty, sarcastic, sardonic, and grim. They inhabit truck stops, rest stops, desert paths and windy valleys. Remarkably, reading these doesn’t feel depressing or dispiriting. Instead, it’s almost like putting a story behind that stranger you noticed outside the diner’s plate glass window, or hitchhiking outside of town, or passing you on the open rural road in that old dirty Ford pickup.
January 22, 2021
Shepard's second-finest collection of short stories and prose, behind "Cruising Paradise." This finds him offering up several multi-part narrative threads which recur throughout (one in particular, involving a severed head, is quite something), and it also finds him in even less-thinly-veiled autobiographical mode. Having read much of his correspondence with Johnny Dark at this point, many of the stories here relate recollections they've shared with each other over the years.
This also just feels like there's more to it than there was to his last collection, "Great Dream of Heaven." Maybe it's the multiple recurring narrative threads, maybe it's the variety of the work included (plus my prior familiarity with some of it), or maybe it's the simple fact that there's just more of it to enjoy, but I found myself deeply moved far more often here. I started this a couple of days ago, but read the majority of it (something like 260+ pages) today in a couple of sittings. Just couldn't put it down.
When Shepard's at his best, reading his collections of stories can feel just like driving across the country in a lot of ways. You're going as fast as you can, and you take in everything around you fairly quickly, but you can't wait to see what's over the next hill, what's around the next corner. This collection communicates as effectively as any of his work that the journey is the point.
This also just feels like there's more to it than there was to his last collection, "Great Dream of Heaven." Maybe it's the multiple recurring narrative threads, maybe it's the variety of the work included (plus my prior familiarity with some of it), or maybe it's the simple fact that there's just more of it to enjoy, but I found myself deeply moved far more often here. I started this a couple of days ago, but read the majority of it (something like 260+ pages) today in a couple of sittings. Just couldn't put it down.
When Shepard's at his best, reading his collections of stories can feel just like driving across the country in a lot of ways. You're going as fast as you can, and you take in everything around you fairly quickly, but you can't wait to see what's over the next hill, what's around the next corner. This collection communicates as effectively as any of his work that the journey is the point.
November 10, 2013
In extrem kurzen Kapiteln folgt der Erzähler seinen Figuren entlang verschiedener legendärer amerikanischer Highways. Das On-the-Road-sein bezieht sich u. a. auf Kerouac und spiegelt sich in aneinandergereihten Erlebnissen in Motels, Diners und Cafés. Manche Figur vollzieht eine Reise in die eigene Vergangenheit, zur nationalen Traumatisierung durch den Vietnamkrieg oder bis in Familiengeschichten aus der Zeit der Eroberung des Wilden Westens. Charakteristische Gerüche und Klänge lassen die Weite ahnen, die einmal wilden Pferden Lebensraum bot. Shephards Übergänge zwischen Wild-West-Legenden und der Wirklichkeit der Gegenwart sind nicht immer sofort zu erkennen.
Von Shephard, der Anfang November seinen 70. Geburtstag feiern konnte, wird noch immer behauptet, er verkörpere gern die Rolle des US-amerikanischen Kultur-Cowboys. Seine Kurzprosa war für meinen Geschmack zu kurz, so dass die Persönlichkeit des Autors mich mehr beeindruckt hat als sein literarisches Bild des Wilden Westens.
Von Shephard, der Anfang November seinen 70. Geburtstag feiern konnte, wird noch immer behauptet, er verkörpere gern die Rolle des US-amerikanischen Kultur-Cowboys. Seine Kurzprosa war für meinen Geschmack zu kurz, so dass die Persönlichkeit des Autors mich mehr beeindruckt hat als sein literarisches Bild des Wilden Westens.
April 19, 2010
Sam Shepard is probably much better known as an actor, but he is also a Pulitzer prize winning playwright and author. This book claims it is "stories," but it is actually a mix of stories, vignettes, and poems, many of them shorter than one page, many of them interconnected, though. As a result, it's the kind of book you pick up and put down a lot.
There is a lot of despair in these pieces. They are set along long stretches of highway or in abandoned or dying towns (several pieces are just named for their settings). Throughout, there is a sort of reverse American dream sentiment. These roads lead to nowhere but more heartache and glimpses of American or personal history that just add to the emotional devastation.
It may not sound like a good read, but the writing is strong, powerful, and honest. Recommended.
There is a lot of despair in these pieces. They are set along long stretches of highway or in abandoned or dying towns (several pieces are just named for their settings). Throughout, there is a sort of reverse American dream sentiment. These roads lead to nowhere but more heartache and glimpses of American or personal history that just add to the emotional devastation.
It may not sound like a good read, but the writing is strong, powerful, and honest. Recommended.
May 27, 2014
Following a trip through imaginative landscapes across rural highways, hotels and many other stops. Sam Shepard gives short stories and flash fiction of many different people living life or doing whatever.
Starts out with a man carrying a severed head in a basket. A talking severed head by the way. And ends with the man throwing it into a rapid river. Not sure how all stories tie together at the end, but I guess it does. a few of my favorites listed below.
-Tops
-Brain Fever (a nice way to call someone insane)
-Costello
-Choirboy Once
-Brute, Montana
-Descendancy
-From Esmeraldaand the Flipping Hammer
-From pages 80-95 the stories are very bizarre my favorite part of book. With titles such as.
Time Line, Shame, Tet Offensive (must read), Mean Green & Pool Side Musingsbin Sunny L.A.
Starts out with a man carrying a severed head in a basket. A talking severed head by the way. And ends with the man throwing it into a rapid river. Not sure how all stories tie together at the end, but I guess it does. a few of my favorites listed below.
-Tops
-Brain Fever (a nice way to call someone insane)
-Costello
-Choirboy Once
-Brute, Montana
-Descendancy
-From Esmeraldaand the Flipping Hammer
-From pages 80-95 the stories are very bizarre my favorite part of book. With titles such as.
Time Line, Shame, Tet Offensive (must read), Mean Green & Pool Side Musingsbin Sunny L.A.
June 4, 2010
Billed as a short story collection, this book also includes brief vignettes (often only one paragraph), snippets of dialog, lyrics, and poems. Shepard again explores the well-traversed mythology of the American West and lonely stretches of both highway and soul he is well known for, delving into the psyche of his characters and exploring their sense (or lack) of belonging. My favorite pieces are those that weave together to tell a single tale of a man who finds and strikes up a conversation with a severed head, then grudgingly grants its last request with both characters pondering questions both practical and metaphysical. (If you're familiar with Shepard's works, this isn't nearly as strange as it sounds.) Overall, a solid and successful offering.
June 10, 2011
This is exactly the kind of collection that one would hope to stumble across while rummaging through Sam Shepard's cupboards. There would be a kind of voyeuristic magic in that scenario. Unfortunately, the brevity of this otherwise engaging melange of miscellany renders the suggested retail price a bit excessive. An enterprising reader can get through the whole book in a single day; there's a lot of blank space on the pages. In this sense, it has more in common with a book of short poems... except without the impacted depth of same. Even so, it is both charming and quintessentially Shepard.
May 30, 2012
The subtitle of this book is "Stories." I do not think that is a fair description of what this book contains. A few pieces classify as stories, but most of the writing feels more like sketches from an author's journal. There are a few poems scattered throughout and I suppose some of the "stories" (which are often less than a page or merely a paragraph long) could be considered prose poems. There is a connecting theme of aging men making bad decisions and living with regret, and the book almost works as a literary collage. However, ultimately I found it hard to keep interest in this collection. It was much easier to put this book down than it was to pick it back up.
April 27, 2014
I enjoyed this book. There were quite a few of memorable moments contained in the short stories. One story taking place in a poor town with depressed people ended with the characters standing on the sidewalk, listening to a woman playing the piano in the nearby house. When she finished they said "thank you" and without ever seeing her they responded "thank you." Such a nice touch. Just the unexpected pleasure of hearing beautiful music when it's least expected. It adds unexpected pleasures to a rather sad story. There were also some profound political suggestions thrown out in some of the stories. An interesting book.
July 28, 2019
Labeling this new collection by Sam Shepard as "stories" might be a little generous - the majority of the writing pieces collected here are barely a page long. There's a memorable story here and there but overall this book seem to be made up of narrative thoughts or scenes I liked this book though, despite the fact that it was far different from his previous story collection "Great Dreams of Heaven"
September 22, 2010
I think this book is an acquired taste, since I'm reading so many positive reviews on this site there must be something good about this book that I'm missing. To be honest, I didn't even venture beyond the first few stories. I love Sam Shepard's plays but the stories were too disjointed and short for me to feel connected to any of them (and besides I wasn't enjoying them) so I decided to jump ship early.
March 10, 2011
The voice of the work is interesting, and Shepard does, in my opinion, dialogue very well.
Even if the title of the book is stories, most of it are but poems and prose poems. Some of them very good.
I didn't like how none of the pieces got that much into the characters. They were episodic and therefore lost their power. Shepard also lists many Native American groups, but he also didn't get into depth about their cultures. Maybe for a busy man, this was all he had time for.
Even if the title of the book is stories, most of it are but poems and prose poems. Some of them very good.
I didn't like how none of the pieces got that much into the characters. They were episodic and therefore lost their power. Shepard also lists many Native American groups, but he also didn't get into depth about their cultures. Maybe for a busy man, this was all he had time for.
June 15, 2012
I'm seriously in love with Sam Shepard. I first read True West >, and loved it. His depictions of violence and the West are beautiful (yes, there is something surreal and lovely about the way he writes violence). These stories, though they don't have a plot, per se, are all connected in subtle ways that reward the reader. At its core, this book is a testament to Shepard's incredible talent for mood and tone.
August 16, 2010
As a playwright, one of Shepard's strengths is his monologues. In the course of two or three paragraphs, he can take you on a trip to some place unique--and usually ends by dumping you in the desert. The current work, structured loosely as linked stories, is loaded with vignettes by Shepard the monologist at his tangiest.
February 9, 2011
Interesting anthology of short (very short) stories and poems by the actor/playwright Sam Shepard. Lots of looking back on a life, often from a roadtrip through the West, or from behind a motel curtain. Strong sense of place, whether it is Duarte, CA, the missions of San Juan Bautista or San Juan Capistrano.
April 14, 2010
A solid collection of sketches. Life on the road. Drifters. Meth heads. A decapitated head. New Orleans. History. A cheating husband. Not remembering. There's quite a bit of dark scraps in here--many of which catch some unexpected light. His spare, lyrical, often staccato prose makes me want to read more Samuel Beckett.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews