Despite my worst instincts I cannot prevent myself from mildly loving the plays of [Sam Shepard]…. He is so sweetly unserious about his plays, and so desperately serious, about what he is saying.

Mr. Shepard is perhaps the first person to write good disposable plays. He may well go down in history as the man who became to drama what Kleenex was to the handkerchief. And just like Kleenex he may well overcome….

[He] bombarded my beleagured mind … with two simple little plays (I scarcely understood a word of them) "The Unseen Hand" and "Forensic and the Navigators." Read those titles again, dear reader, or even dear readers, for they give the flavor of the work. Not so much mindblowing as puzzling. Yet … interesting. Well yes. Interesting.

I find those plays difficult to grapple with, which is why I am playing footsie with them. Like Mr. Shepard's "Operation...