Of all contemporary American playwrights, Sam Shepard alone still has romantic feeling for the landscape. He is not a city playwright; but a Midwestern wanderer who has driven the backroads of the land, tramped its wilderness, scored on its main streets, and explored in his writing the mythology of the nation. He is a protean figure; and the weird terrains of his plays sparkle with the insights of a man who has inhabited many worlds—musician, addict, cowboy, bad-ass horse breeder, and even … movie star….

Shepard's greatest asset as a playwright is his voracious curiosity about America. But if he dissects the society with unusual precision, he is also contaminated by part of its sickness. In a society that lives on myths, he can't resist making a myth of himself. Since he came on the off-Broadway scene in 1965, Shepard has been the darling of the American avant garde...