Nienhuis is an associate professor of English at Western Carolina University. In this essay he examines the nature of myth as it pertains to Shepard's play. Nienhuis also discusses the abundant humor in the work.

As critic Frank Rich pointed out in his New York Times review of the original Off-Broadway production of Shepard's play, "True West is a worthy direct descendant of Mr. Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class and Buried Child. Many of his persistent recent themes are present and accounted for—the spiritual death of the American family, the corruption of the artist by business, the vanishing of the Western wilderness and its promising dream of freedom." Critics and scholars have since elaborated on these and related themes, pointing out, for example, that Lee represents the vanishing "old" West and Austin the plasticized, overdeveloped "new" West of Hollywood and its adjacent suburbs. It...