Sunday with Books: The One Inside by Sam Shepard
A while back, I had a Sam Shepard year. Always knew some of his work. True West. Buried Child, A Lie of the Mind, etc. And some of the flicks of course — Days of Heaven, Fool for Love, Black Hawk Down. But then I fell into the well. Deep dive down it. Every play. Every book. Every movie. What a career. What a life. What a complex American dude with the talent to articulate the strangeness that is being a warm blooded masculine man of the west. Denim and boots. Dirt and dusty. Tears and tears and tears.
Deserts. The West. Moutains. Coyotes. Steaming coffee on cold mornings. Father-Son rivalry. Woman troubles. Pain from every crevice of the soul. Yet, he keeps on putting it all down.
His final book, The One Inside makes it difficult to discern fantasy from reality. But it’s written in cold hard realities. Icy old bones. Luminous mountain ranges. Donuts and waffles. The pain of love and regret. It is life at its raw moments, laid bare but observed through a retrospective lens. Patti Smith introduces the book and in his final installment, Sam takes it from there before the curtains fall and the show’s over. He’s left plenty for us to sift through.—Travis Ferré
