Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Shepard, Sam (Vol. 169) - Robert Brustein (essay date 15-22 July 1996)
Shepard, Sam (Vol. 169) - Robert Brustein (essay date 15-22 July 1996)
Robert Brustein (essay date 15-22 July 1996)
SOURCE: Brustein, Robert. “Shepard's Choice.” New Republic 215, nos. 3/4 (15-22 July 1996): 27-9.
[In the following essay, Brustein offers a mixed assessment of Shepard's works, particularly Buried Child and Cruising Paradise, within the context of Shepard's attitudes towards being a celebrity.]
Challenging the camera over a period of thirty years, Sam Shepard's face appears in sepia and black-and-white on the jackets of three newly issued books. The chiseled bones, the two deep furrows in his forehead, the uncombed mane and dimpled chin are physical constants. What the camera also reveals is how the acid of years and circumstance have etched radical mutations in Shepard's appearance. Something more than passing time is responsible for his transformation from the youthful hipster depicted in Bruce Weber's unposed photo for The Unseen Hand and Other Plays, to the...
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- Introduction
- Principal Works
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Criticism
- Robert Brustein (review date 27 January 1986)
- Gerald Weales (review date 14 February 1986)
- David Wyatt (essay date spring 1992)
- Donald L. Carveth (essay date fall 1992)
- Robert B. Heilman (essay date fall 1992)
- Sam Shepard and Carol Rosen (interview date March 1993)
- Susanne Willadt (essay date March 1993)
- Robert Brustein (review date 2 January 1995)
- Robert Brustein (essay date 15-22 July 1996)
- Sam Shepard and Stephanie Coen (interview date September 1996)
- Francis King (review date 16 November 1996)
- Don Shewey (essay date July/August 1997)
- Susan Harris Smith (essay date 1998)
- Sam Shepard and Michael Phillips (interview date 8 November 2000)
- Michael Phillips (review date 17 November 2000)
- Katherine Duncan-Jones (review date 23 July 2001)
- Ann Wilson (essay date 2001)
- Further Reading
- Copyright
