Rereading Shepard. Contemporary Critical Essays on the Plays of Sam Shepard ed. by Leonard Wilcox (review)

428 Book Reviews Dead not. only reveal the protagonists' journey through the symbolic remnants of the Holocaust and Jewish diaspora, but also describe the exploration of psychic inner space and the mythos of the Eleusinian mystery rites. Lamont argues that in these last plays IoneseD reaches his own moment of transcendence. It is significant that she ends by aligning him with the pilgrim, the hero-writer. Lamont's book is a major contribution to IoneseD studies. By covering his career so authoritatively. it easily convinces that IoneseD must be taken as one of the premier playwrights of the twentieth century. EUZABETIi KLAVER., SOUTIlERN nLD'IIOIS UNIVERSITY LEONARD wu..cox. ed. Rereading Shepard. Contemporary Critical Essays on the Plays ofSam Shepard. New York: St Martin's Press 1993. Pp. 229. $40.00. Rereading Shepard is a solid and welcome addition to Shepard studies. The thirteen essays comprise a reassessment of the Shepard canon, at times clarifying trends and issues previously confronted by Shepard scholars and practitioners, while at others providing new insights into Shepard's growing body of work, up to the 1985 play, A Lie ofthe Mind. While the collection is not rigorously balanced and ordered in, say, its treatment of Shepard's phases and/or themes, there is an organic logic to the essay selections, making them individually worthwhile while at the same creating a whole worthy of being read cover to cover. The decision not to be balanced and orderly has the additional strength of permitting the contributors to move in directions that fruitfully overlap and sometimes contradict, placing the reader in the center of the discussion to detennine the virtues of one or the other position. I should add that becailse of this editorial decision, the book is best suited to an audience of SCholars and practitioners fairly well versed in Shepard scholarship and theatrical demands; it is not a text that will appeal to the uninitiated looking for an introduction to Shepard studies. The collection includes contributors from a variety of fields, including literary academics , theatre practitioners, and performance critics. The list includes the well-known as well as several worthy newcomers to Shepard studies: Gerald Weales, Dennis Carroll , Leonard Wilcox, Gerry McCarthy, Sheila Rabillard, Ann Wilson, Charles R. Lyons, David J. DeRose, Ann C. Hall, Susan Bennett. Sherrill Grace, Jane AM Crum, and Felicia Hardison Londre. True to Shepard scholarship itself, the collection on many occasions dispenses with trying to provide final answers, welcoming instead debate and disagreement. For example Weales '5 opening essay on Shepard's early plays takes the stand (in agreement with Shepard's own conclusions) that Shepard's early experimental works were apprenticeship projects that haven't translated well beyond the period in which they were written. Several essays that follow - Carroll on The Rock Garden, Wilcox on Operation Sidewinder, and McCarthy on Geography of a Horse Dreamer, as well as Rabillard, Wilson, and DeRose, whose essays compare Shepard's earlier and later Book Reviews 429 efforts - either implicitly or explicitly 'challenge Weales's position. What results is a realization that the shifting landscape of Shepard's an deserves a willingness to accept the value of shifting perspectives, that the logic whereby artistic development means improvement is neither whoJly true nor wholly false. Another example of implicit disagreement leading almost paradoxically to greater understanding involveS two essays addressing the fonnal considerations of Shepard's later works. Lyons's essay on Shepard's ironic manipulations of realism - focusing on the traditional realist convention of the kindermord (which he very adeptly summarizes) - is impressive. But so is Grace's essay on Shepard's debt to expressionism, especially considering the fact that she focuses on Shepard's realist plays to make her case. Lest the title, Rereading Shepard, mislead, this volume is anything but a volume dedicated to readings of Shepard's canon. With very few exceptions, the essays speak to the matter of staging Shepard. Carroll's essay on "potential perfonnance texts" demonstrates the value of utilizing a director's eye when engaging in literary analysis, and the value of possessing literary skills when working to mount a production. Likewise, McCarthy argues that Shepard is "an artist concerned with ways of seeing and...