Holy Ghosts: The Mythic Cowboy in the Plays of Sam Shepard

Holy Ghosts: The Mythic Cowboy in the Plays of Sam Shepard Mark Siegel University of Wyoming Sam Shepard's most recently published work, a libretto entitled "The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing His Wife," laments not merely the mercy killing of Slue-Foot Sue but the death in general of the legendary figures of the Old West. The libretto is a somewhat comic juxtaposition of styles ("I was blinded by the sight ofyou/ no such woman did exist/ I'd never seen the like of it/ Ridin high on some big old fish")1 that contrasts the often comically exaggerated aspects of Western legends with the traditional form and serious functions they fulfill. A continuing major concern of Shepard in nearly all his works is the disappearance of the myths on which American character and spirit are founded. Certainly cultures change, and the needs of a people for particular types of legends and myths change also. But Shepard observes that, in our essentially material and profane culture, we have desacralized the past and seem unable to replace our old legends with any viable new ones. As Pecos Bill notes, "My legend and time and my myth is forgot," and with it our American dreams oftranscending the ordinary, mundane march ofmortality: So while you go shopping And watching T.V. 1. Sam Shepard, "The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing His Wife," Theatre, 12 (Summer/Fall, 1981), 34. All further references to Shepard's work appear in the text. They are taken from the following editions: Angel City, Curse of the Starving Class, and Other Plays (London: Faber and Faber, 1978); Buried Child and Seduced and Suicide in Bk (New York: Urizen Books, 1979); Hawk Moon (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1973); "Metaphors, Mad Dogs and Oldtime Cowboys," in American Dreams: The Imagination ofSam Shepard, ed. Bonnie Marranea (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1981); Rolling Thunder Logbook (New York: Viking Press, 1977); The Unseen Hand and Other Plays (New York: BpbbsMerrill , 1972); "Visualization Language, and the Inner Library," The Drama Review, 21 (Dec. 1977). These titles are abbreviated for purposes ofcitation as SL, AC, BC, MMD, RT, UH, and VLIL, respectively. 236ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW You can ponder my vanishing shape You can build your own mountains and tear Them all down But from death you can't never escape. (SL, 38) In a great deal of his drama, Shepard has taken it upon himself to explore the possibility of new myths for our time, most frequently returning to the roots of so many American myths, the Old West. James Magurie points out that "Western drama begins...with the Indian, whose religious ceremonies are what Northrop Frye calls 'myth-plays'" which dramatize myth as "the symbol of spiritual and corporeal communion."2 Sam Shepard, already one of the most critically acclaimed playwrights to come out of the West, harkens back to the very roots of Western drama and waters these roots with some of the most radical dramatic technique employed in contemporary theatre. His "myth-plays" seek to dramatize characters and events symbolic of the communion of spirit and body in hopes of conjuring up a myth potent and appropriate enough to guide men in these confusing times. Shepard says he doesn't have any "political theories" but that his plays "come from the country, they come from that particular part of the country, they come from that particular sort of temporary society that you find in southern California, where nothing is permanent, where everything could be knocked down and it wouldn't be missed, and [from] the feeling ofimpermanence that comes from that — that you don't belong to any particular culture" (MMD, 198). His attempts to attack contemporary American civilization through magic and incantation seem bizarre and merely satirical to many critics, but it is important to recognize that Shepard is notjust analyzing our society or suggesting reforms, but exorcizing our spiritual demons like the Indian shaman in Angel City and the Snake Dancers in Operation Sidewinder. "What I'm trying to get at here," Shepard says, "is that real quest of a writer to penetrate into a world. A...