Understanding Sam Shepard

Crank, James A.

ISBN 10: 1611171067 / ISBN 13: 9781611171068

Published by University of South Carolina Press, 2012

About this Item

Former library copy. Pages intact with minimal writing/highlighting. The binding may be loose and creased. Dust jackets/supplements are not included. Includes library markings. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good.

Seller Inventory # 13460189-6

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Understanding Sam Shepard
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1611171067
• ISBN 13: 9781611171068
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 0.871 pounds

About this title

Synopsis

An ideal introduction into the complex and compelling dramas of the acclaimed playwright

Understanding Sam Shepard investigates the notoriously complex and confusing dramatic world of Sam Shepard, one of America's most prolific, thoughtful, and challenging contemporary playwrights. During his nearly fifty-year career as a writer, actor, director, and producer, Shepard has consistently focused his work on the ever-changing American cultural landscape. James A. Crank's comprehensive study of Shepard offers scholars and students of the dramatist a means of understanding Shephard's frequent experimentation with language, setting, characters, and theme.

Beginning with a brief biography of Shepard, Crank shows how experiences in Shepard's life eventually resonate in his work by exploring the major themes, unique style, and history of Shepard's productions. Focusing first on Shepard's early plays, which showcase highly experimental, frenetic explorations of fractured worlds, Crank discusses how the techniques from these works evolve and translate into the major works in his "family trilogy": Curse of the Starving Class, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child, and True West. Shepard often uses elements from his past―his relationship with his father, his struggle for control within the family, and the breakdown of the suburban American dream―as major starting points in his plays.

Shepard is a recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, eleven Obie Awards, and a Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for Lifetime Achievement. Augmented with an extensive bibliography, Understanding Sam Shepard is an ideal point of entrance into complex and compelling dramas of this acclaimed playwright.

About the Author

James A. Crank is associate professor of American literature at the University of Alabama, a former National Humanities Center Summer Fellow, and cohost of the podcast "The Sound and the Furious." His other books include Understanding Randall Kenan, New Approaches to Gone with the Wind, and Race and New Modernisms. Crank has written on artists as diverse as James Agee, Sherman Alexie, and Eudora Welty.