SAM SHEPARD
MARCH 30, 1985—SANTA FE
John,
Thanks for your letter & notes. Just finished reading
the whole batch. Some very inneresting stuff in there. Must be quite a new
dimension to be found in that situation of being the “leader.”
It’s very quiet here right now. Shura & Jessie are
taking naps. The birds are chirping & a light snow is falling past the
windows. I’ve been reading av- idly lately—about six books at once, as usual,
so it takes forever to finish one. Finally finished Idiots in
Paris though—very simple & touching, particularly the ending
stuff. What ideas we’ve all fabricated in our minds about who Gurdjieff
was—those of us who never knew him! I got a whole new & different sense of
him from that book. Also reading a great piece by Tolstoy called Confession—all
about his tremendous moral & spiritual turmoil at the age of about 51. Talk
about middle-aged crisis—this guy really put himself through the mill. Then,
again, re-reading the 3rd series & going through all the notes from
Pentland’s talks that I have.
I’m struggling along with my play, which is very difficult
to write because, finally, I’m beginning to see the absolute hopelessness of
all forms of negativity—but hopefully, this will be some kind of
final definitive piece on my age- old themes of father & son, sister,
brother, mother, family, etc. Who knows? If nothing else, I feel as though,
after twenty one years of writing I’m finally able to get down to the real
essence of what’s behind it. So many masks. Also doing some painting &
re-kindled that old interest which has now manifested as yet another obsession
for Western Art from the late 1800’s to the turn of the century. Luckily,
now—and I don’t know whether this has to do with age or not, but these
whirlwinds of obsession are much more short- lived, even though they have all
the same characteristic intensity & blind lust behind them.
Me, Jessie & Shura have come into some brand new
territory of togetherness now. There’s a real sense of family & belonging
to each other. It’s a whole different ball park raising a little girl but it’s
quite incredible to see how it demands a different side of me & how
positively she responds to it when I allow it in myself.
I’ll write more later. We’re getting set for dinner now. I
miss all of you very much. Maybe one day I’ll get over the sense of tragedy
about my departure from you all & we can be together without the past
hanging so heavy on my head.
Your old friend,
Sam
Sam
APRIL 17, 1999
NOVEMBER 23, 1999
John,
Here’s one of my favorite Saroyan collections. I’ve had it
for years & can’t even remember where I picked it up. Maybe you’ve read it
already—but just in case. After I read that little story of his you sent me I
realized suddenly how similar your approach is to his—the flights of fancy
right in the midst of the most down-to-earth descriptions; the sense of
mortality all the time & the infatuation with turning the everyday into a
kind of heroic act. I’ve always loved Saroyan & think he’s totally unique
yet still in that American strain of vagabond minstrels like Kerouac & Dos
Passos et al. I think you also belong in there somewhere &, although
Rosenthal didn’t want to go the distance into publishing I don’t think you
should turn away from the possibility. I know you say you don’t care two hoots
about getting published but I’ve never met a writer yet who didn’t secretly
harbor the desire to see his words in print. Here’s what I think you should do:
(I’m going to give you advice now, not because I think I know more about
writing than you do but because I think I know more about how to get people to
pay attention to it.) Some- body—I think it was Yeats said that; “writing is
the social act of a solitary man.” & I believe that’s very true. There’s a
need to get something across & I think you’re made of exactly that same stuff
that wants to move something through words across to other people. So, no more
talk about writing diaries so your grandchildren will have something to pass
the time away when you’re long gone. You don’t have any grandchildren anyway so
who are you kidding?
Here’s what you have to do: Take a lesson from
Saroyan—each one of these little vignettes is framed & structured &
clearly laid out. They all have the taste of real experience real people, real
place & time. Within that structure he waxes philosophical, he gets cute,
he gets funny, he gets tough, he gets emotional & it’s all done, seemingly
without effort in the First Person! This, I guess, is where they
come up with this hackneyed coinage: “the voice of the writer.” All right, it
might be corny & old hat but ultimately I think it’s true. There’s a
“voice” to Beckett, a “voice” to Kerouac, a voice to every single one of them
who’s worth their salt. There’s a voice to Johnny Dark but you keep running
away from it into all these other voices of other people who aren’t nearly as
interesting. There’s areas in your stuff (particularly the letters) where the
voice is loud & clear. All I’m saying is find that & stick to that
& get a real handle on it & turn it into something that other people
can get ahold of & say ‘Yes, I know that! I’ve experienced that! This is
incredible!’— The same stuff we say when we come across writing that just
explodes off the page. I think there’s a lot of material in your book already
that could be pulled out & worked on & shaped into something truly
great but you can’t leave it buried in there, laying next to long dialogues
between 2 stoned guys cracking lame jokes. Nobody wants to wade through the
cute stuff in order to eventually dig up something really worthwhile & I
don’t think you can wait for someone to come along & do your editing for
you. You gotta get in there & pull it out & work at it or else go on
& get busy with new stuff. If none of this makes any sense then just rip it
up—but it seems to me you’ve got all your ducks in a row now—the move to
Deming, your own house & time, precious time to get down to writing. I know
this sounds like some kind of ½ time pep talk but you really ought to give
yourself a shot at being a writer. Why not? Just tell yourself you’re a writer
& get down to it; work at it not with an eye to how disposable it is or how
little you care if anybody ever reads it but with an effort toward
communicating the real aliveness of your own experience—that’s an extraordinary
thing—why not move it across to other people so they can get a taste of it?
Enough of this for now. I hope you take this for what it’s meant to be &
that’s simply encouragement toward finding what you already have. More later.
Your old amigo—
Sam
Sam
JULY 16, 2010
John,
[. . .] It occurred to me yesterday, strolling around my 150
acres here—it just came to me, you know how it goes—that I believe it’s true
that all great writing has come out of solitude & terrible suffering. Look
at: Mr. Beckett, Joyce, Kafka, Goethe, Melville, Genet, Rimbaud, Villon,
O’Neill, Flannery O’Connor, Emily Dickinson, Juan Rulfo, Pavese, Machado,
Cervantes,
Dante, etc. Loners & sufferers all. Not to put myself in
the same category at all but, by way of comparison; I know that my best stuff,
whether it be plays, stories, screenplays, whatever—has come out of those same
two basic ingredients: solitude & suffering. But then I asked myself
(myself asking myself)—if I had a choice to continue on that track (not that we
do have a choice—it’s the old magic-fairy thing again offering you two
alternatives) or, on the other hand, to spend the rest of my life in great
happiness with a young woman who delights in my company & I in hers—would I
forfeit the art & the agony? the answer is yes!!! Yes, yes, yes!!!!
Which brings me to another association I had yesterday about
the great little film you made back in the 70’s with Scarlett, based on a Joyce
piece in which that fabulous soliloquy ends with Molly rising into ecstatic
orgasm with Yes! Yes! Yes! Where is that film? You must have it tucked away
some- where in yr. archives. I think it was made in Super 8. That’s something
that should definitely be preserved, don’t you think?
Anyway, here’s to great courage in aloneness & the
promise of eternal love—at the same time. Why not?
Yr Amigo
Sam
Sam
__
De LITERARY HUB,
02/08/2017
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