Review
------
"Sam Shepard's of the First Person is a
devastating work that is also full of life and wonder. From its
heartbreaking dedication to him by his children to its last
longing and truthful pages, it is an masterwork."
--Michael Ondaatje, Booker Prize-winning author of The English
Patient
"Moving. . . . Sly and revealing. . . . This novel's themes are
echt Shepard: hers and sons; shifting identities and competing
versions of reality; a sense that there are watchers and there
are watchees in this world of dusty gravitas. . . . You can tell
you are moving into the realm of myth when you are holding a
slender novel like this one that has large type and ample
margins, to give the words room to reverberate. . . . There are
echoes of Beckett in this novel's abstemious style and
existential echoes."
--Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"Eloquent. . . . Its effect is one of atmosphere rather than
narrative, an aching requiem sung in the shadow of extinction. .
. . Shepard's gaunt lyricism conjures an album of bleached images
in which the life of a man and the changing face of a country are
cataloged with both love and bafflement. . . . A lived richness
burnishes each page. . . . It is difficult not to be moved by
these sparks of beauty and belonging. They light up all the
brighter for how quickly they go dark."
--Dustin Illingworth, Los Angeles Times
"Beautiful . . . Cryptic, almost hallucinatory. . . .
Remarkable. . . . There's a subtle curiosity at work, too, the
curiosity of a writer to the very end. Unsettling, yet brave."
--Jocelyn McClurg, USA Today
"In of the First Person, two narrative voices wind together
in beguiling fashion. . . . of the First Person returns to
the uncanny experience evoked in all of Shepard's fiction of
being both the observer and the observed. . . . Shepard has
always been a spare and oblique writer, creating a sense of
dreamy discomfort. . . . The sketches jump to northern
California, the Alcatraz prison, a doctor's office in Arizona and
even the squats of the Lower East Side in the 1970s. But as
always, the itinerancy s a profound feeling of imprisonment,
as the scenes inevitably circle back to the old man on the porch,
who has been rendered so immobile that he has to ask for help to
scratch an itch on his face. Yet that appeal for help marks a
small but significant change. Shepard's wanderers have usually
been on unaccompanied journeys with no departure or destination,
only an ever-repeating present instant. But of the First
Person ends with a scene of family solidarity. The old man
watches himself being pushed in a wheelchair to a crowded Mexican
restaurant. . . . 'The thing I remember most, ' he thinks, 'is
being more or less helpless and the strength of my sons.' At last
he has no choice but to accept the company of others as he
travels through the great wide American somewhere."
--Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
"Haunting. . . . A testament-like fever dream of autofiction."
--Elisabeth Vincentelli, Newsday
"As the narrator's body grows weaker, his days are filled with
trips to the clinic with loved ones, and a cascade of
memories--orchards, surfers, the mid-1970s. He describes being
'exhausted from the chaos of this era'--'Napalm. Cambodia. Nixon.
Tet Offensive. Watergate. Secretariat. Muhammad Ali.' . . . He
has rendered the thoughtful, interior months of his own last act
into spare and profound prose."
--Jane Ciabattari, BBC
"Powerful. . . . Ultimately, Shepard drops all pretense, closing
out this collection with two heartbreaking chapters detailing his
final days, and bringing the reader up close to what Rilke called
'undiluted death.'"
--John Winters, WBUR
" of the First Person captivates in its distillation of many
of Shepard's enduring themes--the death of America's frontier,
identity and loneliness. . . . Shepard illuminates loneliness
beautifully in this slight but rich and moving final work. In the
final lines the old man sees 'the moon getting bigger and
brighter . . . two sons and their her, everyone trailing
behind.' Shepard's valedictory message is one of hope."
--Alasdair Lees, The Independent (London)
"There's plainspoken reflection on the tempos of everyday life,
in a signature style that lopes elegantly and rhythmically across
the page. . . . Surreality emerges in Shepard's visions of his
mundane West, as well as the familiar voice of a lonely, achingly
acute observer. . . . The pages of a man's life, with all its
glory and monotony, are sewn together here with steady pathos and
flashes of brilliance, dark and light."
--Molly Boyle, Santa Fe New Mexican
"Spare but not slight, surreal yet stoic, an intriguing and
moving glimpse into what falls away and what still matters at the
end. . . . Shepard evokes the sense of mystery and the
exploration of the myth of the American West that permeated so
much of his work. . . . With of the First Person, Shepard
exited head up."
--Colette Bancroft, Tampa Bay Times
"It is, radiantly, Shepard's voice. . . . Shepard lets his
characters keep their secrets, even as they reveal timeless and
universal truths. . . . [A] stunning and eloquent final
soliloquy."
--Lew J. Whittington, New York Journal of Books
"Snares with virtuoso precision both nature's constant vibrancy
and the stop-action of illness. Told in short takes pulsing with
life and rueful wit. . . . Offers commentary on episodes in
American history, and revels in the resonance of words. . . . A
gorgeously courageous and sagacious coda to Shepard's innovative
and soulful body of work."
--Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
"Elegant, unpretentious, funny, and touching. . . . Slim but
potent. . . . Gently escorts the reader out to the edge where
life meets death."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A sharply observed, slender novel set in familiar Shepard
territory: a dusty, windblown West of limitless horizons and
limited means of escape. . . . Offers arresting portent. . . .
It's exactly of a piece with True West and other early Shepard
standards, and one can imagine Shepard himself playing the part
of that old man in an understated, stoical film. . . . In the
end, this is a story less of action than of mood, and that mood
is overwhelmingly, achingly melancholic. The story is modest, the
poetry superb. A most worthy valediction."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred)
About the Author
----------------
SAM SHEPARD was the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
more than fifty-five plays and three story collections. As an
actor, he appeared in more than sixty films, and received an
O nomination in 1984 for The Right Stuff. He was a finalist
for the W. H. Smith Literary Award for his story collection Great
Dream of Heaven. In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate
from Trinity College, Dublin. He was a member of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, received the Gold Medal for Drama
from the Academy, and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.
He died in 2017.