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PrintBook Review: Day Out of Days
Sam Shepard's Long Strange Trip
Day Out of Days
Sam Shepard
www.aaknopf.com
In one of the many seemingly random personal observations in Sam Shepard’s Day Out of Days, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and playwright wonders if the insanity that has run in his family for generations is finally catching up to him. His readers might reach the same conclusion after digesting this peculiar collection of short stories, essays, and dialogues.
Subjects range from the mundane (a cluttered kitchen) to the macabre (a conversation between a man and a severed head). There are stories that follow a more or less traditional structure, such as the tale of a man trapped overnight in a Cracker Barrel men’s room stall. As the man is driven mad by Shania Twain songs playing in an endless loop, the scene unfolds like a Twilight Zone episode starring Larry the Cable Guy.
Other entries, like Shepard’s musings on the mountains named for cowboy star Roy Rogers in Victorville, California, seem to have been jotted down in stream-of-consciousness mode.
Gradually patterns begin to emerge, as some characters and images recur throughout the book, bound together by their proximity to western roads and highways.
The darkly poetic eloquence that infuses much of Shepard’s work has not been lost, but the jarring episodic structure keeps the reader off-balance throughout. For those who already know and admire Shepard’s work, Day Out of Days will be a welcome return to his surreal, dystopian world. For novices, there are probably better places to start.
