Size: 6 x 9
Pages: 152
Illustrations:

Literary Studies
 Understanding Contemporary American Literature
 Music & Theater
 paperback
 Books

Understanding Sam Shepard, updated edition

With a New Preface

updated edition

James A. Crank

Paperback
978-1-64336-373-8
Published: Feb 2 2023

$21.99

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The inclusion of this book in the Open Carolina collection is made possible by the generous funding of

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

Now available in a paperback edition and featuring a new preface, Understanding Sam Shepard investigates the notoriously complex dramatic world of 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 (1943-2017) consistently focused his work on the ever-changing American cultural landscape. James A. Crank's thorough study offers scholars and students of the dramatist a means of understanding Shephard's frequent experimentation with language, setting, character, and theme. The new preface examines Shepard's legacy and his final work of fiction, Spy of the First Person.



James A. Crank is associate professor of American literature at the University of Alabama, a former National Humanities Center Summer Fellow, and co-host 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.

"Written with great lucidity and wearing its considerable erudition lightly, Understanding Sam Shepard is the perfect introduction to Shepard for both beginning and advanced students of American drama. Because of its subtlety and depth of textual analysis, the book is equally valuable for the scholar. James A. Crank unearths Shepard's buried children and their cursed families in all their complexity and mystery, making a compelling case for the unity and profundity of Shepard's mythic vision of America."—Henry I. Schvey, professor of drama and comparative literature, Washington University in St. Louis