260
PARTISAN REVIEW
the garden. But it also includes the even darker question - is the
secret his curse or his redemption?
In 1974, Shepard told an interviewer: "I'd like to try a whole dif–
ferent way of writing, which is very stark and not so flashy and not
full of a lot of mythic figures and everything and try to scrape it
down to the bone as much as possible."
True West
is not only that
play at last, but represents another breakthrough for Shepard as
well: for the first time he has combined his themes of artistic corrup–
tion and family disintegration in one play. And while his other works
have been deceptively complex and actually quite simple,
True West
is deceptively simple and actually quite complex - a short, crisp play
in which every line reverberates with menace and mystery.
The "story" is more straightforward than anything in Shepard's
career. Austin, a successful screenwriter, is house-sitting for his
mother in southern California, finishing a project, when he's visited
by his brother Lee, a petty thief and aimless wanderer. There's
something ominous about Lee - he has his own story to tell, he grad–
ually persuades the reluctant Austin to help him, he sells the result–
ing script for a bundle. Their identities shift, it seems that Lee is to
become the successful screenwriter (the manufacturer of myth),
Austin the petty thief and aimless wanderer (the degradation of
quest) . "Ya think there's room for a real Western these days?" Lee
asks Austin . "A true-to-life Western?" The title, even in its irony,
tells us that this is that story .
In its theme of the corruption of the artist-shaman by com–
merce,
True West
echoes
Angel City
and
Geography of a Horse Dreamer;
in its treatment of uncertain identity, it recalls
Melodrama Play;
in its
depiction of blood ties and family collapse, it extends
Starving Class
and
Buried Child.
Its dominant symbols-keys (to open doors, to
start cars, to escape) and coyotes (predators, howlers in the night,
killers of the innocent) - help establish the familiar Shepardian con–
flict between liberation and danger. Its secondary characters - the
polyester producer, the mother and father - help convey the
continuing Shepardian conflict between self and community.
But the title provides the basic clues: in Shepard's work,
West
has always symbolized the hope of redemption, as if immersion in
the heroic, mythic past could free the spirit from the confinements of
civilization. In
Angel City,
he is quite specific: "The West is the
'Looks-Within' place .. . the place for looking inside yourself."
But what of
True?
And what does it say about Shepard's present
view of
West?
The plot contains two central mysteries: is Lee's script
