1 - Born injured

Summary

It is around forty years since Sam Shepard drifted across the continent from California to New York, leaving behind a psychologically damaging family situation, escaping a town that “grew out of nothing and nowhere.” Sam Shepard is a drifter by nature. It is in the blood. Like his father (who worked for the military) before him, he has moved from place to place: from California to New York to London, to the Southwest, to Virginia, to Minnesota. He has, in the past, drifted from playwriting to music, to acting, to screenwriting, to directing. He even exchanged one name for another (Rogers for Shepard), refusing to be defined. In his plays, if not his life, it is a losing game. As a character in Simpatico remarks, “I've changed my name . . . and nothing came of it. I've moved all over the place. I was in Texas for a while . . . Arizona. Nothing came from any of it. I've just got - further and further - removed.” But, then, that sense of removal - from other people, from a rooted surrounding, from the self - is a central concern of a writer whose plays explore the American psyche at a time of failed dreams and lost visions. He himself, meanwhile, is always anxious to move on, to explore new frontiers of experience. Now that impulse is reflected in his desire to try his hand at everything from rodeo riding to movie acting.