Great Dream of Heaven: Stories - Softcover

Shepard, Sam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375704523 ISBN 13: 9780375704529

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2003

Synopsis

In eighteen stories unlike any in our contemporary literature, Sam Shepard explores the vast and rugged American West with the same parched intensity that has made him “the great playwright of his generation” (The New York Times).

A boy watches a “remedy man” tame a wild stallion, a contest that mirrors his own struggle with his father. A woman driving her mother’s ashes across the country has a strangely transcendent run-in with an injured hawk. Two aging widowers, in Stetsons and bolo ties, together make a daily pilgrimage to the local Denny’s, only to be divided by the attentions of their favorite waitress. Peering unblinkingly into the chasms that separate fathers and sons, husbands and wives, friends and strangers, these powerful tales bear the unmistakable signature of an American master.

About this title

Review:

In his second collection of short fiction, Great Dream of Heaven, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shepard offers a resonant examination of interpersonal crisis and revelation in 18 lean tales. At times humorous, tense, and tragic, these stories often focus on the elusive search for connection and understanding, visiting characters at key moments of consciousness or detachment. Seized by compulsion or repression, many in this work disengage from life by assuming familiar roles or patterns. In "The Stout of Heart," a man obsessed with horse breeding locks himself in his room annually to study catalogues, shutting out his family, while in "An Unfair Question," another man's frustration with his role as husband and father surfaces when he engages a party guest in friendly conversation and ends up holding her at gunpoint. These stories achieve an understated impact due in part to Shepard's knack for acute dialogue and descriptions that reveal his dramatist's eye for sparse but evocative detail. In "Living the Sign," a handmade sign in a fast food restaurant inspires a man to self-awareness, though he finds that its teenage creator is only dimly aware of its significance. "The Remedy Man," the collection's first and strongest story, tells of a guarded boy who comes to realize his potential by helping E.V., the road-worn title character (a fixer of bad horses), break a stallion. "Horse is just like a human being," E.V. tells him. "He's just gotta know his limits. Once he finds that out he's a happy camper." Offering many such moments of distilled wisdom, the stories in Great Dream of Heaven are no less brief but memorable encounters. --Ross Doll

From the Back Cover:

“Extraordinary by any measure. . . . With this collection [Shepard] becomes a storyteller in the purest sense.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Devastatingly artful. . . . Brutal and satisfying. . . . In their careful craft and mysterious revelations, the best stories in Great Dream of Heaven recall . . . Chekhov.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Strong emotions . . . make a Sam Shepard story as familiar as an old leather saddle. . . . Shepard’s terse, lyrical style excels. . . . There’s something broadly American . . . about the frustrations his characters feel.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Shocking. . . . Often funny. . . . Shepard’s writing is consistently excellent.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“His playwriting skills . . . make his fiction shimmer with a brutal clarity.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0375704523
• ISBN 13: 9780375704529
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160