True West [Paperback]

Sam Shepard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1981

Comedy / 3m, 1f / Int. Recently revived at New York's Circle in the Square, where Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly alternated playing the roles of the brothers, this American classic explores alternatives that might spring from the demented terrain of the California landscape. Sons of a desert dwelling alcoholic and a suburban wanderer clash over a film script. Austin, the achiever, is working on a script he has sold to producer Sal Kimmer when Lee, a demented petty thief, drops in. He pitches his own idea for a movie to Kimmer, who then wants Austin to junk his bleak, modern love story and write Lee's trashy Western tale. "Shepard's masterwork.... It tells us a truth, as glimpsed by a 37 year old genius." - New York Post "It's clear, funny, naturalistic. It's also opaque, terrifying, surrealistic. If that sounds contradictory, you're on to one aspect of Shepard's winning genius; the ability to make you think you're watching one thing while at the same time he's presenting another." - San Francisco Chronicle

Editorial Reviews

From AudioFile

Sam Shepard rose from the fringe theater of '60s counterculture to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and movie star. His plays explore the deep roots of competition and violence in the American psyche. Take TRUE WEST, a black comedy about two adult brothers sojourning in their mother's house while she's away. One brother writes screenplays; the other commits petty larcenies. They hate each other. They fight. They might even have killed each other had not mom returned from Alaska in the nick of time. The Oscar-nominated Alfred Molina and Fran Guinan, who appeared in the celebrated Steppenwolf Theater production of the play, pour on the testosterone in this vigorous audio version, taped before an appreciative audience. Director Simonson keeps the pace brisk but orchestrates the tempo masterfully from hot to cold and back again. Charlotte Rae as the mother does a wonderful little star turn at the end. Y.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 71 pages
• Publisher: Samuel French, Inc. (June 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0573617287
• ISBN-13: 978-0573617287
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.9 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,130 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #10 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical > General
  • #14 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > Drama > United States
  • #19 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Biographies & Memoirs > General

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Play, May 15, 2002

By 

"margiemillenium" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: True West (Paperback)

in True West , Sam Shepard's method is a kind of allegorical realism, where the use of everyday items such as golf clubs, houseplants and toasters is not at all intended to suggest us reality.
In this play, Shepard illustrates the duality of human personality, and our primitive instincts for violence against the unavoidable family ties that usually discourage an individual from acting as wanted. In this case, two brothers, Austin and Lee, who experience the typical good boy vs. bad boy sibling rivalry unexpectedly meet. As a result a series of emotional angry outbreaks take place as Austin can't defined himself: Is he frightened of Lee or does he admire his brother's willingness to break the rules? Austin graduated college, got married, has a family to whom he will return soon. He is disciplined, striving and ambitious. Quite the opposite, Lee is uneducated, violent, envious and resentful.
Austin, a Hollywood screenwriter, is housesitting his mother's home while she is on a sightseeing trip to Alaska. His brother, Lee, has appeared all of a sudden and wants to share the house. Lee is a tramp and small-time criminal, who has just spent the previous six months in the Mojave Desert with their alcoholic father.
The filthy and foul Lee invites Austin's Hollywood producer for a round of golf, and ends up selling him on a story idea for a modern Western film, totally displacing his hard-working brother, who as a result crumples into a chaotic and violent wreck.
Shepard's focus is not on verisimilitude, but on the intensity of the conflict that is revealed. For instance, the main action in the play is the reduction of the mother's neat household into a garbage dump. This includes the destruction of Austin's typewriter with a golf club, vomiting into the desiccated remains of a philodendron and squashing fresh toast into the linoleum. Additionally, Lee had stolen several toasters from the neighborhood, "There's gonna be a general lack of toast in the neighborhood this morning..." he says.
In various occasions, Austin seemed to be afraid of his brother as he winds up doing what Lee asks him, such as lending him his car or typing the script of his imaginary screenplay. However, what Austin mostly seems to fear is not Lee, but his own deep-set, self-destructive impulses as he lives out the paranoiac nightmare of being displaced by his brother. "You think you are the only one in the brain department?" Lee questions him.
When Lee is dictating Austin the lines of his screenplay, he narrates the story of two characters that are running after each other -- actually referring to themselves. He says: "The one who is chasing, doesn't know where the other one is taking him, the one who is being chased, doesn't know where he is going." The two brothers are constantly competing with each other; even though, they head in opposite directions in life. Austin has a career and a family while Lee doesn't but he has the ability to break the rules, his brother strictly follows.
Towards the end of the play, both brothers who are very intoxicated from having being drinking alcohol the night through, start to act both wild and silly at the same time. Under the influence of alcohol, repressions and taboos are forgotten and one acts and says things that would not normally do. As in Fool for Love, the protagonists confess their deepest fears and feelings when drunk, in True West, Austin reveals how he feels lost and lonely despite of his accomplishments, he says:" there's nothing real down here... streets look like a postcard..." He is living his dreams (he is becoming a playwright, has a wife, etc) but he seems not to get acquainted with his reality and does not know anymore what is real and what is not.
Then, decides to "try" the toasters and make some toasts, which Lee steps over and smashes on the floor as he criticizes him: "you're making that toast like salvation or something...I don't want any toast..." to what Austin replies: "...I love the smell of toast...it's salvation...". While this argument goes on, their mother comes back doesn't surprising much when finding out the disaster her sons had made to her house. But, she tells them they'll both end up in the same dessert.
At the end of the play the phrases: "...Something to keep me in touch" and "It's easy to go out of touch" made me realize that one must hold onto something that will keep one focused in order to go on -- either focus on one's reality or on one's dream(s). Everyone needs that toast of salvation!

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars true west the play, September 16, 2010

By 

Michael Rosscoe - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: True West (Paperback)

this play came in good condition. the only problem was shipping. it took about a month to receive the play when i paid like 5 dollars for shipping. i'm not exactly sure how mail works, but nothing should take that long for that price.

5 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars "...when something's been said a thousand times before...", October 29, 2002

By 

Andrew McCaffrey "The Grumpy Young Man" (Satellite of Love, Maryland) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: True West (Library Edition Audio CDs) (Audio CD)

I didn't like TRUE WEST. But there's nothing wrong with it that could be blamed on this particular production of the play. The actors are good considering the flimsy material that they have to work with. The music is used sparingly, but is very effective at setting the scene. I just couldn't get over the shallow development of the characters and a script that was constantly attempting to be deeper than it was.

The story has one location. Two brothers sit in their mother's house, yelling and screaming at each other until the parental unit herself appears near the end of the play. I like the idea behind the story, which is to put two people in a confined area and see what happens to them. Unfortunately, most of what we learn about these two is quite dull. One brother is a moderately successful screenwriter while the other makes his living as a petty burglar. I had hoped that we wouldn't get soppy scenes of each brother revealing that he secretly envied the other's lifestyle, but that's exactly what we get here. The successful brother is the one without good people skills and the streetwise brother really wants to make it big, but doesn't have the proper school learning to do so. You've probably seen this sort of thing played out in films, television and theatre thousands of times before; I know I have. The problem here is that there is virtually nothing else going on in the script to distract from the banality of the characters.

The humor comes across as being forced -- very forced -- especially in the second half. The play is billed as a tragicomedy, but the transition from the funny scenes to the dramatic is shockingly jarring. You can almost hear the goofy, "Hey, this is funny!" music in the background every time a supposedly lighthearted moment comes up. It's possibly attempting to be a black comedy, but I just can't really see it that way. People who moan and whine and complain constantly could very well be hilarious, but I just wasn't amused by them. The comedy didn't flow naturally from the drama, and the drama just hung limply by itself out in No Man's Land.

If you already know that you like the play, then you will probably enjoy this particular staging of it. The various sound effects and music are used in moderation, and are very efficient at placing the audience right inside that house. The script does have one or two nice lines about the falseness of the Hollywood lifestyle and the boundary between the life that we see in pop culture compared to the reality that we drive through every day. They aren't the most original observations that you'll ever hear, but the wording of them and the acting of the principals really make those short sequences work. It's a pity that the rest of the script wasn't as sharp as these moments, because they really had me longing to hear more.

At one point near the end, the hardened brother (who is attempting to write a screenplay, just like his sibling) asks, "What do you call it when something's been said a thousand times before?" The answer that he receives is, of course, "a cliché". And unfortunately that sums up almost this entire production. Other dramas that have utilized these rather basic elements haven't made the mistake of not including anything else. But TRUE WEST is just one big cliché.