Sam Shepard’s book Day Out of Days contains hypnotic storytelling. Shepard, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of more than 45 plays, has appeared in over 30 films, received an Oscar and won 11 Obie Awards. Some of Shepard’s finest collections include The Rolling Thunder Logbook, Seven Plays, Motel Chronicles, Cruising Paradise, Fool for Love, Simpatico and Hawk Moon.
Day Out of Days contends as one of Shepard’s best. Composed usually in transit, these highway stories (over 24 specific highways are mentioned) paint vivid landscapes of contemporary American life. It’s no wonder why he’s written with Bob Dylan, T-Bone Burnett and Wim Wenders.
Day Out of Days features poems, over 100 stories and various dialogues. “Kitchen” offers a detailed description to the pulse of our narrator’s house. “Haskell, Arkansas” begins a series of tales about a severed head a man finds by the side of the road.
Shepard maintains his cutthroat style. Dialogue exchanges “Reason”, “Livingston, Montana”, “Interview in Café Pascual”, “Boca Paila, Mexico”, “Land of the Living” and “Black Oath” adhere to Shepard’s sheer economy of words. Throughout Shepard’s works, a father-son struggle reappears, and a few exist here in “Orange Grove in My Past”, “Descendancy” and “Lost Coin”.
Shepard writes narratives revolving around Fats Domino, Thelonious Monk, Eric Dolphy, Hank Williams, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Richard and Ralph Stanley. Shepard always operated on the main artery of American music. He once lived with Charles Mingus’ son and dated Patti Smith. Shepard also played drums in the Holy Modal Rounders.
Day Out of Days conjures ghosts of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Hurricane Katrina, The Lakota, Casey Jones, Confederate soldiers, Kit Carson, Dostoyevsky, firefighters, Richard Hugo, Marlon Brando, horses, speed freaks, Robert Blake and old friends.
A fine line of truth and fiction blurs the identification of our narrator, but if you know Shepard’s work you understand almost all of these stories are true. Even in family tales you might hear his wife Jessica Lange ask, “Do you have a girlfriend?” just like a spouse in one of these vignettes.
Day Out of Days emits mojo of an old medicine man.
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