692 The American Century: Literature since 1945fictions, can be dangerous, seducing those who act in this way into a destructive
escape from reality. The reality that Shepard intimates we must never try to
escape from is not a narrowly materialistic, mundane one. The failure to acknowledge
magic as a vital element in the world is another insistent theme, pulsating like a
drumbeat through such plays as La Tourista and Mad Dog Blues. In La Tourista, in
particular, that failure is seen as a determinately American one. In American culture,
the action suggests, alienation from the spiritual is endemic and indelibly linked to
alienation from the past. What we see here is an American in Mexico forced to
confront his own mortality, his own inhumanity: compared to the native traditions
he encounters, he is, he finds, a kind of Frankenstein’s monster, and a spiritual
pauper. America, according to all these early plays, is heading in the wrong direction,
away from the power of mystery to the power of the material. And nowhere is this
clearer than in the best of them, The Tooth of Crime.
At the core of The Tooth of Crime is a mythic contest between Hoss, an aging rock
star, and Crow, a young newcomer with a new style. Typically of the work of this
period, Shepard deploys a kaleidoscope of images, as his characters use a fast- talking,
sharp-shooting range of styles in an attempt to impose alternative realities on each
other. Hoss is a gypsy loner, a Mafia godfather, a boxing champion, the old pro;
Crow is a teen gang leader, a lonely hit-man, the challenger, the new kid on the block.
Above all, though, Hoss is a man with a history and roots, simultaneously enriched
and weakened by his accomplishments and his knowledge of his art. Crow, on the
other hand, is a boy with no knowledge beyond his own limited experience, no sense
of commitment to any community or communal inheritance, with the strength and
freedom that his own alienation and amorality bring. Hoss is the past, Crow is the
future; given that, the outcome of the contest between them is inevitable. All Hoss
can do, finally, to reaffirm his identity, is kill himself with a stylishness, a grace under
pressure, that Crow can only envy. To an extent, the antagonists here are hip versions
of Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. In this play,
though, the victor is irredeemably crude, raw, empty; Crow has none of the latent
vulnerability of Stanley (a vulnerability that, of course, helps drive him to brutality
in the end). The future is seen as a decisive drift away from everything that, in the
past, defined not only culture but also community and even humanity.
Not long after writing The Tooth of Crime, Shepard moved away from the
disjunctive narrative rhythms and rapid tonal shifts of his earlier work. He remained
committed to a theater of extremes, emotional and actorly: the stage directions for
his 1983 drama, Fool for Love, for instance, insist that “This play is to be performed
relentlessly without a break.” But his style gravitated closer to domestic realism, the
dynamics of the familiar and obsessive intimacy. Bizarre events and brutal emotional
violence still occurred, but there were no longer such radical shifts in language and
form. This alteration of style was announced in Curse of the Starving Class (1977),
the first play in a trilogy exploring the relationship of Americans to their land,
family, and history; the other two are A Buried Child (1979), probably his finest play
to date, and True West (1980). In Curse of the Starving Class, Shepard uses the
experiences of a family over two days to explore the national hunger. Everyone,GGray_c05.indd 692ray_c 05 .indd 692 8 8/1/2011 7:31:39 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 39 PM