A History of American Literature

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1
The American Century: Literature since 1945 813

our house,” Emma complains. She, in particular, tries to resist. But Haynes is tortured
into submission; and Frank seems persuaded that Welch will lead him to a brave new
world. “We’re going to Rocky Buttes,” Welch tells Frank. “Whole different landscape.
Wide open. Just like the Wild Wild West. Not a tree in sight. Endlessly flat and
lifeless.” All Emma can manage in response to this is to run outside the house and
start ringing the alarm bell. She sees the danger, evidently, but all she can do is what,
in this play, Shepard is also clearly trying to do: sound the alarm.
The God of Hell takes its title from two punningly linked sources, Pluto, the god of
the underworld, and plutonium, the element evidently manufactured at Rocky
Buttes that might signal the end of the world. Its dramatic strategies involve a
combination of broad, black satire and deadpan surrealism and it directs its satire
far and wide. Among its targets, for instance, are the patriotic cant of the “war on
terror,” the myth of the Midwestern heartland (Frank and Emma are, it turns out,
the only people left in the area who still actually farm), the destruction of privacy in
post-9/11 America, the demolition of civil rights in pursuit of terrorism, the threats
posed by nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Emma and Frank are “out of touch,”
Welch sneers. “Living completely in the long-ago. Stuck in some quaint pioneer
morality.” Shepard rehearses one of his favorite themes here, the loss of the true West
and the emergence of a new West that commodifies and corrupts. But the catalyst
for this rehearsal is now the events of September 11, 2001 and their consequences:
the destruction of America, not so much by acts of terrorism, as by the relentless
processes of counterterrorism. The choice of a family farm as setting is carefully
calculated, as is the focus on a middle American couple like Frank and Emma – two
people who seem proud of the fact that, as Emma puts it, “Nothing ever happens
here.” The traditional location of the American dream turns out to be a place of
surreal nightmare as, characteristically, Shepard invokes the old myth of the
American West, on the one hand, while, on the other, he subverts it. Emma and
Frank turn out to be, not the happy farmers of legend, but the unhappy victims of a
literal invasion of their land and lives. If they are, as Jefferson supposed in his
celebration of the rural heartland of America, the chosen people of God, then that
God is the God of Hell.
Two large-scale works that fall into the nascent genre of post-9/11 drama are
Where Do We Live (2002) by Christopher Shinn (1975–) and Pugilist Specialist
(2003) by Adriano Shaplin (1979–). Where Do We Live has a large cast of fifteen
characters, people who are lovers, friends, rivals, and business partners. They are
also neighbors, since the play is set mostly in a New York City apartment block.
Ostensibly, what Shinn is concerned with here is a young, gay man called Stephen,
his relationships and, in particular, the relationship with his black neighbors. In fact,
it is a deeply symbolic look at life in New York just before and just after September
11, 2001: the play begins in late July and ends in early October, with the terrorist
attack occurring between the second and third acts. Stephen, a writer, has a
reasonably comfortable life. He is in love with Tyler, a sleek young actor.
Temperamentally, the two have little in common. Stephen is serious about his liberal
politics, while Tyler has the benefit of a trust fund that insulates him from having to

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