Yesterday's Idea of a Modern Man

"Sam Shepard wasn't born a cowboy. The actor and writer made himself into one. The dusty blue jeans, cattle drives, and folksy drawl suited his taciturn profile, giving Reagan-era America someone rugged to admire. Yet the people who knew Shepard best poked fun at his Western persona, which began to emerge in the 1970s and endured for the rest of his life."

"The cowboy image may have been cultivated, but it was not false. You might say it was earned, the vaquero as self-made man. Shepard-reluctant movie star, poet of masculine angst, and rock-and-roll hero of the American theater-thought Broadway and Hollywood were full of middlebrow nonsense. Born in suburban Illinois and raised in Southern California, he sought out an authentic country, far from New York City or Los Angeles, where he could hear himself think."

Sam Shepard fashioned a cowboy persona despite suburban Illinois origins and Southern California upbringing. He adopted dusty jeans, cattle drives, and a folksy drawl and acted in Westerns while friends sometimes mocked the image. Patti Smith called him "a man playing cowboys," and he portrayed Jesse James's brother late in his career, naming his first child Jesse. Shepard sought authenticity in Kentucky, New Mexico, and Texas, framing work around self-sufficiency and analog tools: "When you go to ride a horse, you have to saddle it. When you use a typewriter, you have to feed it paper." His plays emphasize anxiety, uncertainty, violence, and masculine vulnerability, rejecting Broadway and Hollywood middlebrow nonsense and finding truth in open spaces.

Read at The Atlantic