Cruising Paradise: Tales

Through Cruising Paradise the voice of Sam Shepard kept me company during a week or two. I read his fragmented stories before falling asleep and felt at ease. I think it's the way he uses the language; lucid, clear, to the point, intense. The language flows and takes you to the images of endless roads, wide open spaces and the people who live there or just drive through it . You can feel the heat, you can hear the conversations, while all the time, in the back of your head Shepards voice leads you. He doesn't describe the situations in very much detail, he just lets the people talk, or think and that's enough. Wonderful experience. I believe it is the art of leaving out, to show what's there, in language and in imagery. Hope to find this again.

While reading this book, I had to stop more than a few times either to catch my breath or close my eyes and let what I just read sink in. I grew up down on the Mexican border, and Shepard's descriptions of events in that part of the world rang true, and were written in a terse manner, as is appropriate for the setting and characters. Brilliant.

What can I say! This is simply the best book I've ever read! Shepard's short stories strike you right in the hart in a way other authors only can dream about. Who can for example ever forget about the boy with his drunken father in the desert, or the actor who travels by car from L.A. down to the djungles of Mexico? No other author I have read have so completly spellbound me before, and I have read all of the so called great authors. One can only hope that the Nobel foundation discovers the greatness in Shepard.

The characters in Sam Shepard's Cruising Paradise are all sad and/or tragic figures. It is refreshing to read material that represents people not normally found in modern fiction. You can hear the voices of the protagonists in your head as they speak from the page (not surprisingly, they all sound much like Sam Shepard himself). The men in Cruising Paradise are all of a specific type - the idea of the Western or "man's man" is realistic. These characters all are trying to get a handle on how to be that specific type of person and often come up short. Sam Shepard's voice is poetic and passionate in a stand-offish way, but extremely true to character

A collection of 40 or so short stories, vignettes, and diary entries. Some no more than half a page, but each is a beautiful unique brushstroke. The brushstrokes, when viewed alone, reveal the exposed emotions of a variety of male characters. Combined, they create a graphic painting of the raw and sometimes complex emotions of the American male. Many of the tales are so revealing that you will find yourself re-reading them in awe of their beauty in simplicity. Like any true short story artist, Sam Shepard can create a complex story while maintaining an economy with words. The result is unique, suprising, and constantly rewarding