Cairo – «Gulf»
Sam Shepherd is a writer of diverse skills in different fields. He is a prolific playwright, won a Pulitzer for “Buried Child” and has produced more than 45 plays, and his short story collection “The Great Dream of Heaven” (2002) entered the finalists for the W. e. Smith literary, and in this collection consists of 18 stories, which were translated into Arabic by d. Yahya Kamel, Shepherd traverses the rugged, swampy American West with the same force that made him the greatest playwright of his generation.
In his story “Ain Tarifa”, for example, a young woman drives her car over the countryside, carrying a bowl containing her mother’s remains. The girl encounters a wounded falcon on the side of the road, and takes it to a veterinarian for treatment. In the mind forever.
In the story “Cats in My House,” we encounter a woman who is unable to compromise, even if it costs her to lose her home. This story stands out, given its simple form, as it is an exchange of dialogue, in which no information is disclosed regarding the characters and their surroundings, and here lies the best Shepherd’s strengths are an unerring ear for dialogue.
In “Women’s Entrance,” an old man advises his grandson regarding the gentle sex, without thinking regarding why he and the boy were the only inhabitants of the house, the reason being desertion by the women. The Old West, where you might collect cheap antiques that Native Americans used to sell very cheaply, and then sell them as a dealer at a high price to tourists.
This collection of stories by Sam Shepherd is unforgettable, dealing with the unexpected reactions of human nature, especially the nostalgia for values, and for things that no longer exist.
Much of the collection’s stories are soliloquy or succinct summation of dialogue, Sheppard is on solid ground when he leans on his sharp ear for dialogue, sparking a ghostly drift of short conversations and graceful drama.
Sheppard’s traditional line is to paint turbulent portraits of the unbridled American spirit. The characters are animated, driven by the dynasty’s inherent love of travel, either to escape, or in search of, their roots. Yet the prevailing tone of “The Great Dream of Heaven” is of confined and bound people.
America in the collection is a picture of a landscape or country, beyond the frontier, where there is nowhere else left to escape, Sam Shepherd’s America is populated by men and women who discover dreams of escape are an illusion.