{"id":113364,"date":"2017-08-02T09:01:37","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T13:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=113364"},"modified":"2017-08-05T14:26:27","modified_gmt":"2017-08-05T18:26:27","slug":"sam-shepard-to-johnny-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/02\/sam-shepard-to-johnny-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"A Letter from Sam Shepard to Johnny Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

Photos courtesy of the authors and The Wittliff Collection.<\/p><\/div>\n

From a September 4, 1990 letter from Sam Shepard, who died last week at the age of seventy-three, to Johnny Dark. Shepard and Dark\u2019s forty-plus years of correspondence is\u00a0collected in\u00a0<\/em>Two Prospectors<\/a>, which was named after their unfinished, cowritten play.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear John,<\/p>\n

Funny I should get your letter on the very same day I\u2019m cleaning out one of my many neglected filing cabinets\u2014full of old letters, manuscripts, notes\u2014piles of papers & I came across your huge book of notes you sent me of our endless dialogues\u2014other letters from you, dating clear back to England & a great black & white photo of the two of us destroying the front porch in Nova Scotia\u2014me leaping off the steps with a hammer & you in the background with bushy black hair like the early Bob Dylan\u2014we look like we\u2019re in High School or something & I thought what a great friendship it was! Truly great. I miss the very same things\u2014just riding around in the white Chevy talking about any old thing that floated into our demented imaginations & then, momentarily, actually becoming characters & acting them out as we wandered through grocery stores or the streets of San Francisco or San Rafael on a brisk stoned afternoon. Somehow, it always reminded me of drunken Irish characters from Flann O\u2019Brien\u2014stumbling from bar to bar, spouting poetry, singing ballads & making up outrageous stories\u2014always in trouble with women & ultimately pathetically alone. I hope some way we can again strike up our own private dialogues\u2014hysterically funny to us only\u2014maybe as very old men on a bus stop or a park bench in some place like Lincoln, Nebraska where we\u2019re equally lost.<\/p>\n

I, too, have been going through the same heart-wrenching stuff you describe\u2014(maybe not the same but with the same results) & each time I come out the other end of it I think\u2014aah, at last it\u2019s over\u2014I can get on with my life again but it keeps coming back. I\u2019m convinced now it has nothing to do with women although I make myself believe I wouldn\u2019t feel this way if it wasn\u2019t for \u201cher.\u201d<\/p>\n

Writing is such a pain in the ass. I\u2019d like to just talk & maybe walk that\u2019s about it. I\u2019m exhausted from it all. Hope we can find a way to meet up & have a good time one of these days. It would be great to see you. Love to Scarlett & my ex-wife if you see her. And tell my son to call me\u2014I\u2019ve left messages all over hell for him. I remember the last words my Dad ever wrote me in a letter\u2014\u201cSee you in my dreams.\u201d How \u2019bout that.<\/p>\n

Your on-going amigo,<\/p>\n

Sam<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From\u00a0<\/em>Two Prospectors.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a9 2013 by Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark; published by the University of Texas Press.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From a September 4, 1990 letter from Sam Shepard to Johnny Dark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":784,"featured_media":112490,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1900],"tags":[4219,5733,5438,327,2861,29857,29855,182,29856,2899,11994,9909],"class_list":["post-113364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-correspondence","tag-bob-dylan","tag-correspondence-2","tag-flann-obrien","tag-friendship","tag-history","tag-hooliganism","tag-johnny-dark","tag-letters","tag-rapscallions","tag-relationships","tag-sam-shepard","tag-youth"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Letter from Sam Shepard to Johnny Dark<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From a September 4, 1990 letter from Sam Shepard to Johnny Dark.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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