Vintage, 2006 $12

In the preface to the revised edition of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Sam Shepard asserts that Buried Child is “now a better play.” Anyone who has read the acclaimed play in its unrevised state can surely attest to that fact. In all of its incarnations, the play is a darkly comic portrait of a family brought to its knees by betrayal, adultery, and murder. The reader is drawn into a surreal farmland home that parallels both the absurdity of the homestead in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the circus-like familial interactions of Geek Love. From the start, we are introduced to a bible-beating-yet-philandering matriarch, an incapacitated-yet-smart-mouthed patriarch, a traumatized eldest son freshly home from a mysteriously diabolical escapade in New Mexico, and a youngest son with both a superiority complex and a wooden leg. These characters are unveiled as ghosts of their former selves during a visitation by a long lost grandson and his girlfriend. With wit and clever wordplay, Shepard crafts a sharp dissection of heritage, family, and the ways in which his statement “the past is passed” is far from the truth. The revised edition plays up the burlesque humor of the play and adds to the overall characterization of the play’s cast. Shepard’s tale is as timeless as it is disturbingly relevant to anyone who feels confined by the constraints and expectations of family.