Q: Could you jump fences before?
A: Oh, yeah. You know, you just vault ’em.

Q: What do you rely on when you’re writing?
A: I go between two typewriters. The one that I’ve got now that’s just a monster is this little IBM Selectric from back in the seventies—that electric ball thing. It’s just a monster. I mean, it’s extremely fast, extremely sensitive and accurate, and it feels good. And then I’ve got a little Hermès portable that I like very much, and I take that on the road. You’ve really got to slam on that one, whereas the electric one is very fast. But I basically go from the handwritten notebooks to these other two deals. You know how it is if you’re a guitar player and you’ve got a great old Gibson? The instrument feels good and you feel good playin’ it.

Q: So you don’t use a computer for writing?
A: Never. Never. I don’t touch it. I don’t go anywhere near it. I mean, everybody around me knows about it, but I’ve turned my back on it.

Q: Do you e-mail?
A: No. Don’t need to. It’s a complete hype. It’s not a necessity. Why do I need e-mail?

Q: You need it for the same reason you’d need heroin.
A: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I knew a lot of junkies growin’ up. But you don’t need that.

Q: You captured fraternal friction so perfectly in the play True West—with its two sparring brothers, Austin and Lee—that I was surprised to learn that you don’t have a brother.
A: Right. I mean, basically they’re the same person. It’s just a split. I just wrote ’em as two characters, but they’re basically two conflicting parts of one person. So it’s very easy to do that without—you don’t need a brother. You’ve got your own brother.

Q: Speaking of which, you were known as Steve Rogers growing up in Duarte, California, but when you came to New York City in 1963, you switched your name to Sam Shepard.
A: If you remember, back in the old days there was a Steve Rogers who was Captain America—that was his alter ego, right? And I always thought, I don’t want to be carrying around the name of a cartoon hero. Actually, my legitimate name is Samuel Shepard Rogers, so I just shortened it to Sam Shepard and dropped the Rogers. I just kind of invented it.

Q: Do you ever feel as though there’s a Steve Rogers still out in the Mojave, living an alternate life?
A: Spinnin’ his wheels. Yeah. I’m sure there is.