Patti Smith's Lifetime of Friendship With Sam Shepard

For the New Yorker's Culture Desk, Patti Smith recalls a lifetime of friendship with Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and actor, Sam Shepard, who passed away this week. Shepard of course was the author of numerous plays, including True West and Fool for Love; he also acted in many films and plays, like The Right Stuff and Days of Heaven. Smith shares that her decades-long friendship with Shepard was a rare meeting of the minds for two writers who loved literature. When Shepard received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Trinity College in Dublin, he was most excited about receiving the accolade from an academic institution that once nurtured Samuel Beckett. Smith: 

In the winter of 2012, we met up in Dublin, where he received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Trinity College. He was often embarrassed by accolades but embraced this one, coming from the same institution where Samuel Beckett walked and studied. He loved Beckett, and had a few pieces of writing, in Beckett’s own hand, framed in the kitchen, along with pictures of his kids. That day, we saw the typewriter of John Millington Synge and James Joyce’s spectacles, and, in the night, we joined musicians at Sam’s favorite local pub, the Cobblestone, on the other side of the river. As we playfully staggered across the bridge, he recited reams of Beckett off the top of his head.

Sam promised me that one day he’d show me the landscape of the Southwest, for though well-travelled, I’d not seen much of our own country. But Sam was dealt a whole other hand, stricken with a debilitating affliction. He eventually stopped picking up and leaving. From then on, I visited him, and we read and talked, but mostly we worked. Laboring over his last manuscript, he courageously summoned a reservoir of mental stamina, facing each challenge that fate apportioned him. His hand, with a crescent moon tattooed between his thumb and forefinger, rested on the table before him. The tattoo was a souvenir from our younger days, mine a lightning bolt on the left knee.

Rest in peace, Sam Shepard. Read more of Patti Smith's remembrance at the New Yorker.