Re-reading; remembering

INTERVIEWER

I read somewhere that you started writing because you wanted to be a musician.

SHEPARD

Well, I got to New York when I was eighteen. I was knocking around, trying to be an actor, writer, musician, whatever happened.

INTERVIEWER

Did you start right in?

SHEPARD

Not immediately. My first job was with the Burns Detective Agency. They sent me over to the East River to guard coal barges during these god-awful hours like three to six in the morning. It wasn't a very difficult job—all I had to do was make a round every fifteen minutes—but it turned out to be a great environment for writing. I was completely alone in a little outhouse with an electric heater and a little desk.

INTERVIEWER

Did you already think of yourself as a writer?

SHEPARD

I'd been messing around with it for a while, but nothing serious. That was the first time I felt writing could actually be useful.

-- Sam Shepard interviewed by Benjamin Ryder Howe, Jeanne McCulloch, Mona Simpson for The Paris Review.