The three "Family" plays, with their odd culinary decisions and odder family dynamics, are pretty ironclad (and I think reading them together helps). Outside the doors of those three houses is a map of abyssal America: land you got ripped off on, a bar out of Western cliché, a golf course, a derelict desert, a liquor store, a cornfield, a makeshift burial ground.

"Tooth of Crime" is a story of competitive cool that itself never manages to be credibly cool (I can't imagine it ever was), only gratingly overwritten. But if you can squint through all that slangy nonsense, the myth underneath isn't a total wash.

The second act of "La Turista," with its wild, grotesque monster images, is some of my favorite Shepard writing, even if the first act doesn't do much.

The looser Chaikin collaborations don't do a lot on the page (though "Savage/Love" is moving in its own way).