SOURCE: Shepard, Jim. “Last Tango in Leipzig.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (12 January 1992): 3, 8.

In the following review of The Tango Player, Shepard compares the work to Franz Kafka's The Trial, examining the antisocial behavior of both protagonists.

In Franz Kafka's The Trial, a washerwoman in the court where Joseph K. is being prosecuted says to him: “It's so horrible here. … Do you think you'll manage to improve things?” He answers: “As a matter of fact, I should never have dreamed of interfering of my own free will, and shouldn't have lost an hour's sleep over the need for reforming the machinery of justice.” He goes on to announce that his arrest now forces him to intervene. But time after time in the novel, given the chance to either help someone else or pursue a more genuine course of subversiveness, he declines.

The reader wants to resist comparing a...