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The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake

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Breece Pancake killed himself with a shotgun in Charlottesville, Virginia on Palm Sunday in 1979. He was 26 years old at the time and had just completed a graduate writing program at the University of Virginia. Four years later "The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake" was published, a collection of twelve stories that posthumously established his literary reputation as one of the finest short story writers in twentieth century American literature.

Pancake grew up in the hollows of West Virginia and each of the carefully wrought stories in this collection deals with the seemingly desperate lives of the working poor in that part of the country. They are remarkably crafted stories, written with a deep sense for the locale and the people from which they are drawn. They are also models of precision, the kind of stories that deserve to be read over and over, studied for the way in which they use foregrounding and the mundane details of everyday life--albeit everyday life that quietly screams with the desperation of poverty, deadening work, drinking, promiscuity, and brutality-to draw complex portraits of people who endure, even when endurance is no more than a substitute for hope. As he writes in "A Room Forever," the story of a tugboat mate spending New Year's Eve in an eight-dollar-a-night hotel room where he drinks cheap whiskey out of the bottle and eventually ends up with a teen-aged prostitute: "I stop in front of a bus station, look in on the waiting people, and think about all the places they are going. But I know they can't run away from it or drink their way out of it or die to get rid of it. It's always there."

The best of these stories are "Trilobites," "The Honored Dead," "Fox Hunters," and "In the Dry." But there really isn't a weak story in the bunch. Every story is captivating, every one an exemplar of what good short story writing should be. At the end, the only thing that disappoints, that leaves the reader discomforted, is the thought that Pancake died so young, that these are the only stories we have by a truly remarkable writer.

Having been raised only five or so miles away from the town Pancake grew up in, I was a little bit more than amazed that I'd never heard of him. Adding to my amazement, I was an English Lit major going to college in West Virginia. Pancake's insights are almost horrifyingly close to the truth. His "Faulknerian" insight (as many have phrased it) is so much more powerful because it honestly conveys the spirit of southern W.Va. Powerful stories, especially valuable to anyone raised in Appalachian America.

There are times when things come together in such a way that you know it's perfect. It can be a phrase of music, a blending of colors and sounds in film, or, in this case, the words of a story. This book tells stories that fall together in a timeless way, but are still firmly rooted in a specific place and time.

Having grown up in West Virginia, there were parts of these stories that spoke to me from a sort of "native" perspective. But more to it was the emotion that was the core, the skin and the stitching of each of these stories.

It's a good book to own. To read from when you feel like being taken to another place for a while. And to carry a piece of that place with you once you put the book down.

Breece Pancake killed himself with a shotgun in Charlottesville, Virginia on Palm Sunday in 1979. He was 26 years old at the time and had just completed a graduate writing program at the University of Virginia. Four years later "The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake" was published, a collection of twelve stories that posthumously established his literary reputation as one of the finest short story writers in twentieth century American literature.

Pancake grew up in the hollows of West Virginia and each of the carefully wrought stories in this collection deals with the seemingly desperate lives of the working poor in that part of the country. They are remarkably crafted stories, written with a deep sense for the locale and the people from which they are drawn. They are also models of precision, the kind of stories that deserve to be read over and over, studied for the way in which they use foregrounding and the mundane details of everyday life--albeit everyday life that quietly screams with the desperation of poverty, deadening work, drinking, promiscuity, and brutality-to draw complex portraits of people who endure, even when endurance is no more than a substitute for hope. As he writes in "A Room Forever," the story of a tugboat mate spending New Year's Eve in an eight-dollar-a-night hotel room where he drinks cheap whiskey out of the bottle and eventually ends up with a teen-aged prostitute: "I stop in front of a bus station, look in on the waiting people, and think about all the places they are going. But I know they can't run away from it or drink their way out of it or die to get rid of it. It's always there."

The best of these stories are "Trilobites," "The Honored Dead," "Fox Hunters," and "In the Dry." But there really isn't a weak story in the bunch. Every story is captivating, every one an exemplar of what good short story writing should be. At the end, the only thing that disappoints, that leaves the reader discomforted, is the thought that Pancake died so young, that these are the only stories we have by a truly remarkable writer.

In this volume, the writer's surviving voice really hits home and stays there. Like that perfect song that stays in your head and carries you through the day, Breece Pancake's words and wisdom echoe through the reader's mind forever after reading them. In this life, there is always something around to remind of a Breece Pancake story. From the time weathered fossils in the creek beds to the rare West Virginia 120 m.p.h. strait stretches, after reading this volume I see Pancake everywhere, no matter where I am in the world. Like the trilobite preserved beneath the earth that hides it, these stories are a tangible (and for some reason widely unknown), history of a time and generation that, like the tragedy of Pancake's suicide, is destined to be repeated if ignored.

Anyone who trips across this book must feel lucky. It is heart-warming in it's humanity and heart-breaking in it's honesty. Regardless of where you are in the world you will find something in this book. Sometimes gifted people that die young are great in that they hint at greatness. Breece Pancake hit the bullseye first. Sadly he did not have the saving of himself. The Gram Parsons of literature.

Most of these stories, set in West Virginia, were written in the late 70's and early 80s. At that time the people of the hollows of WV were suffering through a period of recession comparable to the Great Depression. Mining which had been the backbone of the WV economy for over a hundred years, was dying or dead. Ecological and environmental concerns, as well as the growth of the use of oil to fire electric plants, had diminished the need for appalachian coal (also replace by the hugh open pit mines of Colorado and Arizona).

By the beginning of the 80s, towns were literally closing down and people were on the road like Oakies in the thirties. It was at this time that Pancake, having graduated from Marshall University, was beginning his writing career. He saw stories all around him, and his eye for detail is uncanny. Having lived the part, he has little trouble evoking the effect of poverty and hopelessness in his characters.

The problem I have with his stories is that many of them are plaintive narratives, without a beginning or end. They bring forth well defined problems and characters, but that's as far as they go. But maybe that's the way that Pancake wanted them to read.

Knowing that one day he put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, you can see his pain in the words of many of his characters. What was the cause of this pain? All are assumptions, only he knew the real reasons. But I'll say, having been there, his seems to me to have been an uncontrolled malaise (maybe a chemical imbalance or alcohol induced ennui)

that was never treated. On the other hand, maybe he was just bored. Either way, you have to take his stories from his standpoint and go on from there.

Why is this guy still obscure? He should be up there with the rest of the pantheon where he belongs.

Let me try to phrase this well. Breece Pancake is a writer who wrote perfect fiction. Look at the stories: every phrase, every punctuation mark, is placed so carefully and thoughfully that his fiction achieves a balance and aesthetic which makes ninety-nine percent of other contemporary short fiction look like, well, crap. Artsy-fartsy crap. There are images and wordings in here that will floor you.

Breece Pancake, more than twenty years after his death, remains the best American fiction writer of the baby boom generation.

I must have first seen this collection shortly after it came out in 1983. It was impossible not to be struck by the author's name, which seemed to me at the time to embody a uniquely American authenticity (it turns out to have been a typo that he decided to retain). Despite the hyperbolic praise heaped on it even then, I heard nothing of Mr. Pancake or his work until I came across a mention of it recently in another book. Perhaps too close to the author's age upon my first encounter, and unfortunately, too far from his level of maturity at the time, it was better to wait nearly a quarter of a century before reading him.

What impressed me the most was the author's command of his medium: not one superfluous word, and most remarkable in someone so young, the utter lack of artifice, of "cleverness," of the desperate attempt to impress the reader with the writer's erudition. Pancake clearly wrote about what he knew, and like Tolstoy, chose those details of environment and character that by their precision and descriptive power best evoked the whole.

Stylistically, the stories vary between first and third person, and except for "The Salvation of Me," take place in very short periods of time. In the temporal as well as the descriptive, the carefully chosen part succeeds in standing in for the whole.

The foreword by James Alan McPherson, and the afterword by John Casey, both who knew Pancake well, augment the stories by illuminating the man who wrote them. I am baffled by the inclusion of "A New Afterword" by Andre Dubus III, who never met Pancake, but like many people, was strongly affected by his writing. Pancake made his living as a teacher; I would have much preferred a reminiscence by one of his students, and if possible, by "the girl who had allowed him to kiss her cheek after several dates."

What comes through in each story is Pancake's genuine affection, and even more, respect for his characters. He is willing to allow them to be themselves, unlike many writers who use their characters simply as a means to make a point, to elucidate an argument, to convince us of their contempt. Pancake has no desire to prove anything, except the gentle observation of ordinary people limited by their circumstances. There is no blame, no "other" responsible for his protagonists' conditions, aside from the inherent limitation of life itself, of being human in a not entirely indifferent universe.

Unlike Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, and other writers who killed themselves, Pancake died too soon to realize a measure of success, and based on his popularity at this juncture, probably never will. Had he lived, even if he had never "matured," any additional work (dare we imagine, a novel or two?) would have assured his place among the great American writers of the last century. Sadly, the paucity of his production, despite its quality, can only render him a curiosity.

I first read this book in 1988, but I have returned to it many times since, to reflect on the beauty of the prose and the land it describes.