The debut collection by one of our foremost younger fiction writers.
A widely hailed first collection of stories set mostly in the rural South.
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Book Description
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In these nine stories, Benedict evokes the world of hard-bitten Southern men who live in shabby weatherbeaten houses or rickety trailers, who work in tire factories or slaughterhouses, who are slow to speak but quick to explode in anger, and whose women are tangential figures. Benedict deftly delineates his characters and has a good ear for the cadence of Southern speech. But the stories, although powerful, are too grim to be read in one sitting. Most include gory if not violent events: the shooting and flaying of a snake in "The Sutton Pie Safe"; the killing of a hog in "Booze";a barroom fight in "Hackberry"; and various episodes of stabbing, shooting and dogfighting in "Pit." The title story is as bleak as the others: a mountain teenager is robbed of some of his dead father's possessions at gunpoint as he walks to town to buy cigarettes. At 22, the author is a talent to watch, but one hopes that he injects a note of lightness into future stories.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
What Beattie did for urbanites, Cheever and Updike for suburbanites, a younger generationOmstead, Abbott, Cullen, and now Benedictis doing for the rural population. Only 22 and recipient of the 1986 Nelson Algren Award, Benedict has published stories in the Chicago Tribune and Ontario Review. His world is regional, tough, raw, male; these nine stories deal with the mountainmen, sheepfarmers, and hograisers of rural West Virginia. "Booze" describes the rampages of a white rogue boar. When the narrator and his friend Ken catch sight of him while digging post holes, they go after him, their only weapon a brush hook used to clear scrub. With echoes of Ahab and the white whale reverberating, Ken kills the beast, but not before he has broken Ken's leg. In this and other stories, Benedict's talent is certainly equal to his vision and his insight.Marcia Tager, Tenafly, N.J.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Damn good stuff,
By A Customer
This review is from: Town Smokes: Stories (Paperback)
Though he might seem a bit obscure to the casual reader, Pinckney Benedict is one of the finest writers of short fiction in the country. This here is his first collection, published when he was only twenty-three, and it's really something else. Stories like "All the Dead", "Dog", "Water Witch", and "Town Smokes", in the sheer audacity of the style in witch they're written as well as the evocation of the settings and characters, help to make up one of the most enjoyable and satisfying collections of short stories that you ever will read. Highly reccomended for anyone who appreciates good short fiction.p.s.: If you're nervous about buying a book on the internet, there's usually at least one copy in the fiction section of any Barnes and Noble.
11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
good fun,
By
This review is from: Town Smokes: Stories (Paperback)
This, Benedict's debut published when he was only 23, remains his best work to date. He seems to have lost most of his audacity, which is really the charm of this book, in his subsequent work. Still, this book's best stories have a lot of fun with language, and Benedict is undoubtedly a very talented writer. None of his work, though, approaches that of Breece Pancake, the West Virginia writer who was in many ways Pinckney Benedict's inspiration (do all West Virginians have such outrageous names?), but who committed suicide at age 26. Pancake was a genius who basically could not handle the world; Benedict is very gifted, but is not a genius. I still reccomend this book--I just don't want to see Benedict's reputation, just because he is still alive, completely overshadow Pancake's.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The rough beginnings of a great writer.,
By
This review is from: Town Smokes: Stories (Paperback)
Pinckney Benedict, Town Smokes (Ontario Review Press, 1987)
I've been a big fan of Pinckney Benedict's for some years now, thanks to his first (and, to date, only) novel, Dogs of God. Last year, I tracked down Benedict's newer collection of short stores, The Wrecking Yard, and love it. It took me till now to find his first collection, Town Smokes. And had I not found it, I would have kept looking. Sometimes knowledge is a terrible thing. Not that this is a bad collection, really. One of the pleasures of finding the first book by any writer one admires is the chance to see the potential shining through the early rough stuff. And Pinckney Benedict radiated potential in 1987. Unfortunately, he also radiated dialect-- if I never see the word "idea" represented as "idee" again, it'll be far too soon. It makes the stories, all too often, a chore more than a pleasure. Still, the things that make later Benedict so good are all here-- slice-of-life characters in situations that are just outside said slice, whether their own fault or someone else's, reacting to them with the kind of intelligent adaptability one doesn't expect from Benedict's hicks and rednecks (and you have to know that Benedict is using our own stereotypes against us there, which makes it all the better). For the most part, anyway; every once in a while, one of his characters just goes nuts instead (witness the main character in "Hackberry"). That, however, can be just as much fun to watch. In the general tradition of eighties fiction, a lot of these stories feel unfinished, without purpose; one scene is examined from a much larger picture, and you end the story wondering what happened. "Dog" is a prime example of this; there's the dog, and there's the two guys in the trailer, and there's the subtle shift in their relationship as we go through the story. Yes, I get that that shift is the focus of the story, but is it really enough? Benedict obviously thinks so. Good, but read his other stuff first. ***
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