Customer Reviews

Town Smokes: Stories

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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.

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.

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. ***

These tales of poor West Virginia mountain folk create a fictional world unlike that in any other book I have ever read--a world haunted by dark spirits, enchanting the reader even as he is appalled by the brutality of the characters and their lives. Reading "Town Smokes," you close the covers gasping for air, yet wanting desperately to return. Judging from this, his first book, Pinckney Benedict appeared to be well on his way toward becoming one of the great figures of American literature, the equal of Faulkner or Melville. Unfortunately, "The Wrecking Yard," his follow-up book, was very fine, but lacked the originality and power of "Town Smokes." I fear Benedict's M.F.A. advisors may have gotten to him!

This is, without a doubt, first-rate fiction. Benedict does a wonderful job keeping himself distanced in every story; too many writers, it seems, adopt mannered styles of "mush" sentiments: "poor me, look at my beautiful prose, feel what I feel, oh", etc. What Benedict does, then, is put most writers to shame with the psychic distance between him and his characters. Too bad Benedict is not read by the general pubic, who insist on reading morons like Nora Roberts and Danielle Steele.