The Wrecking Yard and Other Stories [Mass Market Paperback]

Pinckney Benedict (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1995

A collection of short stories which illuminate, with imagery and humour, the darkest corners of the American soul. The author attempts to capture the personalities of rural America, shaped by poverty, cruelty and an odd compassion.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

These nine stories and one radio play are raw slices of rural life that cut to the bone. With the same assurance Benedict brought to Town Smokes , the short-story craftsman, product of a West Virginia dairy farm and Princeton, conjures up America as a land of desolation, petty excess, murder, rage and self-destruction. "Washman," about a hunchback who shoots a highway robber in a trivial dispute and then rapes the thief's girlfriend, assumes an almost mythical quality. The title story features workers in an auto salvage and wrecking yard who flock like vultures to car accidents. In "Odom," a hill-dweller clearing his homestead with dynamite becomes a metaphor for the violence integral to white settlers' conquest of America. Benedict's characters, beyond redemption, seek refuge from themselves in bowling alleys, saloons or zoos, places where senseless violence prevails. With every word precise, his writing has the hallucinatory quality of a pure, dark dream.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Benedict's stories present the reader with a veritable gallery of broken lives. The Southern mountain folk who populate these grim tales are victims of emotional as well as economic deprivation. The harshness of their existence has left them brutalized, their stunted feelings emerging in twisted, grotesque fashion. In "Getting Over Arnette," a night on the town intended to ease the main character's pain is quickly transformed into a seriocomic self-punishment. Bitter comedy also dominates in "Rescuing Moon" when a young man attempts to save an older friend from the indignity of a nursing home. The title story lies closest to the heart of the book's bleak vision, as two teenage tow-truck drivers bear witness to the ceaseless destruction of human, beast, and machine. Despite occasional overreaching, this successor to Town Smokes ( LJ 5/15/87) further establishes Benedict as a writer to watch.
- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Plume (September 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452274354
• ISBN-13: 978-0452274358
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,579,198 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars As always, Benedict devliers., October 7, 2005

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wrecking Yard (Paperback)

Pinckney Benedict, The Wrecking Yard (Doubleday, 1992)

Pinckney Benedict writes testosterone-fueled stories that seem, given the publication date of this book, almost to be a rebuttal to the Robert Blys and Sam Keens of the world. I'm certainly glad someone was doing it.

The ten stories here (actually, nine stories and one radio play) have an eighties-fiction feel about them; they are simple slices of life that don't seem to be about much of anything. However, sometime in the late eighties, writers began to take the eighties-fiction tenets and play with them, creating stories with the same mediocre presentation and writing really, really good stuff within the frame. Barry Hannah and Ethan Canin are obvious examples; Pinckney Benedict can be put on the same shelf. Where Hannah pokes his nose into the life of the American south, Benedict reins his vision in a little tighter, sticking with rural West Virginia, and the myriad strangenesses to be found there. For example, "Horton's Ape" deals with two travelers who find themselves at a roadside bar that has a small zoo out back; "Washman" deals with a mountain man who exacts a horrible revenge on a man who tries to kill his mule, and Washman's own punishment for his acts.

It's possible that the best story in the collection is "Rescuing Moon," about a man who goes to save a friend of his from life in a surreal nursing home. However, every reader will likely find a favorite in here, and it could be any of the ten pieces presented. All are written with the confidence of a guy who writes fine short stories, and knows it. Benedict is one of America's lesser-known literary lights, and that's a shame; his books are a lot of fun, in the same way Barry Hannah's are (and with, especially in this case in "Washman," the same genial mean-spiritedness that is likely to disturb more than a few readers). This is stuff worth reading. ****

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Mixed Bag, January 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Wrecking Yard and Other Stories (Mass Market Paperback)

Benedict is hit-or-miss in this, his second collection of short stories...if a rule could be ascribed to the collection, he generally has more succeess with the commonplace than with the absurd. Thus, gems like the funny, pathetic "Horton's Ape" and the vivid, moving "Odom" appear right alongside curious little failures like "Washman" and "The Electric Girl". He is also more at home with the self-pitying losers of "Getting Over Arnette" than the Americans abroad in "At the Alhambra". Occasionally, as well, his metaphors are made to bear more descriptive weight than they can really handle. But all in all, a recommended read, and an author to watch.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pinckney Benedict is something else, May 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Wrecking Yard and Other Stories (Mass Market Paperback)

Thanks to my creative writing professor, who loaned me this book (signed by Benedict), I now know one of the best short fiction writers living today. These stories are such a welcome depature from the abstract sentimentality that so many young writers are putting out these days. Benedict avoids all abstractions, keeping his fiction rooted in cold, hard, wonderful reality. The unsettling (and believable) weirdness of Benedict's rural environment comes through fantastically in stories like "Bounty" and "Odom", and then there's "Washman", which is so surreal that it's almost beyond description. The opening story, "Getting Over Arnette", is especially funny (if you like dark comedy).

Any serious reader of short fiction ought to read Pinckney Benedict.