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The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake

by Breece D'J Pancake, James Alan McPherson (Forward), John Casey (Afterword), Andre Dubus III (New Afterword)

4.27 of 5 stars 4.27 · rating details · 1,579 ratings · 220 reviews

Breece D'J Pancake cut short a promising career when he took his own life at the age twenty-six. Published posthumously, this is a collection of stories that depict the world of Pancake's native rural West Virginia.

Paperback, 192 pages

Published July 1st 2002 by Back Bay Books (first published 1983)

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Mar 08, 2013 Melanie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favourites

These 12 stories silenced the general clamour I carry around with me.

Few experiences can render me peaceable & sated, but with Breece D'J Pancake, this guy just surrenders everything, he is authentic, and as John Casey mentions, Breece absorbs, learns & ages everything he welcomes. (While he lived). Receiving that honest and embracing nature of his is a nourishing and often bracing experience.

The stories offer you a bruising. The characters are deeply connected to nature, they are earn...more

11 likes · like · see review

Feb 19, 2009 Jacob rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008-2009, i-own, short-fiction

February 2009

This was a difficult one to review objectively. After all, to read Breece D'J Pancake is to know Breece D'J Pancake, and to know about him is to know about his death. A self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head at age 26, and these twelve stories the only works he left; how can you ignore that?

This collection has an almost mythical aura to it, the kind that seems to surround the works of all artists who died long before their time. This is all he wrote--this is all we have. And with...more

10 likes · like · see review

Feb 03, 2008 Anders rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Anders by: the believer, circa 2006?

The stories of Breece D'J Pancake (real name) look unflinchingly at the gritty realities of the impoverished Appalachian region-- its difficulties, tragedies, and impossibilities, and the strength that people pull together which is somehow never quite enough. Pancake grew up in the hills of West Virginia and took his own life with in 1979 at the age of 27, just as his literary career was beginning to gain a little momentum. While alive, The Atlantic accepted a few of his stories for publication,...more The stories of Breece D'J Pancake (real name) look unflinchingly at the gritty realities of the impoverished Appalachian region-- its difficulties, tragedies, and impossibilities, and the strength that people pull together which is somehow never quite enough. Pancake grew up in the hills of West Virginia and took his own life with in 1979 at the age of 27, just as his literary career was beginning to gain a little momentum. While alive, The Atlantic accepted a few of his stories for publication, but this posthumous collection brings together the work he was doing in the University of Virginia's creative writing program just before his death. This collection isn't for the weak of heart, and should be avoided when already feeling down. I basically had to put the book down after each story to catch my breath and collect myself. They're heavy, pounding stuff that'll get caught in your head.

In his work, it is evident that Pancake was weighted down by the psychological ramifications of the decaying South's extreme poverty. This collection is packed with frustration-- young girls taking to prostitution, beloved dogs being murdered by best friends, serial killers, heavy drinkers, waitresses, cockfights. Pretty much every story features a character whose life had been charted out since they were conceived, born into a household ripped apart and forced upon a path not of their own choosing. In this light, it's tempting to read Pancake's own biography as just another story in his collection. James Alan MacPherson, a professor who took Pancake under his wing at U of VA and encouraged him to send his work out for publication does just that. A writer in his own right, MacPherson's introduction manages to do just that. I would recommend the introduction on its own, it's that good. Most importantly, the introduction captures the deep respect MacPherson had for Pancake and inspires the reader to feel the same way after understanding Pancake's own battles. It shows that the dark, crushing powers which Pancake shows ripping his characters apart inside acted on him as well.

Parallels of Pancake's work can be noticed in early Palace Brothers albums, specifically "Days in the Wake," or the work of director David Gordon Green ("George Washington," "All the Real Girls"), both of whom may well have been inspired by Pancake's work. These artists similarly capture a certain feeling of modern post-industrial Southern intellectualism and sensitivity which, rather than allowing an escape from the poverty of opportunity plaguing them, instead gives their protagonists a vivid and profound awareness of what they're losing and missing. These stories are rich with regional detail-- the characters use Southern syntax so deep that it can be indeterminate what they're talking about, but this doesn't detract from the stories. The detail Pancake infuses into the stories lends them a magical feeling, shrouds them in a bit of mystery that serves to cut through what I think is a natural predilection on the part of Northerners to condescend to the people of the South. The people of Pancake's stories are experts in their own right, can hunt, skin, brine, and eat a squirrel without too much thought, and are aware of and ripped apart by obligation, family, lust, and impossibility.(less)

8 likes · like · see review

Jun 22, 2007 Bridget Hoida rated it 5 of 5 stars

Ever buy a book for the poem on the first, unnumbered, page because the poem is so spot on you can hardly stand it? And you didn't have a pen or a big enough scrap of paper or the time to kneel in the aisle of the store and scribble the first line and maybe perhaps the author? And although Professor Dane taught you well and with certainty how to lift a page from any book, including those in fancy temperature controlled archival rooms--like the Huntington and the Bancroft and the Getty--you resis...more

10 likes · like · see review

Apr 04, 2013 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars

I just purchased a third copy of this book. The first two were thrust into the hands of unsuspecting friends. I am eager to become reacquainted.

So plaintive. so emotive. gut wrenching.

I'm not sure how I've never run across this guy, but he is absolutely captivating. A tragic personal story, not too dissimilar to John Kennedy Toole from what I understand. He ultimately succumbed to his pain and committed suicide before he could gain the recognition deserved.
The Hemingway comparison is obvious,...more

3 likes · like · see review

Jul 21, 2008 Alex rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: favorites

Occasionally one comes across a writer who seems to exist causa sui, not a product so much as an expression of circumstance. Breece Pancake is of this rare strain. His stories are gems without fissure, staggering glimpses of lives worn down by time and experience. This collection is absolutely excellent.

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Dec 26, 2008 Bart rated it 5 of 5 stars

To stumble on Breece D'J Pancake is to learn a whole bunch of lessons about the nature of genuine talent. Genuine talent doesn't require that you relate to it or find yourself in its depictions or learn important life lessons or be the first to tell your friends your eye for it. Genuine talent doesn't need cheerleaders or fawning critics or book clubs.

Genuine talent overwhelms and defies its lesser rivals.

The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake comprises genuine talent and acts as a fine standard agai...more

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Feb 23, 2008 Cody rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: EVERYONE

Shelves: all-time-faves, southern-classics, novellas-short-stories

This superb collection of twelve short stories by Breece D'J Pancake are truly the greatest thing I have ever read. Moving and lyrical, you can feel the musical rhythms of the speech of truckers, coal-miners, and West Virginia mountain-folk echoing the rhythms of their lives. Unfortunatly, Pancake killed himself at the age of 26 leaving many questions and these twelve stories. We will never know what other great stories and novels Pancake had in him but my bookshelf weeps at their loss.

I bought...more

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Feb 11, 2009 Jeremy rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is an amazing book of short stories that hits you hard and stays with you a long time. Pancake was a genius of prose. He sets a mood early in each story, and paints his characters with quick deft strokes. I've seldom read a collection which demanded to be read as a collection more. The only comparable volumes I can remember are A Moveable Feast by Hemingway (to whom Pancake is often correctly compared, and it is not clear to me that Pancake loses in the comparison, and I love Hem) and Your...more This is an amazing book of short stories that hits you hard and stays with you a long time. Pancake was a genius of prose. He sets a mood early in each story, and paints his characters with quick deft strokes. I've seldom read a collection which demanded to be read as a collection more. The only comparable volumes I can remember are A Moveable Feast by Hemingway (to whom Pancake is often correctly compared, and it is not clear to me that Pancake loses in the comparison, and I love Hem) and Your Lover Just Called by Updike. In all three collections, the stories benefit from the presence of their companions. In Pancake's, they are all set in the bleak lives of WV's working classes. These are stories of a world I do not presume to know, although the dark townscapes of WV have struck me with their stark beauty since I was a child. But I was and remain a tourist in that state, whereas Pancake grew up in it, and there is not a note that strikes as false here. He writes with courage and conviction, shielding us from nothing, in particular not the poverty of relationships between men and women that he saw. As a portrait of white working class rural life, these stories stand with the very best of Jayne Ann Phillips's short stories and the great novel Bastard Out of Carolina. Unlike many "minimalists" Pancake was not sparing in his descriptions. He also adds in a few just a touch of the spiritual, the supernatural, the sense of a reality beyond what we perceive.
I should note that I read this book not long after Pancake's premature death by suicide, and yes, I was afraid that the Keatsian romanticism of an early death had colored my perception of its greatness. Not to fear--the stories stand up apart from the tragic end of their author. That said, this is NOT a book to read when looking for uplifting tales of endurance. Rather, many/most are bitter, brutal, and impossibly good depictions of failure, hopelessness, disappointment, and disease. There is magnificence only in the prose itself, in the gorgeous delicate placing of word after word that speaks directly to the reader's soul.(less)

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Jan 08, 2009 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

Pancake's characters are all operating on everything they've got, which is about 70% of what they need. His protagonists, by and large, hunt through these stories driven by hunger and led by a stubborn sense that a sort of perfection can be found in simple human kindness. They're bursting with a desire to give everything of themselves, but seldom find takers. The stories themselves are descriptions of good, flawed people--noble people--operating on tiny margins, making bruising marches through t...more

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 28, 2011 Sophie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories

Tight prose. Chiseled.

(from the preface by James McPherson) -We once attended a movie together, and during the intermission, when people crowded together in the small lobby, he felt closed in and shouted, "Move away! Make room! Let people through!" the crowd, mostly students, immediately scattered. Then Breece turned to me and laughed. "They're clones!" he said. "They're CLONES!"

-The hillsides are baked here and have heat ghosts.

-I watch the cattle play. A rain must be coming. A rain is always...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 27, 2011 Cody rated it 3 of 5 stars

Trilobites rules, some of the other / older stuff kinda meanders through appalachia without really going anywhere, rip weirdo god man

---

I get up. I’ll spend tonight at home. I’ve got eyes to shut in Michigan – maybe even Germany or China, I don’t know yet. I walk, but I’m not scared. I feel my fear moving away in rings through time for a million years.

The opossum lay quietly by the roadside. She had found no dead farm animals in which to build her winter den; not even a fine empty hole. She pack...more

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Jul 13, 2012 Russell Bittner rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Among the various collections of short stories I've read over the years, I'd have to put this one near the top.

Breece D'J Pancake was clearly a talented writer -- and one who cared deeply about his creations.

In all honesty, most of my reading of this collection occurred during subway commutes to and from work -- i.e., not the ideal circumstances, by any means, under which to read someone's sole opus. (The author committed suicide in his late 20's.) But we live in a world of a thousand momentary...more

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Aug 31, 2010 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-short-stories

I read Pancake's stories as an undergraduate in East Stroudsburg after reading a Poets & Writers article about another young writer who found this book as a student. When I read these stories then, the darkness and leanness of the sentences and narratives contrasted so much with the depth of the real descriptions, I developed a sort of hyperbolic deference to this type of story. Though the stories still hold up as wonderful examples of American realism, and stand up next to the best work of...more

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Jul 08, 2009 Nicholas Montemarano rated it 3 of 5 stars

I've owned this book for about 10 years but hadn't read it until now. One of those books about which I'd heard so much praise. Some of it's deserved, I'd say. The stories - the only book we'll ever have from Pancake - show incredible promise, especially considering he wrote them in his 20s, but some didn't feel finished; a few read more like sketches, slices of life. This might be okay - the main protagonist of the collection is the back woods West Virginia country Pancake clearly knew intimatel...more

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Jul 13, 2009 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Jessica by: Andrew

Pancake was an amazing writer. There's no way around that. However, for all his masterful use of language, I felt like I had to fight to stay involved in the stories; my mind kept wandering, and no sooner did I start the next story than I'd forgotten nearly everything about the last. I think part of the problem is that each story seemed to be about the same characters and have the same overarching sense of despair and futility. The tales are about people stuck in place, people who dream of bigge...more

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Mar 12, 2007 J. Alan rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Any American

Shelves: topshelf

This is one of those books that makes you realize that not all contemporary fiction with literary aspirations has to be about the convoluted relationships between people who drive Volvos around Cape Cod. Breece's hard-luck characters understand the fundamental heartache at the base of the American experience, the suffocation and terror of standing still and the ephemeral exhilaration of running free.

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Jul 10, 2011 Laura Leaney rated it 4 of 5 stars

This may be the most startling collection of stories I've read in quite a while; and how is it that I got through college without ever having heard of Breece D'J Pancake?

The stories all take place in the rural backwoods of West Virginia, but the depth of the stories, despite the narrow setting, is vividly rich. The male protagonists are all young men, caught by the confines of rough traditions and strange, ugly parents - like mothers who "would not bathe" and fathers and older men who grate on...more This may be the most startling collection of stories I've read in quite a while; and how is it that I got through college without ever having heard of Breece D'J Pancake?

The stories all take place in the rural backwoods of West Virginia, but the depth of the stories, despite the narrow setting, is vividly rich. The male protagonists are all young men, caught by the confines of rough traditions and strange, ugly parents - like mothers who "would not bathe" and fathers and older men who grate on the nerves. I like this exchange at breakfast between Hollis and his mother in "First Day of Winter":

"Cer'als hot." His mother giggled, and the crescent of her mouth made a weak grin. "Your daddy's burnt his mouth."
"I ain't hungry." Hollis poured his coffee, leaned against the sink.
"The old man turned his head a little toward Hollis, bits of meal stuck to his lips. "You going hunting like I asked?"
Hollis sat his cup in the sink. "Thought I'd work on the car. We can't be with no way to town all winter because you like squirrel meat."

This particular piece of dialogue is pretty clear - but in many of the stories the dialogue and the internal thoughts of the protagonist blend together in such a way that (despite my confusion) interiority feels external, almost a part of the landscape. This is hard to explain, but the result is mythic......epic in scope. In the first story, my favorite, called "Trilobites," a young man named Colly hooks up with an old girlfriend Ginny who is visiting from college. While Colly's life is heavy with the past - his dead father, an ailing mother and farm, and memories of what he wrote in Ginny's yearbook before she "up and left him" - Ginny has moved on. After essentially rutting her in an abandoned building, she takes off, but the dialogue continues as Colly talks to his dead father while Ginny's "taillights are reddish blurs in the fog." The writing is powerful and begins with the father speaking as Colly is slumped on a bench:

"Ever notice how only blue lightning bugs come out after a rain? Green ones almost never do."
I hear the train coming. She is highballing all right. No stiffs in that blind baggage.
"Well, you know the Teays must have been a big river. Just stand on Company Hill, and look across the bottoms. You'll see."
My skin is heavy with her noise. Her light cuts a wide slice in the fog. No stiff in his right mind could try this one on the fly. She's hell-bent for election.

The remarkable thing about all these stories is how the past and the darkly beautiful Appalachian landscape are such powerful entrapping forces in the present consciousness of the main characters. All seem aware of the trap and accept their condition with a strange nobility.

(less)

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Aug 09, 2012 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

As a writer and a native West Virginian, it was inevitable that someone would recommend this collection to me eventually. I rarely read an entire collection of short stories in one sitting, but this blew my socks off. What I love about Pancake's writing is it's unpretentiousness--his syntax is deceptively simple, his images are down-to-earth, body-driven, visceral. Even though most of the collection concerns male characters, Pancake does not fall into the Hemingway/Salinger trap of using simple...more

1 like · like · see review

Nov 15, 2007 P.S. rated it 5 of 5 stars

considering the number of goodreads reviews, it's apparent that even the dead can be consider 'soldouts'. In WVa, some of us grew up on this book, lived a stonesthrow from the part of Rte. 60 in "Time and Again". It's not just one more "great book of fiction" for everyone. Hipsters; just...please don't get all down with Pinkney Benedict, OK?

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Apr 12, 2013 Christopher rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: lit-fiction

A very beautiful and transporting writer, in which I can personally see some influence of Kerouac and Salinger, rather than the Hemingway described by Joyce Carol Oates. What a shame his life was ended so early, a shame for him, and a shame for us. The characters in Pancake's stories here remind me of the thin elongated people created by the sculptor, Giacometti. He once said that he was sculpting not the human figure but "the shadow that is cast" and this is exactly how I see Pancake's literary...more

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Apr 26, 2013 Daniel Haeusser rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, literature

Pancake's stories are passionate and pure, beautifully crafted reflections of his native West Virginia. Understandably well-respected, the stories contain a darkness and sadness that are mirrored and intensified by the brief intensity of Pancake's own life. The stories are all literary in that they focus on the individual and psychological and emotional complexities found within simple plots. Pancake's unique voice has a surety and familiarity in portraying the rural, working-class common man of...more

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Nov 04, 2011 amy rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: you

Recommended to amy by: eugene cross

Shelves: forever-sexy

this is a fantastic collection of little short fiction pieces, and i would say that reading the first and most iconic "trilobites" changed my world and set me where i am today!!!!

I'm putting Pancake on the same level as Hemingway and Joyce in the same sentence. Right here.

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Feb 21, 2010 Brett rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Brett by: Meg DesCamps

Shelves: classy-fiction, short-stories

I had never heard of Pancake (whose name I love) before a friend gave me a copy of this book. It's obvious from perusing other reviews that he has some passionate defenders, and for good reason: this is an astonishing and rewarding collection of stories. The stories are gems of characters moving through their lives, with minimal exposition from the author. However, I confess that I've never spent any significant time in Appalachia, and the dialect can be so thick here that it's virtually impossi...more

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Mar 25, 2009 Chris Laskey rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Short Stories, Regional American

Recommended to Chris by: Daughter

So this book came from my daughter and one of her literature courses at college. You know "You have to read this guy dad - he's really good!" and then about a year later out of curiosity I do read it. These short stories are indeed terrific and it is a real shame to know that these stories are there is of this author as he died quite young. Within this short body of work however are wonderful little tales from the darker parts of America. Beautiful tight writing and sense of place. There's a cer...more

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Nov 24, 2008 Powells.com rated it 5 of 5 stars

"I give you my word of honor that he is merely the best writer, the most sincere writer I've ever read. What I suspect is that it hurt too much, was no fun at all to be that good." — Kurt Vonnegut

At the age of 26, Breece D'J Pancake took his own life and left the world to wonder what might have been. Four years later, with the release of this book, the world got a little taste. The stories collected here are powerful, yet uncomplicated. They cut to the soul of what it is to be human no matter yo...more

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Jul 10, 2011 Mark Lynn rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake is probably the singular most influential book I've ever read. His vivid, moody portraits of West Virginia changed the way I saw Appalachia and the way I write. In fact, my very first blog post was about this book. Here's how it begins:

In April 1979, Breece D’J Pancake broke into a neighboring home in Charlottesville, Virginia. He sat alone in the dark until the owners returned; then he bolted to his own place and unloaded a shotgun into his mouth. He was a powe...more

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Nov 28, 2008 Scott Hammer rated it 5 of 5 stars

The comparison to Hemingway is inevitable, but should be avoided. Save that for Raymond Carver (or his editor) instead. These stories are quiet and unbearably lonely. Terse prose and regional affect. I don't mind, as most people do, the idea that Pancake had some sort of promise unfulfilled. By reading these stories, I can't imagine how he could have done anything else other than end his life. I mean that as a compliment. This collection is so heartbreaking, so real, there is absolutely no postu...more

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Mar 27, 2008 will rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to will by: Alex

Stark and crushing, and more than anything beautiful. The best American short shories I've read (sorry, Salinger).

1 like · like · see review

Apr 09, 2010 William rated it 5 of 5 stars

Stunning. This is the kind of short story writing that I am always searching for and it's always a near life-altering reward to stumble upon a treasure like this.
I had read one of his short stories a long time ago when the late Mark Linkous had mentioned that the Sparklehorse song "Rainmaker" was based on the particular story........and, of course, I forget the name right now. Anyways, I read it, liked it, and it went on a long list of writers that I eventually need to get around to "absorbing"....more

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About Breece D'J Pancake

Breece (Dexter John) Pancake was born in South Charleston, West Virginia, the youngest child of Clarence "Wicker" Pancake and Helen Frazier Pancake, and was raised in Milton, West Virginia. Pancake briefly attended West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon before transferring to Marshall University in Huntington where he completed a bachelor's degree in English education in 1974. After graduati...more

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“i feel my fear moving away in rings through time for a million years.” — 15 people liked it

“I lean back, try to forget these fields and flanking hills. A long time before me or these tools, the Teays flowed here. I can almost feel the cold waters and the tickling the trilobites make when they crawl. All the water from the old mountains flowed west. But the land lifted. I have only the bottoms and stone animals I collect. I blink and breathe. My father is a khaki cloud in the canebrakes, and Ginny is no more to me than the bitter smell in the blackberry briers up on the ridge. --from Trilobites” — 4 people liked it

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