Breece D'J Pancake is a writer from West Virginia who published a handful of stories before committing suicide. This book contains his entire output of twelve stories along with three appreciations from other writers.
I'm afraid that my experience of the stories was negatively impacted by the foreword from James Alan McPherson. McPherson tells about meeting Pancake at the University of Virginia. The picture he paints of Pancake as an outsider who cultivates his image as a hayseed is so clichéd that I briefly thought Pancake might be a fictional character. The afterword from Andre Dubus III is far more effective at conveying the strengths of the stories.
Nearly all of the stories take place in the dying coal mining towns of West Virginia, and Pancake captures the region well using carefully chosen details. His protagonists are men who feel tied to the land but pine wistfully after others who have left.
Many respectable critics rave about Pancake, comparing his stories to Hemingway's. They reminded me more of Alistair MacLeod with their focus on working-class characters living in out-of-the-way towns. (MacLeod's territory is Cape Breton Island.) Dubus captures the appeal well in his afterword: these are not typical literary characters. However, they aren't very distinct from one another; the names and circumstances change, but the men all seem like the same guy to me.
I would say Pancake was a very promising writer. His prose style and sense of place are fully formed, but the plotting and thematic development revealed his youth.
I'm afraid that my experience of the stories was negatively impacted by the foreword from James Alan McPherson. McPherson tells about meeting Pancake at the University of Virginia. The picture he paints of Pancake as an outsider who cultivates his image as a hayseed is so clichéd that I briefly thought Pancake might be a fictional character. The afterword from Andre Dubus III is far more effective at conveying the strengths of the stories.
Nearly all of the stories take place in the dying coal mining towns of West Virginia, and Pancake captures the region well using carefully chosen details. His protagonists are men who feel tied to the land but pine wistfully after others who have left.
Many respectable critics rave about Pancake, comparing his stories to Hemingway's. They reminded me more of Alistair MacLeod with their focus on working-class characters living in out-of-the-way towns. (MacLeod's territory is Cape Breton Island.) Dubus captures the appeal well in his afterword: these are not typical literary characters. However, they aren't very distinct from one another; the names and circumstances change, but the men all seem like the same guy to me.
I would say Pancake was a very promising writer. His prose style and sense of place are fully formed, but the plotting and thematic development revealed his youth.
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