By far one of the best things for me about taking a couple of creative writing classes at the University of Michigan was learning about writers I had never heard of prior to those classes. The list of writers that I was exposed to during those two semesters is huge. One of those was Breece D'J Pancake which one of the two professors I had (not, not Alyson Hagy) said a story I wrote reminded her of this writer (I still get a chuckle when typing or saying that out loud). I immediately went looking for what I sadly found out was his only book, The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake, published posthumously as he'd taken his own life at the age of 26. The bulk of his stories had been published in The Atlantic, and it was the work of two former professors, James Alan McPherson and John Casey, that helped push this collection along.
There is definitely a power to Pancake's writing. A starkness. He wrote of where he came from, Appalachian West Virginia and he did so as honestly as possible, not spit-shining anything. Turtles aren't referred to as turtles, but turkles, as you'd hear if you ever wandered into Pancake's home land. His stories don't always involve large plots, but frequently live within the minds of his protagonists who often are at odds with their past, something this young man trying to fit in at the University undoubtedly struggled with himself. It's a fantastic collection that should be on the shelf of any writer (and reader).
The following are the opening lines to the stories in the collection:
"I open the truck's door, step onto the brick side street." (Trilobites)
"Hunched on his knees in the three-foot seam, Buddy was lost in the rhythm of the truck mine's relay; the glitter of coal and sandstone in his cap light, the setting and lifting and pouring." (Hollow)
"Because of New Year's I get the big room, eight-dollar room." (A Room Forever)
"The passing of an autumn night left no mark on the patchwork blacktop of the secondary road that led to Parkins." (Fox Hunters)
"Mr. Weeks called me out again tonight, and I look back down the hall of my house." (Time and Again)
"On the morning of the fair the smell came to Reva in the kitchen, slicing through the thick odors of coffee and fish roe." (The Mark)
"In the silence between darkness and light, Skeevy awakened, sick from the dream." (The Scrapper)
"Watching Little Lundy go back to sleep, I wish I hadn't told her about the Mound Builders to stop her crying, but I didn't now she would see their eyes watching her in the dark." (The Honored Dead)
"Alena stepped under the awning of the Tastee Freeze and looked out at the rain draining into the dust, splattering craters with little clouds." (The Way it Has to Be)
"Chester was smarter than any shithouse mouse because Chester got out before the shit began to fall." (The Salvation of Me)
"He sees the bridge coming, sees the hurt in it, and says aloud his name, says, 'Ottie.'" (In the Dry)
"Hollis sat by his window all night, staring at his ghost in glass, looking for some way out of the tom Jake had built for him." (First Day of Winter)
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