Breece Pancake’s stories are contained in first paragraphs, gestating and developing from their fetal status as his narrative comes to term. Upon a second reading, description is recognized for the limitation it is, containing the characters in seemingly unbreakable prisons of environment. His suicide notes were written in the same style. Sent out months before he killed himself, they cryptically mention his unhappiness, slip in vague references to a future without: “When you read this it really won’t matter anymore…” The implications became clear only after a second reading.

Pancake hailed from West Virginia, and his stories settle in the passes in and through the Appalachians. Coal mining towns and masculine men dominate, leading lives of extraordinary limitation both mentally and economically. In Pancake’s own life, he imitated the lower-class West Virginians that he wrote about. Upon entering college, he adopted the persona of ‘hill-billy’, hunting town squirrels and fishing in manicured golf-ponds. A friend said, “He really steeped himself in their world to the point where it’s confusing whether or not he was one of them or just knew everything about them”.

Language carries Pancake’s narratives, and meaning is veiled in indeterminate phrases that demand contemplation. Doom hovers over the narrative–the characters are allowed no way out of their limited circumstances. When they find love, they are unable to recognize it. If they seemingly escape a situation, they find themselves inexplicably pulled back in.

Pancake explores the hopelessness of the Appalachian foothills,contrasting the character’s contemporary existence with the bleak history that shadows them. His eye for detail is extraordinary, and in a Tolstoyian fashion he is able to form a character and environment with a few well-chosen descriptors. In ‘Trilobites’, “I look at the cups hanging on pegs by the storefront. They’re decal named and covered in grease and dust. There’s four of them, and one is Pop’s, but that isn’t what gives me the creeps. The cleanest one is Jim’s. It’s clean because he still uses it, but it hangs there with the rest.” In a few short words, Pancake has established a dead father and an almost-extinct generation. He has set the story in a small town, and the scene in a humble diner. He evokes loneliness.

It is some consolation that Breece D’J Pancake is dead. The twelve stories contained in his posthumous book are unendurably sad and unbearably personal. So clearly is Pancake’s hand shaping the narratives, it is impossible to read the stories without thinking of the author. Pancake gave himself completely to his art, to the point where he was forced to destroy himself or give up telling stories. The narratives themselves burned too much of him, and as such couldn’t be sustained. Breece Pancake gave up too much of himself for every tale, and if he had lived, he would have become a shadow of himself.

The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake, published by Back Bay Books