The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake

I've read some of these stories multiple times. I first remember reading “Trilobites” in the Fall of 1999. I'll say that's when it was because that's the first time I remember reading it. As an English major at West Virginia University, I was in a senior seminar class whose task was to review West Virginia authors and suggest inclusions for an anthology of their literature. That class was in the Spring of 2000, and I know I had read the story before that class. (WVU Press ultimately published that anthology as Backcountry: Contemporary Writing in West Virginia.

As my first real exposure to Breece D'J Pancake, I now read his work through the dense tapestry of that West Virginia literature. I'm sure that influences the themes that I pull from these stories because it seems like West Virginians not only live these themes, but they also write about them in a range of ways.

To wit, I'm not sure there's a character that I like or admire in this collection of stories, but I can't put them out of my mind. I look out my home or office window, and I see them. Whether it's Colly's ability to see things as they are but to not completely discard things as he wants to see them or Hollis yearning to get away but knowing he can't save for something drastic, Pancake mixes sadness with weight, honor, familial shackles, and lost love with the best of them.

One has to think of the time at which Pancake wrote these stories: the late 1970s. I can't say there's a celebration of the poverty and seediness of Appalachia, but there are times when the dialog runs so close to cliched that I have to wonder if that's a more modern, socially conscious take rearing up. From the posthumous accounts of Pancake's life, one suspects that it was not meant for cliche; those are the characters whose paths Pancake himself might have crossed.

These stories are heavy, and I doubt readers walk away from them truly uplifted. Perhaps they feel a stronger connection to themselves or their homes. Perhaps they identify the tension in their life that drags them down but holds them too tightly for them to let go.

The stories are brilliant, yet somehow left wanting. As so many have noted before me, the magic and sadness of this book is, in part, thinking about what Pancake might have written had he lived.

(I listed this edition of the book because it came from a discount shelf from my local library. What's more, this is the first book my daughter ever gave to me as a gift. She was just learning to walk at the time she grabbed it, knowing only that it was a book. Of course she would have had no way to know about that class in the Spring of 2000 and my connection to West Virginia's literature.)