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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 813.54 EAN: 9780316715973 ISBN: 0316715972 Label: Back Bay Books Manufacturer: Back Bay Books Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 192 Publication Date: July 01, 2002 Publisher: Back Bay Books Studio: Back Bay Books Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: Breece D'J Pancake cut short a remarkably promising career when he took his own life in 1979 at the age of 26. In 1983 Little, Brown and Company's posthumous publication of this book-a collection of stories that depict, with astonishing power and grace, the world of Pancake's native rural West Virginia-electrified the literary world with a force that still resounds across two decades. The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake has remained continuously in print, and Back Bay Books takes pride in now making the collection available in this new trade paperback edition. Average Rating:
 Rating: - Astonishing.I am going on six decades, and over that period have read a handful of collections of stories in the same class as these stories. Although this troubled man only wrote this one book, he accomplished more than most writers do in a career. If you love great writing this book will not disappoint you. Other reviewers have described the content well, so I will not repeat it, but will agree heartily with the five star reviews. I only wish we had more from this incredibly talented man. Rating: - A Modern ClassicWriting instructors looking for a story that illustrates the "show, don't tell" principle will be pleased with Pancake. For example, there's a line in "Trilobites" in which the story's narrator recalls seeing the shadow of an airplane pass over the mountains in which he lives and thinking, for a split second, that it was ("I swear to God") the shadow of a pterodactyl. No thick blocks of exposition about how the land of his birth seemed to lie at the intersection of the ancient and the modern--Pancake ... Read More Rating: - Write what you knowI must have first seen this collection shortly after it came out in 1983. It was impossible not to be struck by the author's name, which seemed to me at the time to embody a uniquely American authenticity (it turns out to have been a typo that he decided to retain). Despite the hyperbolic praise heaped on it even then, I heard nothing of Mr. Pancake or his work until I came across a mention of it recently in another book. Perhaps too close to the author's age upon my first encounter, and unfortunately, ... Read More Rating:  - Collected Stories of a Work in ProgressMost of these stories, set in West Virginia, were written in the late 70's and early 80s. At that time the people of the hollows of WV were suffering through a period of recession comparable to the Great Depression. Mining which had been the backbone of the WV economy for over a hundred years, was dying or dead. Ecological and environmental concerns, as well as the growth of the use of oil to fire electric plants, had diminished the need for appalachian coal (also replace by the hugh open pit mines of Colorado ... Read More Rating: - Reality in FictionThe skillful rendering of characters rather than caricatures distinguishes Breece D'J Pancake's one and only book from many other works of contemporary fiction. The stories are set primarily in the hills, small towns, and hollows of West Virginia. The stories illustrate the hardscrabble lives and emotional struggles of characters on the periphery of many things: society (in "A Room Forever"), love (in "Trilobites" and "Hollow"), depravity (in "Fox Hunters"), acceptance (in "The Scrapper"), success (in "The Salvation ... Read More 
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