Back The Collected Breece D’J Pancake: Stories, Fragments, Letters

The Collected Breece D’J Pancake: Stories, Fragments, Letters

Introduction by Jayne Anne Phillips More

“The stories [are] tense, elegiac, remorseless in their insistence on the past’s dominion over the present. . . . As compactly and tightly written as prose poems.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

“Pancake’s stories are the only stories written in just this way,” observes Jayne Anne Phillips in her introduction to this volume, “from inside the minds of protagonists coming of age in the mountains of an Appalachian world closed to others.” As beautiful, stark, and solemn as the landscape in which they are set, the stories concern miners, truckers, farmers, waitresses, and others possessed by dreams of change they can neither relinquish nor quite bring themselves to believe in.

Breece D’J Pancake was a gifted and original writer who died far too young, having published only a few stories before taking his own life in 1979 at twenty-six. Recalling the overwhelming response to those early stories, Phoebe-Lou Adams, his editor at The Atlantic, concluded that “whatever it is that truly commands reader attention, he had it.” Four years after his death a collection of twelve stories appeared that drew enthusiastic praise from such writers as Joyce Carol Oates (“one is tempted to compare his debut to Hemingway’s”) and Margaret Atwood (“an exceptional voice; gritty, mordant, invested with the texture of stroked reality”). Today, Pancake’s diverse admirers include Andre Dubus III, Samantha Hunt, Tom Waits, and Lorde.

Bringing together the entire text of that landmark 1983 collection with additional story drafts, fragments from Pancake’s two planned novels, and a selection of Pancake’s letters that illuminate his life and art, this Library of America special publication is the ultimate edition of an American writer whose legacy continues to grow.

Breece D’J Pancake (1952–1979) was born in South Charleston, West Virginia. He was a graduate of Marshall University and the creative writing program at the University of Virginia. The posthumous collection, The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake, appeared in 1983.

Jayne Anne Phillips, a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, was born and raised in West Virginia. She is the author of two short story collections, Black Tickets and Fast Lanes, and five novels: Machine Dreams, Shelter, MotherKind, Lark & Termite, and Quiet Dell.

This special publication features full-cloth binding, acid-free paper, and a unique design with specifications differing from those of Library of America series titles.
Table of Contents

Introduction by Jayne Anne Phillips

Part One: The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake
Foreword by James Alan McPherson
Trilobites
Hollow
A Room Forever
Fox Hunters
Time and Again
The Mark
The Scrapper
The Honored Dead
The Way It Has to Be
The Salvation of Me
In the Dry
First Day of Winter
Afterword by John Casey

Part Two: Fragments
Shouting Victory
Conqueror
Ridge-Runner
Survivors
Untitled Fragment
Notes

Part Three: Selected Letters

12.50 List Price: $24.95 (Save: 50%) Free shipping on orders $50 and over

Or buy from our partners

Phone orders: 1-800-964-5778 Request product #410353

ISBN: 978-1-59853-672-0 384 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

Related Books

Where the Light Falls: Selected Stories of Nancy Hale

Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works LOA N°39

Raymond Carver: Collected Stories LOA N°195

Eudora Welty: Stories, Essays, & Memoir LOA N°102

Carson McCullers: Stories, Plays, & Other Writings LOA N°287

Library of America

CURATOR

A champion of America’s great writers and timeless works, Library of America guides readers in finding and exploring the exceptional writing that reflects the nation’s history and culture.

Learn More

PUBLISHER

From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely recognized as America’s literary canon.

Browse our books Subscribe

NON-PROFIT

With contributions from donors, Library of America preserves and celebrates a vital part of our cultural heritage for generations to come.

Support our mission

The Collected Breece D’J Pancake: Stories, Fragments, Letters

Related Books

Get 10% off your first Library of America purchase.