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    Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
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    Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
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    Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
    Audiobook5 hours

    Stories of Breece D'J Pancake

    Written by Breece D'J Pancake and Andre Dubus III

    Narrated by Jeremy Arthur

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Breece D'J Pancake cut short a promising career when he took his own life at the age twenty-six. Published posthumously, this is a collection of stories that depict the world of Pancake's native rural West Virginia.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateOct 7, 2014
    ISBN9781478930266
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Stories of Breece D'J Pancake

    4/5

    152 ratings11 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Among the various collections of short stories I've read over the years, I'd have to put this one near the top.

      Breece D'J Pancake was clearly a talented writer -- and one who cared deeply about his creations.

      In all honesty, most of my reading of this collection occurred during subway commutes to and from work -- i.e., not the ideal circumstances, by any means, under which to read someone's sole opus. (The author committed suicide in his late 20's.) But we live in a world of a thousand momentary and pesky distractions. A good writer has to contend with each and every one of them.

      My principal difficulty in reading Breece's stories had most to do with his dialect. He writes from the POV of his fellow West Virginians -- a disjointed folk who are easy neither on the eye nor on the ear. Couple that with the noise of a subway car, and quick 'n' easy understanding becomes elusive.

      I would highly recommend this collection of stories to aspiring writers. Breece is truly a writer's writer. Would I recommend it to casual readers? Nope.

      RRB
    • 5/5
      I am, for better or worse, a very fast reader. I don't usually take my time, even if I ought to; I tend to plow through regardless of genre or difficulty. Of course, there are plenty of writers whose work is so densely packed that it requires that you flip back and forth, to catch the nuances, to slow down, unpack, reflect. There are only a very few writers that stop a reader like me in my tracks in the very first sentence. These are the authors whose every sentence is so skillfully crafted that one cannot help but savor each perfectly edited choice; they require, from the get-go, an entirely different pace and an entirely different kind of active reading. Engaging with them is like sitting in a masterclass, and the feeling is mostly awe.So it is with Breece Pancake. Every sentence is perfect. Every bit is necessary. There is nothing in excess. He has total command not only of the words, but of the silences and spaces between them.
    • 3/5
      The stories here are beautifully drawn through clean, clear prose. I love his writing style, and that, really, is what kept me going, because the actually composition of the stories is quite lacking, in that each feels and acts like something work shopped and assembled from a bag of traditional leitmotifs and themes. None of the stories really elicit the fresh idiom or messy interpretation of life and the world that most stunning writers strive towards. Breece seemed content writing beautifully assembled stories that might as well all be told from the same guy about the same hillside.

      There seems to be something missing. I don't know. Maybe it's that the voice and style of every story---hell, every sentence---seems cut from the same cloth, from the same larger sheet, with the same scissors.

      There is a tremendous sensitivity here, and I believe he could have become a great writer if not for his suicide at age 26, but right now his stories are way too pre-packaged and airtight for my taste.
    • 4/5
      A very beautiful and transporting writer, in which I can personally see some influence of Kerouac and Salinger, rather than the Hemingway described by Joyce Carol Oates. What a shame his life was ended so early, a shame for him, and a shame for us. The characters in Pancake's stories here remind me of the thin elongated people created by the sculptor, Giacometti. He once said that he was sculpting not the human figure but "the shadow that is cast" and this is exactly how I see Pancake's literary population. These sad filthy people are not the whole of them, just the image that we are left with when they disappear, almost like shadows burnt into a wall in a nuclear blast. The things that truly add color to these stories, and they absolutely fill them, are all of the normally unspoken-about birds, and foxes, and snakes, and owls, and wasps, and crawly things that surround us and add an essential stability to these otherwise futile lives.

      Includes a wonderful Introduction and two worthwhile Afterwords in getting to know the personality of the author.
    • 3/5
      Breece Pancake took his own life aged 26. There's a lot of promise in this collection of his stories but the fact of his suicide doesn't change the fact that the stories are uneven in their quality. Some are very good - Trilobites and The Salvation of Me - and all speak with a very authentic voice that is not often heard in literary fiction, rural and southern America. That's not to say that all these stories are perfectly formed shorts; Pancake is no master of the form. Some of the stories show a level of immaturity in their writing as well, especially the "native" accents given to characters. Of course, these criticisms aside, this collection is still quite accomplished for a 26 year old and I'm certain that had Pancake lived longer he would have become a writer of real stature.But, unfortunately, we can only judge him on this one collection and, personally, I think it's a mixed bag. There are some good stories here but much of it is rough around the edges. Definitely worth a read but don't be seduced by any sort of hagiography because of the author's sad ending.
    • 5/5
      A brilliant collection of short stories by Breece D'J Pancake, a relatively unknown young writer from rural West Virginia. Reading the stories is a full, complete and wholly authentic submersion into Appalachia. Breece D'J Pancake embodied West Virginia and was able to write about it in a way that is unquestionably real. He is not well known but once you have read his stories, they are not easily forgotten.
    • 5/5
      great collection of a writer we lost too soon.
    • 4/5
      ** spoiler alert ** Sometimes brilliant, sometimes promising. If he had not taken his life I think he would have written beautiful things of the quality of the best stories here (and the best are very very good), but possibly not. Breece is relentlessly bleak, perhaps too certain he knows the minds and souls of others. Worth a read for anyone who wants to read short stories that most definitely did not come out of an MFA program.
    • 3/5
      This was an interesting read. The stories are walk-of-life sort of yarns that are distinctive of their settings and how they influence the characters and their actions. This is a very different kind of writing, and short story form, that I've dealt with and it's quite original in its conception. Overall, an intriguing read and one recommended if you value American short stories.3 stars.
    • 5/5
      This was some slow going, because I couldn’t read more than one or two at a time. Really spare, beautiful but also harsh stuff -- you know how I said Tobias Wolff has so much affection for even his most difficult characters? Pancake has NO affection for his. Love, yes, and respect, but it’s of a very unblinking variety. The descriptions of the physical world -- nature, weather, work, fighting -- are really striking.I wonder what I would have thought had I not known this was early work of someone who never had the chance to do more. Some of it feels rough in places, or rather... nascent, in a way. But beautifully worked, and it’s hard to ignore the fact that there won’t be more.
    • 3/5
      I received this book decades ago as a gift. I remember that I started reading it soon after receiving it and then put it down unfinished. I returned to it this month and read it cover to cover and think I know now what put me off back then.Breece Pancake wrote about West Virginia’s farmers, miners, whores and car mechanics. He described their lives and their longings, the past that led them to today and the dead ends they’ve reached. His eye and ear were good, and he added his imagination and chose his words precisely and sometimes even elegantly. There is absolute believability in every one of his short stories. What isn’t present in his tales is hope for the future. There is no expectation that any of his characters will escape the drunken, violent, hardscrabble lives they are leading. Perhaps that’s why I put the book down. Perhaps that’s why Pancake killed himself at 26.Pancake had an unquestionable way with words. His brief career was studded with honors and adulation, with comparisons with Hemingway and Faulkner. I have to temper my appreciation with the feeling of gloom that surrounds his stories. I don’t dispute their honesty, but I’m sad that they hold no hope for redemption