The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake (1983) by Breece D’J Pancake

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake (1983) 

by Breece D’J Pancake 

Milton, West Virginia

West Virginia: 2/10

   This is the only book by West Virginia author Breece D'J Pancake (he acquired the apostrophe when a copy editor at The Atlantic made a typographical error and he decided it looked cool that way), who killed himself (or maybe accidentally shot himself while he was drunk.)  He was 27 when he died, putting him in the literary annex to rock and roll's 27 club.  That kind of gives you an idea of the Breece Pancake vibe- bad boys and bad girls skulking around burned out derelict West Virginia river towns.  In one particularly vivid story, a river-rat-tugboat worker staying in a decrepit SRO for New Year's picks up an underage prostitute. beds her and then has to call the cops when he finds her with her wrists slit in an alley behind the only bar in town.  That is the scene, man.   Generally speaking I'm relieved to encounter any book in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America written by a male author who isn't a coastal elite or a professor of lit at a university in some random part of the United States and Pancake here fits the bill.   Dying before he could write a novel, that's the real tragedy here.