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Breece
Pancake
Breece Pancake, a noted Appalachian author,
died by his own hand at the early age of 26 by putting a shotgun in his mouth
and pulling the trigger. On April 7, 1979, Palm Sunday, following a stint
at job hunting and in the anticipation of receiving his Masters Degree, Breece
began drinking and, for some reason broke into a neighbor's house. The residents
returned, heard him stir; he then ran back to his house and took his own life.
John Casey, one of his professors at the University of Virginia, best
describes his life and writings below:
He
must have had an enormous concentration at an early age.
He had a very powerful sense of things. Almost all of his stories
are set in the part of West Virginia he came from, and he knew
that from top to bottom. he knew people's jobs, from the tools
they used to how they felt about them. He knew the geology,
the per-history, and the history of the territory, not as a pastime,
but as a deep part of himself that he couldn't help dreaming
of it... he worked as hard at his writing as anyone I've known
or known about. I've seen the pages of notes, the sketches,
the numbers of drafts, the fierce marginal notes to himself
to expand this or contract that. And, of course, the final
versions, as hard and brilliant worn as train rails.
- from the
"Afterword" to Pancake's Stories
Breece was a native
West Virginian, born on June 29, 1952, in Milton, West Virginia. His
father was Clarence "Wicker" Pancake and his mother, Helen Frazier
Pancake. He had two older sisters. His father worked as a shipping
clerk for Union Carbide overcoming a drinking problem only to succumb to
Multiple Sclerosis.
Breece attended West Virginia Wesleyan College and Marshall University,
graduating in 1974. In 1975, following the death of his father
and at the same time, his closest friend, Breece converted to Catholicism.
After a stint of jobs out west, he began teaching at the Staunton Military
Academy in Virginia and enrolled in writing courses at the University of
Virginia. In 1977 he was awarded the prestigious Hoyns Fellowship award
and became a teaching assistant at the University of Virginia. During that same
year the Atlantic Monthly accepted for publication what many consider his
best writings, "Trilobites"
The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake by Breece Pancake. Boston: Atlantic, Little, Brown, 1983. A 178-page short story collection published post-humously, Pancake's only book. Portrays his home state in his stark writing skills.