Breece D'J Pancake

Biography

Breece Dexter Pancake was born in South Charleston, West Virginia, the youngest child of Clarence "Wicker" Pancake and Helen Frazier Pancake. He was raised in Milton, West Virginia. Pancake briefly attended West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon before transferring to Marshall University in Huntington, where he completed a bachelor's degree in English education in 1974. After graduating from Marshall he spent time in the western United States, visiting his sister in Santa Fe. As a graduate student he studied at the University of Virginia's creative writing program under John Casey and James Alan McPherson. Pancake also worked as an English teacher at two Virginia military academies, Fork Union and Staunton.

While attending the University of Virginia, Pancake deliberately styled himself as an uncultured hillbilly, distancing himself from other students at the school. He was an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed hunting, fishing, and camping. Pancake was a devout fan of the music of folk singer Phil Ochs, who had attended Staunton Military Academy, where Pancake later taught.

The unusual middle name "D'J" originated when The Atlantic Monthly misprinted his middle initials (D.J., for Dexter John) in the byline of Trilobites, a short story the magazine published in 1977. Pancake decided not to correct it. Dexter was Pancake's middle name; he took the name John after converting to Catholicism in his mid-20s.

Pancake died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was buried in Milton.

Pancake's papers are held at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.

Writing

Pancake published six short stories in his lifetime, mostly in The Atlantic. These stories and six more that had not been published at the time of his death were collected in The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake (1983). The volume was reprinted in 2002 with a new afterword by Andre Dubus III. His vivid, compact style has been compared to that of Ernest Hemingway. Most of his stories are set in rural West Virginia and revolve around characters and naturalistic settings, often adapted from his own past. His stories received acclaim from readers and critics. The Atlantic's editor recalled receiving letters that "drifted in for months - asking for more stories - inquiring for collected stories, or simply expressing admiration and gratitude ... in 30-something years at The Atlantic, I cannot recall a response to a new author like the response to this one."

Among the writers who claim Pancake as a strong influence are Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club and Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog. After Pancake's death, author Kurt Vonnegut wrote in a letter to John Casey, "I give you my word of honor that he is merely the best writer, the most sincere writer I've ever read. What I suspect is that it hurt too much, was no fun at all to be that good. You and I will never know."

The song "River Town," from Dire Straits' frontman Mark Knopfler's 2015 studio album Tracker, was inspired by Pancake's "A Room Forever," the story of a tugboat mate spending New Year's Eve in an eight-dollar-a-night hotel room where he drinks cheap whiskey out of the bottle and eventually ends up with a teen-aged prostitute.

Quote

From a letter to his mother, Helen Pancake, that Pancake wrote in Charlottesville, where he was studying writing:

I'm going to come back to West Virginia when this is over. There's something ancient and deeply-rooted in my soul. I like to think that I have left my ghost up one of those hollows, and I'll never really be able to leave for good until I find it. And I don't want to look for it, because I might find it and have to leave.

Awards and honors