Let the author's middle initials be a lesson. These are stories of stumbling small-towners and troublemakers. There are more than a few criminals. It's in dialect, but it's fast-paced. It feels like all the buildings Pancake takes you through are falling apart, and so are the characters' lives. It's...
The title is a misnomer. Not that there aren't some wonderful stories here, but they were never really chosen because they're the best American short stories of the 20th century. Rather, these are Updike's 56 picks out of the 2,000 stories originally chosen in the 84 volumes of a yearly anthology pu...
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 ...
Breece Pancake, who committed suicide at the age of 27, leaving behind only a small collection of stories, seems to be "a writer's writer". That is, writers greatly admire (even to the point of awe..., they say), his technical skills. I have no reason, and am in no position to dispute that.As a rea...
Felt like I was sitting in my truck, watching the same story happen over and over. It was an okay story, but once I heard it once, why tell me it twelve more times. "Trilobites" was my favorite version of it, and "Fox Hunters," "The Mark," and "The Honored Dead" are the other ones I'll remember a ...
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