Pancake & Joe
I’ve always found suicide baffling, despite the frequency of it. The only cases where it makes sense are when someone is facing a fatal disease or dementia or Alzheimer's. It rarely works for me in fiction and film, where it’s usually tied to despondency. Consider the millions — billions? — in real life who have suffered unspeakable abuse and continued to cling to life. Why, then, would others who have suffered far less choose to check out? It’s a mystery that will never have a satisfying solution. Breece D’J Pancake was 26 when he took his own life in 1979. He’d had six short stories published in magazines, several in the prestigious Atlantic Monthly. According to his Wiki profile, his motives for taking his life remain unclear. I’ve just finished a posthumous collection of his work, 12 stories in all, most set in rural West Virginia, where he grew up. They are slices of life, vivid, downbeat depictions. I found the writing challenging, and not just because of the use of native dialect or the description of the area, the use of unfamiliar terms. The prose seemed odd and the thoughts of the characters baffling. Still, he was miles ahead of where I was at that age. Heck, he still is, given his robust books sales at Amazon. He is almost universally lauded, dubbed the Hillbilly Hemingway. The song River Towns by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits was inspired by Pancake’s A Room Forever. Perhaps it would be more accurate to dub him the Kurt Cobain of short story writers. Both used a shotgun. 95 users at Amazon have rated The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake, forging to a consensus of 4.5 on a scale of ten. Whenever I encounter the praise heaped on such work, I question the value of my own, thinking mine must be ridiculously simplistic, shallow, and that I have no idea what constitutes a good short story. Are there any indications of the author’s fate in the pieces? Yes. In at least one the protagonist contemplates ending it all. The author threw away a promising career, one for which many writers long. I don’t get it. Here’s a snippet from a letter he wrote to his mom while studying his craft in another state: “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.” Apparently, he was confused. So was I at that age. So were a lot of folks. Many are puzzled by the bittersweet mystery of life, the suffering from cradle to grave, and plod on regardless, even those who believe the glass is much less than half full. Imagine the pain his mom suffered.
The NY Post is famous for its front pages. Here’s the most recent example why:
What a gorgeous day. Too bad the pandemic robs it of a lot of joy. As I hung out by my car on Avenue Z soaking up vitamin D, Marty, NYPD retired, stopped to chat for a minute. Had he not spoken first, I would not have recognized him behind the bandit’s mask. I also was relieved to see Mike, who’s 80 or so. He said he hadn’t been out for a while because the weather was so lousy. An oddity at present is saying hello to folks I don’t recognize behind their Corona garb. Unmasked, I smile and wave, pretending to know whoever it is.
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