Pancake, Breece D'J | David Montrose (review date 23 October 1992)
David Montrose (review date 23 October 1992)
SOURCE: Montrose, David. “In a Melancholy State.” Times Literary Supplement (23 October 1992): 21.
[In the following mixed review, Montrose deems Trilobites and Other Stories “an intimately frustrating memorial, testifying to potential rather than achievement.”]
On April 8, 1979, at Charlottesville, Virginia, Breece D'J Pancake blew out his brains with a shotgun. He was twenty-six. In 1983, thanks to the efforts of Pancake's widowed mother and admiring literary figures, his fictional oeuvre—this collection of stories—was published in America and earned a coterie following; now, thanks to a long-standing devotee at Secker, it has reached Britain.
These facts prompt memories of John Kennedy Toole, who, in 1969, killed himself following repeated rejections of his masterly novel, A Confederacy of Dunces (which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981). Pancake's...
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