[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 circumstances, though, were different: he had held a creative writing fellowship, had established contacts, been accepted by Atlantic Monthly. From the volume's foreword by James Alan McPherson and afterword by John Casey, it appears he was a victim of his own “constitutional melancholy.” Certainly, that emotion pervades these twelve stories, which largely concern Pancake's native West Virginia, in particular the lower rungs (to which he did not belong) of that notoriously poor state: the farmers, mechanics, truckers, miners. Nearly all his protagonists have lives distorted by loss, failure, missed opportunities, family trials; afflicted with paralysed wills or stunted ambition, they do little to improve their lots.

In certain stories, the answer lies in getting out—of the family or of the region. In “First Day of Winter,” one son has escaped to a life elsewhere; his brother remains to work an unviable farm and care for their infirm parents. The narrator of “Trilobites,” tied to his birthplace despite chances to leave, is contrasted with his former girlfriend, now at college in Florida. “In the Dry” is gloomier: physical removal is not enough. Its central figure left the valley where he grew up, but never forgot the beloved foster-sister he left behind. Love usually causes anguish: the young wife of “The Mark” harbours incestuous passions for her absent brother; in “Hollow,” a coal-miner's girl is an ex-prostitute who talks of resuming “the life.”

The past is a potent force, continually impinging on events and thoughts, offering a refuge from the present. The narrator of “The Honored Dead” finds a solider reality in memories of his lifelong buddy who died in Vietnam (which he dodged). Daydreams operate similarly in the finest story, “The Salvation of Me”: of two boyhood friends, one gets out and scores transitory success on Broadway; the other, who has long fantasized about escape, ends up pumping gas: “on a slow day, I sometimes think up things that might have happened to Chester, make up little plays for him to act out.” His own experience cannot even provide the stuff of reverie.

Several of the stories show the influence of other writers—not the minimalists who were then becoming fashionable, but traditional, altogether more robust writers: Sherwood Anderson, Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck. “A Room Forever,” in which a tugboatman sleeps with a young “chippy” who later attempts suicide, might almost belong to the 1930s; “Fox Hunters” closes with a familiar American initiation rite. Though Pancake's voice may lack versatility, it is generally assured and exact. His style occasionally lapses, (“Insecurity crawfished through his blood”) and he can misjudge effects: “A Room Forever,” for example, suffers from an unconvincing excess of slang, “The Scrapper” from the heavy-handed juxtaposition of a cock-fight and a gory boxing bout. But these are flaws of inexperience. His best stories—notably “The Honored Dead” and “The Salvation of Me”—demonstrate that he could overcome them. Unfortunately, these are the exception and Trilobites and Other Stories [The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake] is an intimately frustrating memorial, testifying to potential rather than achievement.