Breece D'J Pancake 1952–1979

(Born Breece Dexter Pancake) American short story writer.

The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake (1982), collected and published after Pancake's suicide, received favorable critical appraisal. Joyce Carol Oates compared Pancake's debut with that of Ernest Hemingway, whose gifts were apparent in his early stories. Like Hemingway, Pancake wrote in a spare, understated prose style and achieved striking effects from the precision of well-chosen detail. Pancake's sensibility was shaped by the West Virginia cultural and physical environment in which he was raised. His stories are set in the often harsh, infertile landscape of his home region; his characters and their circumstances echo the hopelessness of the settings.