This work may be used, with this header included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed institution . No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without express written permission from the JHU Press . D'J Pancake . By Thomas E. Douglass. By Ruth D. Weston .
Critical theory solves the problem nicely, of course, by writing about itself.
Here, the subjects of two new books in question are two southern writers who came to large national prominence roughly two decades ago, with the focal figures and the studies themselves making for some curious symmetries across a range of literary and cultural topics. The Life, Work, and Letters of Breece D'J Pancake . Pancake was a young West Virginia writer of great promise albeit slender publication who took his own life at age twenty-seven in 1979. He is remembered for his gritty but wonderfully crafted portraits of contemporary Appalachian life in a single, highly-praised collection of short fiction, The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake, published posthumously in 1983, with accompanying appreciations by John Casey and James Alan MacPherson, two of his mentors in the University of Virginia creative writing program. Hannah, in contrast, a Mississippian now in his late fifties, has enjoyed an astonishingly prolific career.