Doc Creed - group leader. What are your thoughts?
Discussion Group -March 20th- "Time and Again" by Breece DJ Pancake
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Thanks, Spidey. I was just about to create a thread. Here's a little snippet I posted on the Playground:
Breece D'J Pancake took his own life with a shotgun forty years ago this April. He described himself as having "something ancient in {his} soul", and I think this is evident in his writing and in his characters. His writing is unflinchingly brutal and often bleak, but there is something life affirming in his masterful prose. Like Flannery O'Conner and Eudora Welty and Ernest Hemingway, his stories are haunting because of his surgical precision and his hidden sutures: these writers call to the heart not by the art of showing, but by how much they don't reveal. Pancake, to me, writes with an admirable dexterity and his narratives are measured in brief moments; he finds the moment, the pulsing artery, and with one confident move of the knife he cuts it open. "Time and Again", is a great example of this. His brevity and shortsighted points of view give his stories an immediacy and undeniable claustrophobia. I think he loved his small town life, and his work is not without tenderness, but he seemed to be plagued by an indescribable emptiness, like winter wind in a hollow gourd, that echoes today on every page.
Breece D'J Pancake took his own life with a shotgun forty years ago this April. He described himself as having "something ancient in {his} soul", and I think this is evident in his writing and in his characters. His writing is unflinchingly brutal and often bleak, but there is something life affirming in his masterful prose. Like Flannery O'Conner and Eudora Welty and Ernest Hemingway, his stories are haunting because of his surgical precision and his hidden sutures: these writers call to the heart not by the art of showing, but by how much they don't reveal. Pancake, to me, writes with an admirable dexterity and his narratives are measured in brief moments; he finds the moment, the pulsing artery, and with one confident move of the knife he cuts it open. "Time and Again", is a great example of this. His brevity and shortsighted points of view give his stories an immediacy and undeniable claustrophobia. I think he loved his small town life, and his work is not without tenderness, but he seemed to be plagued by an indescribable emptiness, like winter wind in a hollow gourd, that echoes today on every page.
Did anyone see elements of the narrator's son in the hitchhiker?
I had the feeling that the old man was the one responsible for killing other hitchhikers and he hadn't killed the young man because he looked or reminded him of his son. Thoughts?
This story, as with most of Breece's stories, is about loneliness and alienation. I thought it sad how the old man didn't even see his coworker, Mr. Weeks, except when he happened to pass him in his snowplow. I guess he spoke to him only on the telephone.
Okay, he was a killer. The guy driving was a murderer. He didn't feed the pigs when he got home because he let the hitchhiker go. Right? I'm not the only one that went there, right?
And it made me wonder if he killed his wife and his kid and fed them to the pigs.
At first I thought the narrator's son who was the killer, and I thought the father was somehow covering for him.
Yeah, that was the impression I got. He let the boy go because of the similarities to his son. I think you are probably right about him feeding his pigs and disposing of the bones at a later time. Didn't the young guy say something about the bones being picked clean?
See post #5.
Never thought it was the kid, but wondered if the kid really left or if the guy fed him to the pigs. Yes, I think he let him go because of the resemblance to his son.
Very bleak story and the writing served that feeling well. Good choice.
Thanks. Yeah, I own this author's only collection (published after his death) and each story is so bleak and/or troubling that I can read no more than one or two at a time. He was well acquainted with this region and its inhabitants. The dialogue is natural and, as I said, he leaves a lot unsaid. He was extraordinary. Mysterious.
Absolutely.
Yes indeed.
Do not think he killed his son, but definitely feel he was the killer of the other hitchhikers and they were fed to the pigs.
There doesn't seem to be a motive for the narrator's actions (if in fact he is the killer, although this is what the reader is led to believe) and he is a sympathetic character, I think. I felt sorry for him. How he leaves on the light in case his son comes home...the empty house and the dark winter landscape, it all adds up. I didn't get the feeling that he was mentally challenged or psychotic, though. Did anyone else?
...sorry I’ll miss out tonight....try to ring in tomorrow....my oldest son got married in a brief civil ceremony tonight...off to hoist a pint to their future....
The fact that it is told in first person probably helps with playing on the reader's heart strings. If he did kill his son and his wife then that would suggest he really is mentally ill; perhaps he's convinced himself of a separate reality, as some killers do. This would explain why he leaves on the light in the house for his son.
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Right. On one hand, you do believe that perhaps the son is out there and he leaves the light on for him. Asking people if they have heard from him. But then, part of me just thought that was a facade -- whether on purpose, or no memory of what happened. I can see both scenarios very clearly, I just went with the more macabre one.