Breece D'J Pancake

[2] His motives for suicide are still somewhat unclear but some speculate the death of his father, from alcohol abuse, and of a close friend from a gruesome car accident may have had an influence on his decision to end his own life.

[3] Milton, the home of the Blenko Glass Company, situated in a plateau of farms outside the city of Huntington, is said to be Pancake's inspiration for the fictionalized settings of his stories.

[1] Pancake briefly attended West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon before transferring to Marshall University in Huntington, where he completed a bachelor's degree in English education in 1974.

As a graduate student, he studied at the University of Virginia's creative writing program under John Casey and James Alan McPherson.

Douglass points out that, in hindsight, there were many indications of Pancake's suicidal longings," such as the act of giving away many personal items, including his guns, with the exception of the Savage over-under shotgun he used to end his life.

[10] Sam Sacks of The Wall Street Journal described Pancake's death as "A Voice Stilled Too Soon," and called his suicide a "tragic mistake," insisting that it was the result of a particularly bad night rather than an inevitable circumstance.

According to Alan McPherson (via Gower), "His ambition was not primarily literary: he was struggling to define for himself an entire way of life, an all-embracing code of values that would allow him to live outside his home valley in Milton, West Virginia."

"[12] In an issue of the New Yorker, Jon Michaud calls Pancake's characters "both immediately recognizable and pertinent to the present moment."

[13] Cleveland Review of Books said Pancake's "letters reveal a complex figure who loved his home and family, was dedicated to his craft, and was restlessly uncomfortable when not writing, revising, hunting, or fishing."

His writing is often considered to be part of the southern “grit lit” movement that includes such writers as Harry Crews, Barry Hannah, and Larry Brown.

"[15] The song "River Towns", from Dire Straits' frontman Mark Knopfler's 2015 studio album Tracker, was inspired by Pancake's "A Room Forever", the story of a tugboat mate spending New Year's Eve in an eight-dollar-a-night hotel room where he drinks cheap whiskey out of the bottle and eventually ends up with a teen-aged prostitute.