SOURCE: Harpham, Geoffrey Galt. “Short Stack: The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake.” Studies in Short Fiction 23, no. 3 (summer 1986): 265-73.

In the following essay, Harpham contrasts Pancake's stories with those of James Joyce, perceiving the short story as the suitable genre for Pancake's ability as a writer.

One difference between the short story and the novel can be seen in the fact that while the death of the novel has been heralded since the beginning of Modernism, nobody has proclaimed the demise of the short story. While the novel seems an art form unusually responsive to and dependent upon particular cultural and ideological conditions, the short story has flourished in apparent independence from such conditions. One reason for this might be that the short story, like the arachnids, can base its survival on its structural primitivism: an uncomplicated and hardy form, it can weather violent changes in the cultural...