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Wrecking Yard
A collection of short stories which illuminate, with imagery and humor, the darkest corners of the American soul. The author attempts to capture the personalities of rural America, shaped by poverty, cruelty, and an odd compassion.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
2 people are currently reading
116 people want to read
About the author
Pinckney Benedict
24 books58 followersPinckney Benedict (b. 1964) is an American short-story writer and novelist whose work often reflects his Appalachian background.
Benedict grew up on his family’s dairy farm in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. He graduated from Princeton University, where he studied primarily with Joyce Carol Oates, in 1986, and from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1988.
He has published three collections of short fiction, Miracle Boy and Other Stories, Town Smokes, and The Wrecking Yard and a novel Dogs of God, the last three of which were named Notable Books by The New York Times, and all of which have been published in England, Germany, and France. He has another book, Wild Bleeding Heart (a novel, due out in 2010).
His stories have appeared in, among other magazines and anthologies, Esquire, Zoetrope: All-Story, StoryQuarterly, Ontario Review, Appalachian Heritage, the O. Henry Award series (twice), the New Stories from the South series (twice), the Pushcart Prize series (three times), and The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. Along with his wife, the novelist Laura Benedict, he has edited the poetry and fiction anthology Surreal South (Press 53 2007), which includes work from, among others, Robert Olen Butler, Joyce Carol Oates, William Gay, Ron Rash, and Rodney Jones.
He wrote the screenplay for the feature film Four Days (Cite Amerique 2000), which starred Colm Meaney (The Commitments, television’s Star Trek: The Next Generation), Lolita Davidovich (Blaze), and William Forsythe (The Rock).
Benedict grew up on his family’s dairy farm in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. He graduated from Princeton University, where he studied primarily with Joyce Carol Oates, in 1986, and from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1988.
He has published three collections of short fiction, Miracle Boy and Other Stories, Town Smokes, and The Wrecking Yard and a novel Dogs of God, the last three of which were named Notable Books by The New York Times, and all of which have been published in England, Germany, and France. He has another book, Wild Bleeding Heart (a novel, due out in 2010).
His stories have appeared in, among other magazines and anthologies, Esquire, Zoetrope: All-Story, StoryQuarterly, Ontario Review, Appalachian Heritage, the O. Henry Award series (twice), the New Stories from the South series (twice), the Pushcart Prize series (three times), and The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. Along with his wife, the novelist Laura Benedict, he has edited the poetry and fiction anthology Surreal South (Press 53 2007), which includes work from, among others, Robert Olen Butler, Joyce Carol Oates, William Gay, Ron Rash, and Rodney Jones.
He wrote the screenplay for the feature film Four Days (Cite Amerique 2000), which starred Colm Meaney (The Commitments, television’s Star Trek: The Next Generation), Lolita Davidovich (Blaze), and William Forsythe (The Rock).
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 15, 2014
I've been striking gold in my choices of short story collections this year, and this one is no exception.
Benedict's tales of guys gone wild are well written morsels that shock and entertain.
One fellow rescues an elderly man from an old folk's home, another man's obsession with a caged baboon leads to trouble, some carny folk help deliver a ne'er-do-well's just deserts and two good ole boys find themselves ejected from a bowling alley by a league of female bowlers:
"It'll teach them to strip us naked with their eyes," one big lady said to her friend.
The author seems equally at home writing humorous fiction AND Joe R. Lansdale-like stories about gun-toting misfits. So, yes, I added all his other books to my "to-read" list.
Sigh.
Benedict's tales of guys gone wild are well written morsels that shock and entertain.
One fellow rescues an elderly man from an old folk's home, another man's obsession with a caged baboon leads to trouble, some carny folk help deliver a ne'er-do-well's just deserts and two good ole boys find themselves ejected from a bowling alley by a league of female bowlers:
"It'll teach them to strip us naked with their eyes," one big lady said to her friend.
The author seems equally at home writing humorous fiction AND Joe R. Lansdale-like stories about gun-toting misfits. So, yes, I added all his other books to my "to-read" list.
Sigh.
May 13, 2014
Full disclosure, Pinckney Benedict was a visiting lecturer in my final grad school residency and I loved him. Interestingly, and not so much relevant...the guy loves guns. Atypical of an artist. Huh. But, he gave me some great pointers on how to write the realistic use of guns in fiction. Quite helpful, because a lot of my characters are pretty violent folks. I digress.
Wrecking Yard, at this point, is way back in Benedict's career. He's a pretty prolific guy. This short story collection came out in the ol days of 1992. One of the beauties of it, though, is that the stories are pretty timeless. That is, by and large, the characters and plots are pretty universal, at least through American time and sensibility. Mostly they're down and outers. Losers up in the mountains who kidnap people or blow up tree stumps with dynamite. I suppose if Benedict had his critics, and I'm sure he does like all authors, they'd say, "Well, why not go out and read Raymond Carver and just call it a day?" That's fair, I guess. Their stories certainly have very similar flavors. Somebody out there would probably both classify them as "dirty realists" in the same way somebody else out there would classify Willem de Kooing and Jackson Pollock as "abstract expressionists."
Here's the difference, as I see it, the thing that keeps Benedict from being a Carver derivative. Carver faced facts, in his stories. More accurately, he faced consequences. Real people making real mistakes and coping with, successfully or not, the results. Early on in his career, Carver seemed to have no sympathy for his characters. They were naive, perhaps, hard things happened and the characters, by stories' ends, were often hardened. Or completely in despair. Or, perhaps, the reader was in complete despair. As he matured and recovered from his own vices and as the cloud of Gordon Lish moved off into the horizon, there was a greater sense of compassion present in his work, compassion that was never really overtly presented, but that did become an undeniable fabric with which Carver weaved. But usually (always?) Carver's characters were bound by the here and now, the rising of the sun here on this Earth and the setting of it. Allusions maybe to some sort of spiritual plane (e.g. "Cathedral") but mostly real. Tangible.
Benedict's stories, while still of the dirty realist school, contain elements of...well, best I can put it: elements of fairy tale. Fables, maybe. And one he makes up, not calls back to the Brothers Grimm or something. For example, the fine story (my favorite) "Washman." Washman is a hunchback (thing number one that is fairy tale-esque.) who, in a snippet of Cormac McCarthyism (you'd swear in this scene Washman = Anton Chigur), shoots down a lowlife and takes his woman. He absconds into the woods and mountains to his solitary dwelling (thing number two that is fairy tale-esque.) Come on, the woods? A house that is basically a cave? A huge, strange person? Check out the Iron John myth for more on that. Through this dark fairy tale, and make no mistake, fairy tales were originally dark, strange, and foreboding, Benedict invites the reader into a world that is not quite realistic. Masterfully, he does not over do it. But the reader leaves the story with the sense that he has been to a magical world and that the magic is actually a kind of dark magic. "Washman" isn't the only story like it.
Benedict has a good time writing. Isn't that nice to see? This passage, from the story, "Odom."
"The rhododendron has grown up through the floorboards of the car and out of the rotted cloth top. Caught in the Nash's shattered grillwork is the narrow rib cage of a deer." What author out there looks at that bit and goes, "Hm. I guess." No way. I was jealous he thought to write it first.
Like I said, Benedict is prolific. He's down at Southern Illinois University teaching in the MFA program there. I asked him if he would let me come shooting with him. He hasn't responded. So, I guess I'll just keep reading his stuff.
Wrecking Yard, at this point, is way back in Benedict's career. He's a pretty prolific guy. This short story collection came out in the ol days of 1992. One of the beauties of it, though, is that the stories are pretty timeless. That is, by and large, the characters and plots are pretty universal, at least through American time and sensibility. Mostly they're down and outers. Losers up in the mountains who kidnap people or blow up tree stumps with dynamite. I suppose if Benedict had his critics, and I'm sure he does like all authors, they'd say, "Well, why not go out and read Raymond Carver and just call it a day?" That's fair, I guess. Their stories certainly have very similar flavors. Somebody out there would probably both classify them as "dirty realists" in the same way somebody else out there would classify Willem de Kooing and Jackson Pollock as "abstract expressionists."
Here's the difference, as I see it, the thing that keeps Benedict from being a Carver derivative. Carver faced facts, in his stories. More accurately, he faced consequences. Real people making real mistakes and coping with, successfully or not, the results. Early on in his career, Carver seemed to have no sympathy for his characters. They were naive, perhaps, hard things happened and the characters, by stories' ends, were often hardened. Or completely in despair. Or, perhaps, the reader was in complete despair. As he matured and recovered from his own vices and as the cloud of Gordon Lish moved off into the horizon, there was a greater sense of compassion present in his work, compassion that was never really overtly presented, but that did become an undeniable fabric with which Carver weaved. But usually (always?) Carver's characters were bound by the here and now, the rising of the sun here on this Earth and the setting of it. Allusions maybe to some sort of spiritual plane (e.g. "Cathedral") but mostly real. Tangible.
Benedict's stories, while still of the dirty realist school, contain elements of...well, best I can put it: elements of fairy tale. Fables, maybe. And one he makes up, not calls back to the Brothers Grimm or something. For example, the fine story (my favorite) "Washman." Washman is a hunchback (thing number one that is fairy tale-esque.) who, in a snippet of Cormac McCarthyism (you'd swear in this scene Washman = Anton Chigur), shoots down a lowlife and takes his woman. He absconds into the woods and mountains to his solitary dwelling (thing number two that is fairy tale-esque.) Come on, the woods? A house that is basically a cave? A huge, strange person? Check out the Iron John myth for more on that. Through this dark fairy tale, and make no mistake, fairy tales were originally dark, strange, and foreboding, Benedict invites the reader into a world that is not quite realistic. Masterfully, he does not over do it. But the reader leaves the story with the sense that he has been to a magical world and that the magic is actually a kind of dark magic. "Washman" isn't the only story like it.
Benedict has a good time writing. Isn't that nice to see? This passage, from the story, "Odom."
"The rhododendron has grown up through the floorboards of the car and out of the rotted cloth top. Caught in the Nash's shattered grillwork is the narrow rib cage of a deer." What author out there looks at that bit and goes, "Hm. I guess." No way. I was jealous he thought to write it first.
Like I said, Benedict is prolific. He's down at Southern Illinois University teaching in the MFA program there. I asked him if he would let me come shooting with him. He hasn't responded. So, I guess I'll just keep reading his stuff.
September 23, 2024
Excellent short stories with that backwoods, southern gothic feel. Authentic characters (usually poor) dealing with hardships of the world or of their own making, and an overall gritty feel to the scenes and people inhabiting them.
October 5, 2013
Years and years ago, a writing instructor at my university recommended three authors to me: Arundhati Roy, Per Petterson, and Pinckney Benedict. Roy’s novel The God of Small Things turned out to be one of my favorite books I have ever read. And Pinckney Benedict’s collection of shorts The Wrecking Yard has been sitting on my shelf for years now, based on this instructor’s recommendation, but never seemed to feel the pull to read it. I just finished it this morning and was fairly disappointed. Benedict’s style is a little too blunt, as if he doesn’t trust the readers with his sometimes powerful imagery. The Wrecking Yard is full of human and animal violence. Death abounds in each of these tales that sometimes read more like folklore. But I can’t help feeling Benedict kept falling a little short, not quite clinching it in any of the stories except maybe one or two.
The rest of the review is over here: http://wp.me/p1vbVP-aI
The rest of the review is over here: http://wp.me/p1vbVP-aI
November 26, 2021
Around 25 years ago, I must have read something about Benedict, because I picked up his novel Dogs of God and this earlier collection of short stories. My lukewarm reaction to the novel then led to this sitting unread on my bookshelf for the next two decades. I finally picked it up and read a story a day over ten days, and so now it can finally leave my shelf. Originally written in the late 1980s, the stories all take place in Benedict's native West Virginia and feature a series of broken and grotesque characters flailing around to survive, occasionally evoking a kind of mythic resonance.
Many of the stories feature pairs of men, and the opening story, "Getting Over Arnette" sets the tone right away, following two sad sack young men to Ladies League Night at the Bowling Alley. One of them lost his girl to "some college puke" and their attempts to get his mind off that humiliation result in them getting run out of the place by angry lady bowlers. They then wash up at the local saloon, where they set to talking with an out-of-town Vietnam Vet, and it all ends in tears. "The Wrecking Yard" features a pair of teenagers who drive tow trucks to haul wrecked cars away from crash sites -- metaphor time. "Rescuing Moon" is the only story with any uplift to it, as a young man attempts to rescue an old man who once was special to him, from the indignities of a ramshackle nursing home. "Horton's Ape" is also about a captive and rescue, albeit this one is a baboon kept as an attraction at a roadside bar and what happens when a traveller tries to free it.
"Washman" is the longest and grimmest story, apparently set in the distant past, unfolding like a nasty old fairy tale. In it, a highwayman tries to rob a hunchback, only to lose his life and the teenage girl he travels with. But this only begets another round of violence and planting of dark seeds. "Odom" is about a man who lives up on a hill trying to clear his land with illegal dynamite, to spectacular effect -- again, metaphor time with a twist of dark comedy. Also darkly comic is "Bounty", which kicks off when a strange farmer shows up in a small town with a pickup truck full of dead dogs, which he claims a bounty has been offered. The bemused sheriff and confused local animal control officers get into an almost sketch comedy scenario of who's going to deal with him and his truckload of stinking corpses, until the teenagers hanging out on the corner point out that some of the dogs match the description of one recently gone missing. Like the first story, it puts you right into the absurd lifeblood of a rural small town.
Three of the stories are outliers, and don't quite fit into the collection very well. There is the throwaway 3-page "The Panther", which at least seems to be set in the same West Virginia hills as the other stories. "The Electric Girl" is about a murder -- so thematically linked to some of the other stories, but it's in the format of a radio play, so not particularly readable. "At the Alhambra" is about a married couple vacationing at a shabby Nicaraguan hotel in 1970 and an expatriate American who runs the local ice plant. While it has a decent sense of place and a thinly bitter tone, it feels forced, almost like an exercise, rather than a story that needed to be told.
All in all, I can't really imagine what contemporary reader would really need to seek this out, other, perhaps, than one with a deep interest in fiction set in West Virginia.
Many of the stories feature pairs of men, and the opening story, "Getting Over Arnette" sets the tone right away, following two sad sack young men to Ladies League Night at the Bowling Alley. One of them lost his girl to "some college puke" and their attempts to get his mind off that humiliation result in them getting run out of the place by angry lady bowlers. They then wash up at the local saloon, where they set to talking with an out-of-town Vietnam Vet, and it all ends in tears. "The Wrecking Yard" features a pair of teenagers who drive tow trucks to haul wrecked cars away from crash sites -- metaphor time. "Rescuing Moon" is the only story with any uplift to it, as a young man attempts to rescue an old man who once was special to him, from the indignities of a ramshackle nursing home. "Horton's Ape" is also about a captive and rescue, albeit this one is a baboon kept as an attraction at a roadside bar and what happens when a traveller tries to free it.
"Washman" is the longest and grimmest story, apparently set in the distant past, unfolding like a nasty old fairy tale. In it, a highwayman tries to rob a hunchback, only to lose his life and the teenage girl he travels with. But this only begets another round of violence and planting of dark seeds. "Odom" is about a man who lives up on a hill trying to clear his land with illegal dynamite, to spectacular effect -- again, metaphor time with a twist of dark comedy. Also darkly comic is "Bounty", which kicks off when a strange farmer shows up in a small town with a pickup truck full of dead dogs, which he claims a bounty has been offered. The bemused sheriff and confused local animal control officers get into an almost sketch comedy scenario of who's going to deal with him and his truckload of stinking corpses, until the teenagers hanging out on the corner point out that some of the dogs match the description of one recently gone missing. Like the first story, it puts you right into the absurd lifeblood of a rural small town.
Three of the stories are outliers, and don't quite fit into the collection very well. There is the throwaway 3-page "The Panther", which at least seems to be set in the same West Virginia hills as the other stories. "The Electric Girl" is about a murder -- so thematically linked to some of the other stories, but it's in the format of a radio play, so not particularly readable. "At the Alhambra" is about a married couple vacationing at a shabby Nicaraguan hotel in 1970 and an expatriate American who runs the local ice plant. While it has a decent sense of place and a thinly bitter tone, it feels forced, almost like an exercise, rather than a story that needed to be told.
All in all, I can't really imagine what contemporary reader would really need to seek this out, other, perhaps, than one with a deep interest in fiction set in West Virginia.
February 14, 2024
“The old woman backed off a couple of steps, watching the two of them for a second. She was dressed all in greasy leathers, and she carried a battered iron stewpot in her hand. He's gone crazy, the boy said. He never did anything like this before with me. The gelding had tangled its tack in a thick gorse bush, and the boy dropped the rifle to try and pull it free. The old woman looked at the rifle and then headed down the path again.
Stand by a minute, the boy called after her. Is it a way down the mountain that you know of? The old woman vanished among the trees. The gelding stood shivering and blowing, still caught fast. It had torn its hide on the thorns as it fought, and the boy's hands were cut and bleeding. He worked to free it - reins, stirrups, mane, tail - and every time the gelding shifted, the boy gashed himself again. You, he said and slapped his fist against the gelding's dusty barrel side. You.”
Stand by a minute, the boy called after her. Is it a way down the mountain that you know of? The old woman vanished among the trees. The gelding stood shivering and blowing, still caught fast. It had torn its hide on the thorns as it fought, and the boy's hands were cut and bleeding. He worked to free it - reins, stirrups, mane, tail - and every time the gelding shifted, the boy gashed himself again. You, he said and slapped his fist against the gelding's dusty barrel side. You.”
December 13, 2025
Fantastic heartfelt and hilarious tales of rural America. Every story in this is a winner. Not poverty porn or southern fried noir but solid and interesting stories of people doing the best they can.
Some are deeper than others, but they are all crafted with a confident and touching voice.
p.s. I think this is out of print, which is an absolute travesty. Track down a copy
.
Some are deeper than others, but they are all crafted with a confident and touching voice.
p.s. I think this is out of print, which is an absolute travesty. Track down a copy
.
August 4, 2025
Really intriguing short stories. Benedict creates a timeless portrait of Appalachia, overlapping the darkness and joy of its characters. Particular stand-outs are the titular story (The Wrecking Yard), Odom, and The Electric Girl.
September 6, 2023
Just phenomenal short story writing.
November 24, 2024
I loved these stories and I am in the process of reading and/or acquiring Benedict's other story collections. Often the best writing leaves me with nothing to say except to repeat how fine and deep and moving I have found it. That it has taken me thirty years to read his first collection is only due to my failure to keep abreast of things literary. I don't think it has impaired them, it has probably allowed them to mature - although there is nothing immature about most of the characters in these stories - they are the most wonderful collection of men and women from the margins - I like reading about such people - not back woods grotesques - just real ordinary (god I hate that word) people who are actually extraordinary.
If you enjoy short stories and have read nothing else by this author then this is an excellent place to start.
If you enjoy short stories and have read nothing else by this author then this is an excellent place to start.
December 18, 2011
Some excellent writing, but not a single story moved me or will stick with me.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews