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The Orchard Is Full of Sound: one author's connection with Breece D'J Pancake: a memoir
In this superb memoir Sheldon Lee Compton reflects on his own life, his struggles with poverty and divorce and violence and addiction and fatherhood and an early heart attack and trying to make it as a writer in rural Kentucky, all the while trying to trace the life and tragic ending of one of his literary heroes, Breece D'J Pancake. The book is part overcoming, part acceptance, part reflection on Appalachia and its stereotypes, part study in suicide among the creative. Compton seeks closure on Pancake's suicide when he travels to Pancake's last home, to the orchard where Pancake did the deed, and in doing so finds new perspective on the tragic events of his own life.
Cowboy Jamboree Press
good grit lit.
Cowboy Jamboree Press
good grit lit.
192 pages, Paperback
Published April 4, 2022
About the author
Sheldon Lee Compton
32 books109 followersSheldon Lee Compton is a short story writer, novelist, prose poet, and editor from Pike County, Eastern Kentucky.
He is the author of the short story collections The Same Terrible Storm (Foxhead Books, 2012), Where Alligators Sleep (Foxhead Books, 2014), Absolute Invention (Secret History Books, 2019) and Sway (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2020).
Compton is also the author of the novels Brown Bottle (Bottom Dog Press, 2016) and Dysphoria (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2019).
His poetry chapbook Podunk Lore was part of the Lantern Lit series (Dog On a Chain Press, 2018) and his first full-length poetry collection, Runaways, was published in 2021 by Alien Buddha Press.
Compton's novel, Alice, was named one of the Best Books of 2023 as selected by the Independent Fiction Alliance.
In 2021 Cowboy Jamboree Press published The Collected Stories of Sheldon Lee Compton and followed that in 2022, on the anniversary of author Breece D'J Pancake's tragic death on April 8, 1979, Compton's memoir The Orchard Is Full of Sound, which the publisher describes as a book that "reflects on his [Compton's] own life, his struggles with poverty and divorce and violence and addiction and fatherhood and an early heart attack and trying to make it as a writer in rural Kentucky, all the while trying to trace the life and tragic ending of one of his literary heroes, Breece D'J Pancake."
In 2012, Compton was a finalist for both the Gertrude Stein Fiction Award and the Still Fiction Award. His writing has been nominated for the Chaffin Award for Excellence in Appalachian Writing, the Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Wigleaf's Top 50. He was cited twice for Best Small Fictions, in 2015 and 2016, before having his short story "Aversion" included in Best Small Fictions 2019 and his short story "The Good Life" included in Best Small Fictions 2022.
Since 2020, he has taught in the Master of Fine Arts program at Concordia University, St. Paul. He also edits the Poverty House Collective and writes the interview series Chaos Questions for Hobart.
He is the author of the short story collections The Same Terrible Storm (Foxhead Books, 2012), Where Alligators Sleep (Foxhead Books, 2014), Absolute Invention (Secret History Books, 2019) and Sway (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2020).
Compton is also the author of the novels Brown Bottle (Bottom Dog Press, 2016) and Dysphoria (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2019).
His poetry chapbook Podunk Lore was part of the Lantern Lit series (Dog On a Chain Press, 2018) and his first full-length poetry collection, Runaways, was published in 2021 by Alien Buddha Press.
Compton's novel, Alice, was named one of the Best Books of 2023 as selected by the Independent Fiction Alliance.
In 2021 Cowboy Jamboree Press published The Collected Stories of Sheldon Lee Compton and followed that in 2022, on the anniversary of author Breece D'J Pancake's tragic death on April 8, 1979, Compton's memoir The Orchard Is Full of Sound, which the publisher describes as a book that "reflects on his [Compton's] own life, his struggles with poverty and divorce and violence and addiction and fatherhood and an early heart attack and trying to make it as a writer in rural Kentucky, all the while trying to trace the life and tragic ending of one of his literary heroes, Breece D'J Pancake."
In 2012, Compton was a finalist for both the Gertrude Stein Fiction Award and the Still Fiction Award. His writing has been nominated for the Chaffin Award for Excellence in Appalachian Writing, the Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Wigleaf's Top 50. He was cited twice for Best Small Fictions, in 2015 and 2016, before having his short story "Aversion" included in Best Small Fictions 2019 and his short story "The Good Life" included in Best Small Fictions 2022.
Since 2020, he has taught in the Master of Fine Arts program at Concordia University, St. Paul. He also edits the Poverty House Collective and writes the interview series Chaos Questions for Hobart.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 5, 2022
This book is more than a memoir. It is an analysis of the genre in which Pancake wrote. Compton approaches this through his personal attachment to Pancake’s writings, and to his sensibility. Pancake influenced Compton’s own writing, just as he did other rural noir writers. Stories such as Pancake’s “In the Dry,” “The Mark,” “The Battler, “Hollow,” and “The Honored Dead” feature complicated motivations for cruel, criminal, and self-destructive behavior. The elegiac feeling in family stories such as “First Day of Winter” and “Trilobytes” reveal the conscious and subconscious hesitancies of young people who know they have to leave home.
Compton’s writings center around similar experiences: Brown Bottle is a crime novel, a story of family dysfunction and its healing, and a delineation of how and why a rural town’s drug dealers and law enforcement personnel depend on each other. Compton’s short stories are about irrepressible farmers, prize fighters, writers uncertain about their talent, and facing death and the devil. For both writers, home, leaving it and family, and entanglement in one’s own flawed plans for success, are the essence of rural America’s consciousness.
There is a strong spiritual undertone to some rural noir, quite at variance with the here-and-now realism of the urban crime narratives of its predecessors. Compton epitomizes this: “sin, knowledge, banishment, a demanding and angry god, perfection, punishment, beginnings.” This echoes writers from Flannery O’Connor to David Joy, Larry Brown, Denis Johnson, Steph Post, Chris Offutt, and Cormac McCarthy.
Compton's approach to Pancake shows why, although he died a suicide at 27 in 1979 with only one book of stories published, Pancake is and will remain an archetypal figure for his Appalachian contemporaries. His approach to that event preserves its mystery, enhancing it in the way he presents the known details. This reconstruction of Pancake’s last day ends the book. It preserves the uncertainty, the ineffable sadness, and the evanescence. The lostness is equated with that of long gone Appalachian predecessors detached from their land.
Compton’s writings center around similar experiences: Brown Bottle is a crime novel, a story of family dysfunction and its healing, and a delineation of how and why a rural town’s drug dealers and law enforcement personnel depend on each other. Compton’s short stories are about irrepressible farmers, prize fighters, writers uncertain about their talent, and facing death and the devil. For both writers, home, leaving it and family, and entanglement in one’s own flawed plans for success, are the essence of rural America’s consciousness.
There is a strong spiritual undertone to some rural noir, quite at variance with the here-and-now realism of the urban crime narratives of its predecessors. Compton epitomizes this: “sin, knowledge, banishment, a demanding and angry god, perfection, punishment, beginnings.” This echoes writers from Flannery O’Connor to David Joy, Larry Brown, Denis Johnson, Steph Post, Chris Offutt, and Cormac McCarthy.
Compton's approach to Pancake shows why, although he died a suicide at 27 in 1979 with only one book of stories published, Pancake is and will remain an archetypal figure for his Appalachian contemporaries. His approach to that event preserves its mystery, enhancing it in the way he presents the known details. This reconstruction of Pancake’s last day ends the book. It preserves the uncertainty, the ineffable sadness, and the evanescence. The lostness is equated with that of long gone Appalachian predecessors detached from their land.
September 1, 2022
A great writer reexamines the life and loss of another great writer who ended his life too soon.
Not unlike Nicholson Baker's book about Updike, except interesting.
Not unlike Nicholson Baker's book about Updike, except interesting.
May 20, 2026
This book does exactly what it set out to do. In a sad turn of events, the author’s own early passing adds an extra dimension to the work. I wish I would have read it when Sheldon was still here. I didn’t have a lot of interactions with him but Goodreads was one place we kind of “kept in touch” each liking the reading activity of the other. It was like a distant fist bump. Centered on a love of Breece Pancake, this book really becomes a testimony to writing and its place in surviving this difficult thing called life.
June 13, 2024
I encourage you to read this memoir. I still need to finish a couple of the stories that are part of a latter section of the book in which various authors build fiction based upon Breece D'J Pancake's outlines.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews