Mode of Program Participation
Academic Scholarship
Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
Worlding Trilobites: Breece D’J Pancake Writing Appalachian Extremes
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Worlding Trilobites: Breece D’J Pancake Writing Appalachian Extremes Abigail Heiniger, Ph.D. Like the shaft of a coal mine, Breece D’J Pancake’s “Trilobite” delves from the rural sunny mountainside into to the dark underbelly of daily life in West Virginia. Characters in the story seem to swirl like last autumn’s leaves, trapped in an eddy on the edge of the ancient Teay’s River while the world flows around them. Despite their relative immobility, the consciousness of characters is shaped by the imagined flow of the outside world. Like Pop, who is wounded at the Elbe in Central Europe and dreams of going to China while he is unconscious, the narrator’s mind travels around the world while he drives into town and shares a cup of coffee with old Jim. The geographic and geological extremes in the narrator’s thoughts are a stark contrast with his physical immobility. Pancake’s short story is littered with thoughts and things that ricochet the reader from rural West Virginia of the 1970s into a much wider world. Although these movements seem random, they give meaning to the place and message of the narrator’s mundane existence. According to Sue Thomas, “Worlding is … a strategy that works to locate and situate the historical consciousness of authors and the historical consciousness given to their characters, and to disclose the ways in which that consciousness has been shaped.” (2) This paper uses Sue Thomas’ concept of worlding to examine the way the extremes of daily life in West Virginia are positioned in a global context in “Trilobites.”
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Dr. Abigail Heiniger is an Assistant Professor of English at Bluefield College. She studies transatlantic fiction across the long nineteenth century and recently published her first book: Jane Eyre's Fairytale Legacy at Home and Abroad (2016).
Worlding Trilobites: Breece D’J Pancake Writing Appalachian Extremes
Worlding Trilobites: Breece D’J Pancake Writing Appalachian Extremes Abigail Heiniger, Ph.D. Like the shaft of a coal mine, Breece D’J Pancake’s “Trilobite” delves from the rural sunny mountainside into to the dark underbelly of daily life in West Virginia. Characters in the story seem to swirl like last autumn’s leaves, trapped in an eddy on the edge of the ancient Teay’s River while the world flows around them. Despite their relative immobility, the consciousness of characters is shaped by the imagined flow of the outside world. Like Pop, who is wounded at the Elbe in Central Europe and dreams of going to China while he is unconscious, the narrator’s mind travels around the world while he drives into town and shares a cup of coffee with old Jim. The geographic and geological extremes in the narrator’s thoughts are a stark contrast with his physical immobility. Pancake’s short story is littered with thoughts and things that ricochet the reader from rural West Virginia of the 1970s into a much wider world. Although these movements seem random, they give meaning to the place and message of the narrator’s mundane existence. According to Sue Thomas, “Worlding is … a strategy that works to locate and situate the historical consciousness of authors and the historical consciousness given to their characters, and to disclose the ways in which that consciousness has been shaped.” (2) This paper uses Sue Thomas’ concept of worlding to examine the way the extremes of daily life in West Virginia are positioned in a global context in “Trilobites.”
