The Old Forest and Other Stories

This is a fantastic collection of short stories by the master of the genre in Southern literature. Each takes place in the old south of the 1930's and 40's and are stories of simple events of everyday life. However, these simple events are not so simple because of the complex and unusual social structure and race relations. Taylor masterfully brings out the tension beneath each relationship and in each seemingly simple situation in a way that accurately transmits the feeling of this most troubled time and place. Two of the stories "Bad Dreams" and "Two Ladies in Retirement" appear in another collection "The Widows of Thornton" but are worth rereading. You can read about the old south and Jim Crow before the Civil Rights movement in history books but Taylor, along with other great writers such as Richard Wright, help you feel and understand the myriad of unresolvable conflicts, unstated resentments and tensions simmering just below the facade of life. Taylor masterfully documents how Blacks and Whites live intimately and form a greater family unit with mutual yet unequal duties and obligations, live so close yet be separate and far away. He also shows how domestic servanthood for Blacks was very much like slavery in that they were free but highly dependent on their white employers. Long-term domestics even form family-type relationships with each other. My favorite stories are "Bad Dreams" and "The Old Forest." Don't miss this wonderful collection.

I have trouble with assessments of great writing that tend to subordinate every concept to setting. We know that Chekhov wrote about the Russian provinces, Cheever wrote about WASPs in New England, William Trevor writes about lower middle-class Ireland, and Faulkner wrote about Mississippi. We also know that Taylor writes about the upper South (not the so-called "Deep South" that some others have mentioned). So what? What many of us realize, but often fail to mention, is that Taylor is writing about the human condition, as all of these great writers have. I'm a firm believer in the notion that the setting is incidental--a product of the world Taylor understood. So, as we can say with Chekhov, Cheever, and Trevor, Taylor writes about people. We appreciate these stories because they are about us, whether we're from Maine, Mississippi, or Maryland. If you have any belief in a universal human condition (whatever that may be), in the truth inherent to archetypal stories about people, you'll find that the setting only serves as the metaphorical framework in which the author works. It's our own problem if we have trouble shedding our regionalism, not Taylor's. Also, this book is not an obituary to the death of any particular culture, but a celebration of life and universal human relationships. How can "The Gift of the Prodigal" be about anything but that? Who would say that "The Gift of the Prodigal" is about Charlottesville, VA? So, by all means read this book. Don't be turned off by its Southern setting or its WASPy characters anymore than you would be turned off by Chekhov's rural Russia.

I have a confession to make. I don't like these stories. I recognize the strengths of Taylor's story telling - the elegant language, the depiction of emotional tension in simple things, the clear progression of 'story' or theme from setup to inevitable conclusion, but I can't get past a deep dislike for his characters. This is a personal failing. Taylor's fiction depicts a world that is inhabited almost exclusively by a certain class of affluent, white, middle class city dwellers whose lives are bounded on the upside by manners, fashion and ritual (in imitation of an upper class to which, presumably, they aspire)and on the downside by a stiff reticence and correctness of behavior to insulate them from their inferiors (not only their black servants but also whites of a lesser social and economic standing). I grew up in Nashville, TN at a time when this world was rapidly passing away, but I have met people, more than a few, who could have stepped from the pages of these stories, and almost without exception developed a deep antipathy for them. Their overt arrogance which seemed to mask a great fear of the world 'outside' always made social intercourse with such people strained and unsatisfying. There is nothing like being politely condescended to to make the recipient want to deliberately break convention and strike through the mask. So it's personal.I have read, and reread, these stories enough to see that Taylor's characters are frequently as frightened of change and the possible corruption of contact outside their little world as I had sensed in the real Taylor-type folk I have met. There is great skill in his presentation of this tension, but it doesn't lead me to empathize, much less sympathize, with his characters. Any given person's response to a piece of fiction is going to be colored by a host of factors over which the author has no control, and no writer ever had universal success at generating the response he desires the reader to have. In the case of my response to Taylor's stories, I fear that my dislike of the specific milieu (and its inhabitants) that is his chosen subject will forever keep me from a full appreciation of his work.

This lovely collection of stories presents some of the most complete short fiction ever produced. Each story (averaging around thirty pages) tells everything that needs to be said about their characters. Their lives are there in their entirety. These are real stories of a simplier time, in a pleasent,more docile place. And what happens as modern day begins to seep in, casting a gloom on all the old glories of the past. These people do not understand what is happening. They are upper class rich white folks of the near south, clinging to an old way of life that is somehow becoming irrelevent. It's the coming and,later, the going of The Great War, when Hitler was making it life or death, and the ole red white and blue is gonna die fighting. This is how life seems to these privilaged folks, and their uneasy relationships with their Jim Crow servants is starting to show signs of wear and tear, and even the good ones are acting all uppity and haven't they always been decent to their HIRED HELP? Attitudes like this were very much in existence during the eras where these narratives take place. Now I usually don't go in for stuff this tame, but the emotion is true, the stories are wonderful and any aspiring writer could learn more from this book than any creative writing class could teach (unless they taught the book--then, good job.) This is how you want to tell a story. Not style, not mood or tone or pitch or pace--this is what a beginning, a middle and a climactic end should look like. It is a model of short fiction. You know how plays have acts and novels have chapters? Here is the short story