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The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor
Described by Anne Tyler as "the undisputed master of the short story form," Peter Taylor imbued his stories with a powerful sense of the conflicts between the old rural society and the increasingly urbanized South. Ranging in subject from the story of the exposure of a respected doctor's infidelity by the family's longtime cook to the tale of elderly siblings whose party for young people exposes the town's class divisions, the stories often explore family dynamics within the larger society of the South.
560 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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764 people want to read
About the author
Peter Taylor
115 books84 followersPeter Matthew Hillsman Taylor was a U.S. author and writer. Considered to be one of the finest American short story writers, Taylor's fictional milieu is the urban South. His characters, usually middle or upper class people, often are living in a time of change and struggle to discover and define their roles in society.
Peter Taylor also wrote three novels, including A Summons to Memphis in 1986, for which he won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and In the Tennessee Country in 1994. His collection The Old Forest and Other Stories (1985) won the PEN/Faulkner Award. Taylor taught literature and writing at Kenyon and the University of Virginia.
Peter Taylor also wrote three novels, including A Summons to Memphis in 1986, for which he won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and In the Tennessee Country in 1994. His collection The Old Forest and Other Stories (1985) won the PEN/Faulkner Award. Taylor taught literature and writing at Kenyon and the University of Virginia.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
May 3, 2009
When I think of Peter Taylor, I think of the closer to his story Dean of Men: "It is a strange world, Jack, in which an old man must tell a young man this."
In the story, of course, the point is that it is the old man who has become the stranger, and in turn Peter Taylor has become a stranger to current readers of stories. Many modernists and writers of the "other tradition" are still understood as pretty much current--Hemingway is, at least, Beckett is, Borges and Kafka are--but Taylor is writing in midcentury realist forms and dignified tones, in a generous fullness of exposition, about the South of the '30s; he is doubly or triply estranged and so largely neglected.
But it is still a strange world in which this is so. Sophisticated readers ask not to be led, gentlemanly-like, by the hand; less sophisticated readers lack the patience or the diligence for such careful tapestry.
But you know what? It's really no trouble if somebody holds a door for you now and then, or if they take you out to a nice dinner. You don't owe a thing other than your polite attention when it turns out the dinner was costly, the chef imported, every detail measured to the degree and timed to the second, each ingredient brought freshly from the pier or the market. But you do nonetheless owe your polite attention, and you'd be missing something beautiful and extravagant if you never showed up at the goddam table.
Taylor is a formally proficient teller of the seeming shaggy dog, a maker of stories that build up a bulk of description and feeling that seem unable to be contained and channeled into a form--and which then, miraculously, are.
Old houses, old architecture, old men--I like they way these things were built.
In the story, of course, the point is that it is the old man who has become the stranger, and in turn Peter Taylor has become a stranger to current readers of stories. Many modernists and writers of the "other tradition" are still understood as pretty much current--Hemingway is, at least, Beckett is, Borges and Kafka are--but Taylor is writing in midcentury realist forms and dignified tones, in a generous fullness of exposition, about the South of the '30s; he is doubly or triply estranged and so largely neglected.
But it is still a strange world in which this is so. Sophisticated readers ask not to be led, gentlemanly-like, by the hand; less sophisticated readers lack the patience or the diligence for such careful tapestry.
But you know what? It's really no trouble if somebody holds a door for you now and then, or if they take you out to a nice dinner. You don't owe a thing other than your polite attention when it turns out the dinner was costly, the chef imported, every detail measured to the degree and timed to the second, each ingredient brought freshly from the pier or the market. But you do nonetheless owe your polite attention, and you'd be missing something beautiful and extravagant if you never showed up at the goddam table.
Taylor is a formally proficient teller of the seeming shaggy dog, a maker of stories that build up a bulk of description and feeling that seem unable to be contained and channeled into a form--and which then, miraculously, are.
Old houses, old architecture, old men--I like they way these things were built.
June 26, 2007
Peter Taylor is a master. His prose is clean and beautiful and capable of anything.
April 23, 2008
Remarkable observer of mid-century mid-south culture, its characters and changes. Astute observer. Gets how much to tell and what moment to choose to tell it.
April 27, 2024
A collection of twenty-one short stories that were all written in the 40's, 50's and 60's. They have a very strong feel about them of those periods of time and almost gave me the sensation of watching an old black and white movie. A few of the better stories are:
First Heat - About a legislator who is laying on a hotel bed, sweating profusely, and thinking about a betrayal he just made in helping to pass an amendment he had been opposed to, but then voting for in exchange for favors. He is waiting for his wife to call to warn him she has arrived and glad he doesn't have to hide a woman in the closet when she knocks on the door.
At the Drugstore - About a man who has come with his family to his parents house for a visit. He had forgotten to bring shaving lotion with him so he has walked to the nearby drugstore where he sees the same pharmacist that had been there twenty years before. He begins reminiscing about how he and his friends had tormented the pharmacist back then.
Their Losses - Two women meet while on a train. One of them is taking her very ill aunt home before she dies and the other woman is taking her dead mother home for burial. Then a third woman joins them and the begin comparing their losses.
The Elect - A story written from the viewpoint of the wife of a judge who has just been elected governor and tells about the sacrifices she made to help him get elected.
First Heat - About a legislator who is laying on a hotel bed, sweating profusely, and thinking about a betrayal he just made in helping to pass an amendment he had been opposed to, but then voting for in exchange for favors. He is waiting for his wife to call to warn him she has arrived and glad he doesn't have to hide a woman in the closet when she knocks on the door.
At the Drugstore - About a man who has come with his family to his parents house for a visit. He had forgotten to bring shaving lotion with him so he has walked to the nearby drugstore where he sees the same pharmacist that had been there twenty years before. He begins reminiscing about how he and his friends had tormented the pharmacist back then.
Their Losses - Two women meet while on a train. One of them is taking her very ill aunt home before she dies and the other woman is taking her dead mother home for burial. Then a third woman joins them and the begin comparing their losses.
The Elect - A story written from the viewpoint of the wife of a judge who has just been elected governor and tells about the sacrifices she made to help him get elected.
July 27, 2025
500+ pages. Definitely wouldn’t have kept on if he wasn’t a good storyteller.
December 13, 2011
It's difficult for me to speak about this book coherently, as it's something I've read in starts and fits for several years, never finishing it. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy the stories--I relished them, and found Taylor to be one of my favorite authors; in my starts and fits of reading The Collected Stories, I've read three other collections of his stories, and each of his two major novels twice. For whatever reason, I never made it though all these stories. But this time, I finally did. And it was worth the wait, worth reading "Dean of Men" for the fifth time, worth the slow, laborious walk through his several worlds.
Because, ultimately, what Taylor gives us are the full, intimate portraits not only of people, but of their entire worlds. And while these worlds may have a similar center of gravity, they are all deeply unique and different. Yes, at their center, all of these are stories that touch the patrician, urban white South of the mid-20th century. Wealth, privilege, elitism, and racism are often on display. But these are the things in the air, the environment; they are not the subjects of his stories. Taylor's stories are of people, and he gives the perspectives of the poor whites and blacks who lived on the outskirts of this world just as well, just as persuasively, just as powerfully and with as much respect and realization, as he does the stories of the upwardly-mobile middle class whites, the progressive wealthy whites who are running from the squeezing worlds and backward mores of their pasts, and the patricians who go down defending their ways of life until their last breaths. Many of the stories critique this world savagely, many defend it passionately, some do both. This is not a fiction of social activism, nor is it rightly called a "conservative" fiction. Taylor, I think, has no interest in pronouncements--he has every interest in showing human beings as complete, complex, and fully realized individuals. He has, I think, no interest at all beyond that.
Like all his writing, these are magnificent, often slow-to-develop stories that exist in such vivid detail that they demand time to digest, demand to be encountered again. They are "realistic" stories, they are controlled tales "of manners" in the vein of many Victorian works or Henry James, and they are every bit as dedicated to exploring all aspects, psychologically, of human beings as anything produced by the Russians. Some, not all, of the stories contain the raw, punch you in the jaw feelings of overwhelming awe you get from Dubliners or the Germans. Every one, then, shows Taylor as a great student of the short story form, an exemplary practitioner himself, and deserves meditation, reflection, and staring into the night sky with a glass of something strong in your hand afterwards.
Magnificent might be the only word--though delicious comes closely behind.
Because, ultimately, what Taylor gives us are the full, intimate portraits not only of people, but of their entire worlds. And while these worlds may have a similar center of gravity, they are all deeply unique and different. Yes, at their center, all of these are stories that touch the patrician, urban white South of the mid-20th century. Wealth, privilege, elitism, and racism are often on display. But these are the things in the air, the environment; they are not the subjects of his stories. Taylor's stories are of people, and he gives the perspectives of the poor whites and blacks who lived on the outskirts of this world just as well, just as persuasively, just as powerfully and with as much respect and realization, as he does the stories of the upwardly-mobile middle class whites, the progressive wealthy whites who are running from the squeezing worlds and backward mores of their pasts, and the patricians who go down defending their ways of life until their last breaths. Many of the stories critique this world savagely, many defend it passionately, some do both. This is not a fiction of social activism, nor is it rightly called a "conservative" fiction. Taylor, I think, has no interest in pronouncements--he has every interest in showing human beings as complete, complex, and fully realized individuals. He has, I think, no interest at all beyond that.
Like all his writing, these are magnificent, often slow-to-develop stories that exist in such vivid detail that they demand time to digest, demand to be encountered again. They are "realistic" stories, they are controlled tales "of manners" in the vein of many Victorian works or Henry James, and they are every bit as dedicated to exploring all aspects, psychologically, of human beings as anything produced by the Russians. Some, not all, of the stories contain the raw, punch you in the jaw feelings of overwhelming awe you get from Dubliners or the Germans. Every one, then, shows Taylor as a great student of the short story form, an exemplary practitioner himself, and deserves meditation, reflection, and staring into the night sky with a glass of something strong in your hand afterwards.
Magnificent might be the only word--though delicious comes closely behind.
May 14, 2017
This book was a pleasure, especially for a Tennessean like me.
It's easy, however, to see why you don't hear much about Peter Taylor these days. These stories are old-fashioned in their delicate construction and even delicate-r prose style. The fancy, high-toned erudition of Taylor's sentences charmed me silly, but I doubt that many readers have the patience for that sort of thing these days. At times, the stories also suffer from a certain preciousness of subject matter - an almost tedious fixation on the mild ravages of time (the erection [lol] of telephone lines in once-spotless rural towns, the abandonment of the hamlet for the city, the many losses of innocence, romantic and otherwise, that such changes effect).
But for some reason I really love these stories. It must have something to with an Old South I never knew, an Old South that Taylor doesn't romanticize so much as he investigates with a clear eye this very particular time and place and all its knotty contradictions. This is honest storytelling that shows heartbreak, injustice, nostalgia, and many forms of love through judicious detail and beautiful characterization. The stories are textbook realist fiction, the kind of Chekhovian mousetraps the postmodernists sought to explode in the 60s and 70s, but they've got a power that even I (a consistently caustic disciple of Coover and Barthelme) find undeniable and even - look out, now - enriching.
My favorite stories in the book, for what it's worth, are "The Fancy Woman," "Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time," and "Dean of Men."
It's easy, however, to see why you don't hear much about Peter Taylor these days. These stories are old-fashioned in their delicate construction and even delicate-r prose style. The fancy, high-toned erudition of Taylor's sentences charmed me silly, but I doubt that many readers have the patience for that sort of thing these days. At times, the stories also suffer from a certain preciousness of subject matter - an almost tedious fixation on the mild ravages of time (the erection [lol] of telephone lines in once-spotless rural towns, the abandonment of the hamlet for the city, the many losses of innocence, romantic and otherwise, that such changes effect).
But for some reason I really love these stories. It must have something to with an Old South I never knew, an Old South that Taylor doesn't romanticize so much as he investigates with a clear eye this very particular time and place and all its knotty contradictions. This is honest storytelling that shows heartbreak, injustice, nostalgia, and many forms of love through judicious detail and beautiful characterization. The stories are textbook realist fiction, the kind of Chekhovian mousetraps the postmodernists sought to explode in the 60s and 70s, but they've got a power that even I (a consistently caustic disciple of Coover and Barthelme) find undeniable and even - look out, now - enriching.
My favorite stories in the book, for what it's worth, are "The Fancy Woman," "Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time," and "Dean of Men."
April 27, 2009
There are very few practitioners of the short story who could match Peter Taylor's unique, formal and precise gems. I loved these stories.
May 22, 2020
The writing in this book is amazing, so fluid, it just flows. I just read on without a hiccup, a pause to reread a sentence. And the characters are so real, southern, living in small towns out side of Memphis and Nashville. There were outliers, like Je Suis Perdu, about a man in Paris with his wife and 2 small children wondering what he had missed by not being there when he was single, realizing that what he had was better. May read some of them again, for the story and the writing.
May 29, 2019
I have always loved Peter Taylor’s Summons to Memphis- a very satisfying full length novel. Even though his true skill, according to more astute reviewers than I, are his short stories. I like his short stories, and enjoyed most of these, a longer story is what I prefer from Mr. Taylor.
January 2, 2018
The bile and shit of the previous generations certainly makes for interesting fodder.
November 7, 2024
The Portcoshare... the New Yorker fiction podcast
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November 23, 2023I don’t have a strong affiliation for or with Peter Taylor, the way I do with several other Southern writers (Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston etc). Instead, he was one of those figures talked about in the periphery of a few literature classes I took in college that were labeled as Southern Fiction or Southern Literature, as well as author classes. But yet, we never read any of his work. He is kind of exalted in a lot of ways, and moderately famous–having won the Pulitizer Prize for a late novel of his. But mostly he’s know for his short stories. He’s about a generation past Faulkner, younger than Welty but older than the newer crop or writers born in the 1930s and beyond, and so I think he’s a kind of middle child in that respect.
His fiction, at least as this collection suggests it, is also moderate. Focusing on little moments and life histories of his characters, and cataloging the kinds of small injustices that Southern American life tends to allow to happen, from a very middle-class and middle-brow perspective.
I don’t find most of the stories to be particularly of interest to me, and in fact only two did I actually like a whole lot. But that doesn’t determine their worth, only how they held my interest. Those two — “First Heat”, which was the accounting of a state senator’s night after a disastrous vote as he waits for his wife to meet him at a hotel and “Miss Leonora When Last Seen” about a retired teacher and land-owner on the lam from a small town’s attempts to buy out her property to build their first integrated school (by force of law) and destroy a local black community in the process — are good, but don’t elevate the whole for me.
His fiction, at least as this collection suggests it, is also moderate. Focusing on little moments and life histories of his characters, and cataloging the kinds of small injustices that Southern American life tends to allow to happen, from a very middle-class and middle-brow perspective.
I don’t find most of the stories to be particularly of interest to me, and in fact only two did I actually like a whole lot. But that doesn’t determine their worth, only how they held my interest. Those two — “First Heat”, which was the accounting of a state senator’s night after a disastrous vote as he waits for his wife to meet him at a hotel and “Miss Leonora When Last Seen” about a retired teacher and land-owner on the lam from a small town’s attempts to buy out her property to build their first integrated school (by force of law) and destroy a local black community in the process — are good, but don’t elevate the whole for me.
March 18, 2012
Long ago, I loaned my copy of The Collected Stories to a friend from Chattanooga; she has just returned it, and I'm reminded of how much I loved these stories. Peter Taylor wrote several fine books, but this one is where I'd begin. It is so very Tennessee but, as the Goodreads review states, moves beyond regionalism. I think I'll have to read it again now. Highly recommended for everyone, but especial Tennesseans!
Want to read
December 10, 2023Read so far:
*Dean of Men --
*First Heat --
*Reservations --
Other Times --
*At The Drugstore --
*Spinster's Tale --
*Fancy Woman --
*Their Losses --
Two Pilgrims --
*What You Hear from 'Em? --
*Wife of Nashville --
Cookie --
*Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time --
1939 --
*There --
Elect --
Guests --
*Heads of Houses --
Mrs. Billingsby's Wine --
Je Suis Perdu --
*Miss Leonora When Last Seen --
***
*Missing person
*Dean of Men --
*First Heat --
*Reservations --
Other Times --
*At The Drugstore --
*Spinster's Tale --
*Fancy Woman --
*Their Losses --
Two Pilgrims --
*What You Hear from 'Em? --
*Wife of Nashville --
Cookie --
*Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time --
1939 --
*There --
Elect --
Guests --
*Heads of Houses --
Mrs. Billingsby's Wine --
Je Suis Perdu --
*Miss Leonora When Last Seen --
***
*Missing person
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December 9, 2013Dean of Men is the definitive short story guide to life that every young person should read. "It is a strange world, Jack, in which an old man must tell a young man this." Peter Taylor is a Tennessee writer that my freshman English teacher Dr. Clarkson had us read this story and write a paper on.
July 28, 2010
CLASS struggles esp in political office: Just listened to MARISA SILVER's podcast of ...PORTE COCHERE
November 16, 2011
Read during Peter Taylor kick, but I petered out on this one as the stories began to seem the same. Did not finish them all.
October 24, 2012
These short stories are pretty typical small town/family dramas, but they hold up much better than many other short stories from the same time period.
March 24, 2013
Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time
April 3, 2014
My college English 102 textbook. Southern Literature at its best.
December 3, 2014
Delicious
April 22, 2015
Stories of a Tennessee I never knew.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews