This collection of four prose and four intimately told verse stories was first published in 1977, and the following year Peter Taylor was given the Gold Medal Award for the short story by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Set mostly in Nashville and Memphis amid Taylor's fictional genteel Tennessee society, these tales belie serene manners and lovely neighborhoods with undercurrents of irony, violence, disgrace, sexual transgressions, and generational divide. Often shadowing male despair in the modern world, they describe the power of unleashed passion once the restraint of custom has given away.
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About the Author
Peter Taylor, 1917-1994, was the author of eight books of stories, including THE WIDOWS OF THORNTON and THE OLD FOREST, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1985; three novels, including A SUMMONS TO MEMPHIS, winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 1986 Ritz/Hemingway Prize; and three books of plays. He was Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the American Chekhov,
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This review is from: In the Miro District and Other Stories (Voices of the South) (Paperback)
Peter Taylor is one of the few writers who can stand toe to toe with Chekhov, and their work has a lot in common. Their characters are complex and full-blown. Their stories are subtle but stick in the mind and you may find yourself reinterpreting them long after you read them. But unlike Chekhov, Peter Taylor didn't publish a great deal -- a few books of short stories, a couple of short novels or novellas, some poems, a play or two. It's all so good that it's hard to pick a favorite, but this may be mine. This is real fiction for real adults.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Evokes a time and place beautifully,
By Avid Reader (USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: In the Miro District and Other Stories (Voices of the South) (Paperback)
My wife described Peter Taylor's stories as always about secrets that people are hiding, and I think that's exactly on the mark.In these stories, Taylor writes about keeping secrets -- often for decades --and about the damage that they inevitably cause. His setting is (with two exceptions) the wealthy neighborhoods of Nashville, Tenn., prior to WW II. The characters are often adults who tell tales of life-changing events from their youth, events which stood out vividly against a background of propriety, wealth, and ease. And though the adults have gone on to bigger and better things, the agonies and awkwardness of those situations has seared them for life. Yet, in most of the instances, the actual events are mild, and even the outcomes are mild. A grandfather catches a grandson drinking and carousing with girls; the grandfather doesn't even tell the parents. A husband and wife drink too much, and they eventually move away from Nashville to hide their shame. One teenage boy loses a first love to his best friend, though the first boy admits he'd been afraid to declare or act on his love anyway. A few of the stories are more macabre, including a dramatic suicide in one and the discovery of a journal that indicates that another one was likely a suicide, too. But regardless of the outcome, the stories flow smoothly and pull you into the milieu. However, that is also a weakness, as we move further and further away from understanding a time of segregation, aged Civil War veterans, Negro servants, finishing schools and debutants, and class distinctions in which boys could troll for sex with some girls but would expect other girls to save themselves for marriage (and the girls would save themselves). This world in which every luxury seemed available -- even to people who remark in several stories that they are cutting back due to the Depression -- undercuts the severity of the events. What could be so bad about losing a girl or getting caught in an embarrassing situation when just across town, people were living in shacks and banned from schools? I recognize that Peter Taylor is writing about what he knows, not what he imagines was across town. And I recognize that he is a master at doing it. But I kept wishing that one of his characters would step out of his or her world and really reach a new understanding. But then again, few of us do that in real life, so why should Taylor be obligated to do it in his stories?
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