. Spinning .

It’s been quite an experience reading this anthology.  I’ve learned so much in watching Peter Taylor skillfully focus and bring out the innermost personality of his characters while weaving a setting that grounds the players together in an American South that is still reacting to the supposed liberation brought by the Civil War.  Yet there is still a war of sorts going on as society attempts to adjust to not only racial but gender bias that is just beneath the surface.

I’ve already written much about Taylor’s use of narrator, trustworthy or unreliable though he/she may be, and his intense work in allowing the reader to form opinions about the narrator and what is going on.  The stories aren’t usually featuring a major event that changes lives, but rather a normal situation that brings out the deeper feelings of the characters.

I’m ordering Taylor’s A Summons to Memphis, to see how he handles a longer narrative. I’m also planning on reading more of Taylor’s short stories and see what else I can hope to learn.   

This story perhaps more than any other illustrates Taylor’s method of characterization through character observation.  There is, as a matter of fact, very much "overhearing" thus giving us what may (if we assume narrator reliability, and that’s been a major factor with Taylor’s stories–to the good) be fact and how the narrator reacts to the event.

The story here is rather simple, though I think I’ve picked up something else on Taylor in that the protagonist is not always clearly selected at the beginning of the story.  Noticing the title, the Scoutmaster, we find fairly early on that Uncle Jake is the scoutmaster referenced.  Yet in the story, while he plays a major character, Virginia Ann appears to be the focus.  What I’m coming to believe is that Virginia is merely the "event" that brings everyone else’s characterizations more into definition as they react to her actions.

Uncle Jake then, steps up to plate as protagonist.  He is the mediator between the generation of the parents and their children.  We get his own background via conversations between Mother and Father, but we see into his soul via the child (nephew) narrator. 

Taylor does some truly amazing stuff with the simplest of story.  But it is the simple story of human nature with which we all can best relate.

The majority of Taylor’s stories in this anthology are set in the old South of Tennessee and therefore there is the constant of social status as well as the racial relations.  Taylor’s amazing insight coupled with his skill at exposing his characters brings a tremendously powerful impact on what is usually a fairly simple story line of interaction.

For example, in Porte Cochere, we are in the study of an elderly man who listens in on his grown children who are visiting for his birthday.  Here Taylor uses a standard he’s established of the protagonist revealing a personal opinion, one less than of high regard, of his offspring and we are into a battle of changing values brought with each generation.  What Taylor does give the reader in Porte Cochere however, is the reason for the man’s rancor.  In this case, his having been beaten by his father as a boy and his resolve to never be a father.  What happens here is more reinforcement of the character, as well as giving us a bit of background of which his own children are unaware, and which explains much of their opinion of him as well.

Some good lessons in character development to be learned here.

One of Taylor’s stories, Rain in The Heart, is particularly subtle and I realize that I need to go back and reread it in order to fully enjoy and get out of it what Taylor has so aptly put in.

I’ve been trying to put my finger on how Peter Taylor manages the deep character revelation he does while in such a subtle way, particularly by using the narrator voice to establish something often quite different than what the narrator says, or sometimes just in the way the narrator relates the story.

It’s been difficult to post examples because for one thing, Taylor builds a character very gradually and then further reading reinforces the point he is making.  Therefore, taking something out of context is sort of useless without dragging a good percentage of the story into the statement.  Going back is next to impossible to find the place where something is hinted at because again, the subtlety is easily missed.  But here’s one that kind of represents what I’m seeing.  This is from The Scoutmaster:

I used to hear Uncle Jake asking Father very gently why he was so "hard on" Virginia Ann and asking if he didn’t know that all "modern girls" were like that.  And I would sit and wonder why he was so hard on her.  (p. 267)

Now here’s a narrator who I’m guessing is a sibling of Virginia Ann who has spent the first few paragraphs of story telling the reader that a) Virginia Ann often uses trendy sentences that are in fashion at the time and b) Father and Mother are unable to "abide" this overuse.

But what we’re getting is so much more: Uncle Jake’s opinon, as well as his careful handling of the topic with his brother about his niece, and something even more important about the narrator, that he sides with Uncle Jake.  Taylor doesn’t say that, but it is implied by the straightforward "And I would sit and wonder, etc."   

Two more things: Everything is being "overheard," and Uncle Jake’s direct dialogue lays out the scenario more than Father confronting Virginia Ann–that means something right there about the parent/child relationship.  And this, that Father (and Mother) repeat phrases themselves, i.e., the word "abide" which is more obvious in the next paragraph:

Yet Mother’s groans were as loud as Father’s when they heard Virginia Ann greeting her date at the front door with "Well, well, well, if it isn’t my country cousin!"  I would turn my eyes to her and Father as soon as I heard Virginia Ann say this, for I knew it was one of the things they could not abide. 

Aunt Grace lives there too; a sister of Mother’s who has divorced her husband.  Grace also sticks up for Virginia Ann, but it is more obvious than her accusations might have us believe, that Mother and Father are proudest of their daughter and perhaps make these negative comments for the very purpose of being proven wrong and hearing praise as they themselves may be either too humble to offer, or too greedy for compliments on their skills as parents.

It’s all twisted in there, and Taylor makes us listen to his characters very carefully to glean the real story.