. Spinning .

Wow.  Just caught the drift of Taylor’s genius at showing character.  In using the first person pov of the father describing his relationship with his son, there is an unreliability about the narrator not necessarily that he is hiding something within his words–that’s there too–but that his perception of the his son is way off from what we are experiencing.

The final pages here, the same scenario of Hugh desperately hoping for rain so that his reading will be broadcast instead of the game.  The sun disappears and a crash of thunder brings the anticipation to a resolution:

Hugh galloped across the hall into the living room and commenced disconnecting the batteries from the charger and hooking them up to the radio.  The rest of us followed, just as if there were no other room in the house we could have gone to. 

Why this wording? Why do they think they need to pretend? They should have been leaping in glee for Hugh!

Through the loudspeaker the voice of Hugh Robert Perkins began with some introductory remarks…

Here the father refers to his son as Hugh Robert Perkins; this directly relates to Hugh’s often referring to his parents by their formal names and we wonder why the father has chosen this way of putting it.

Hugh never once looked around from the radio(…) The storm and static got worse every second and he didn’t even try to improve the reception.

Hugh was listening closely, as he expected his family would be doing.

Toward the very end, I saw his mother raise her eyebrows and tighten her mouth the way she does when she’s about to cry, and I shook my head vigorously at her, forbidding it.  I knew what she was feeling well enough; we were all feeling it: Poor boy had endured uncertainty, had for days been pinning his hopes on the chance of rain, and now had to hear himself drowned out by the static on our old radio.  I thought it might be more than flesh and blood could bear.

Not only does the father assume that everyone is feeling sorry for the boy, and that Hugh is embarrassed and upset–about which he turns out to be wrong–he dissuades his wife from sympathizing with what even he considers a tough thing to go through.

When Hugh jumps up in excitement at the end of the reading, the father realizes that Hugh somehow heard it all and was proud, not embarrassed. He also feels the growing gap between them.  Hugh sees it too, and as always, he puts himself down likely because to do so keeps his father from doing it.

We see the separation as Hugh grants himself the freedom from the burden of his family’s expectations.  I am thinking that what Hugh was searching for in the mirrors was not how handsome or whatever he was, but what was wrong with him that didn’t measure up. 

The final paragraph is the most telling of the story. The narrator didn’t get it and he never will. The irony of the last statement and the narrator’s assessment of the nature of the episode and relationships is priceless.

This just makes you want to slap him hard:

After raining all morning, the skies seemed to be clearing.  It was mostly bright while we sat there, with only an occasional dark interval.  During those dark intervals, Hugh ate feverishly; otherwise he only picked at his food.  I’m afraid that with the rst of us the reverse was true.  (p. 113)

How telling of the narrator, Hugh’s father, that even as he and the rest of the family are aware of Hugh’s wish that the rain at least stall the start of the game so that the radio station will play his talk, he still hopes for the game to begin on time.

Lucy may, their black servant has stepped behind Hugh as the sun shines through the window on his back in a protective gesture, understanding that he is hurting.  She dismisses the chirp of a bird as a sign of a promise of rain and tells him so quietly.  But the father has overheard.

Hugh may or may not have heard the redbird.  But he paid no more attention to Lucy May’s encouraging words than he had to the encouragement and applause of Miss Arrowood. (p. 113)

The father takes a swipe at his son here, failing to understand that Hugh may not care what these other people think; his life has been spent to this moment trying to make his family recognize him for something. 

I’m wondering though how far off his father’s estimation of his son has been; if in fact despite his apologetic recital of the situation and of his son’s escapades, he does not instead blame himself for not giving him the benefit of education the others received.  If the fact that his own business left him without as much to provide for Hugh as the older children, is what he is really ashamed for and is transferring the differences onto Hugh rather than admit his own failings.

There are similarities between Peter Taylor’s stories in the first person pov and Raymond Carver’s Cathedral. What has become prominent for me is the way he handles the narrator’s evaluation of another character’s actions.  There is an underlying theme that is quite contrary to the words the narrator speaks.

In Promise of Rain, the narrator describes a frustration with his youngest son who in his opinion is very different than his siblings in ways that embarrass the father.  Hugh is goodlooking and has a habit of studying himself in mirrors.  He is also less ambitious than the others–whose ambition often has merely been marrying well.  He bounces from one thing to another in trying to find himself, and actiing, above schoolwork, may be one thing that suits him.  In the pursuit of improving himself, he has been practicing elocution and the father describes how Hugh is anxiously watching the weather and recharging old radio batteries in the hope that a local game will be called because of rain and the station will instead play a ten minute speech by Hugh as a local service.  The father, on the other hand, is looking forward to hearing the game.

I knew why Hugh kept looking out the windows, and soon I was looking out windows, too.  The rain came down pretty steady all morning and only began to let up about noon.  I found I was pitting my hopes against his.  I was, at least, until I saw how awfully worked up the boy was.  Than I tried my best to hope with him.  But I don’t think I ever before had such mixed feelings about so small a thing as whether or not a ball game would be rained out.  (p. 112)

What the narrator is saying that as a father he switched from his own hopes to hear the game to ‘try’ his best to hope for the opposite for his son’s sake.  What’s particularly telling is his statement that he"had such mixed feelings about so small a thing as" whether the game would be rained out!  He doesn’t say a big thing like his son’s talk on the radio, but refers to the ball game instead.

There are many instances where the narrator says something that can be taken sarcastically, or condescendingly, and puts himself in a position of trying his best for the boy but continually being disappointed.  Hugh is bright and remains cheerful, and often we get the idea that his father is misreading him badly.  But what comes through even stronger, to me, is that the narrator is not telling us how he really feels.

Just finished Peter Taylor’s story The Old Forest and I understand that the theme is one of how people treat one another, and how change comes slowly. 

There is a friendly tone to Taylor’s first person narrator and in the reminiscence of the event of the automobile accident which brought the comparison of lifestyles and in particular, of woman’s place in society, he is telling us what he has learned from it.  There is a wistfulness in his voice, as if he wishes he could have understood it all better and more, that society had understood the strength of women and brought it to its fruition rather than sidestepping it into an almost cunningness rather than recognize its value.  He understands that even as she had explained it all back then, his fiancee–now his wife–still has not broken free from the role she was given at birth. 

Nice writing–though as I said, a bit dated in its overinvolvement of language to tell a simple story.  The underlying them of equality of gender was strong throughout and almost anticlimactic once the answers to the mysteries are given.

Forty pages into this particular story and I’ve learned this: A young man has been caught with having had a girl other than his fiancee in his car a week before his wedding, as they’ve had an automobile accident.  The girl took off through the woods immediately following the collision and is missing now for several days.

The time of the telling is a past reflection; the narrator has gone ahead and married his fiancee despite his worries at the time that the incident may have changed her mind.  We’re not sure however, that the girl who was with him has survived the winter storm in the woods.  Everyone is secretive. 

But the real story here appears to be the difference in the two women as to social status, and in particular, how the men of the story view them.  There is (to my mind) too much emphasis placed on this point, almost a "methinks (s)he doth protest too much" attitude in protecting the reputation of this missing girl, and the focus on who is marriage material and who is not; even as all are almost condescendingly protective.

The conflict started with the accident; the tension continues with the possibility of his broken engagement–although he sees his fiancee as quite mature and understanding, and the question of why the girl has taken off, and of course, if she is safe.  But the majority of words have been spent on the narrator’s explanation of how women were considered back in the 40s and their social standing not only in the South, but in the area of their male counterparts as well as the women of other groupings.

A bit much; I think it might have been more briefly told.