This second volume of the Library of America edition of Peter Taylor’s complete short fiction presents thirty stories written from 1960, when the author was forty-three, to 1992, when he was seventy-five. They include many of his most ambitious works, including “Dean of Men,” a monologue delivered by a middle-aged father to his long-haired son about the limits of idealism. “In the Miro District,” which concerns the contentious relationship of an ascetic grandfather and his libertine grandson, is a parable of the Old South’s enduring persistence in the New. “The Old Forest,” one of Taylor’s most celebrated works, is the story of a young man who jeopardizes his impending marriage by consorting with a girl deemed beneath his station, precipitating, in Taylor’s words, “a struggle of women for power among themselves.” Here too are all five of Taylor’s remarkable prose poems, stories in free verse that demonstrate that great fiction is, at its highest pitch, a line-by-line, image-by-image high-wire act. Two of the stories, “A Cheerful Disposition” and “The Megalopolitans,” are collected here for the first time.

Complete Stories 1960-1992: Dean of Men In the Miro District The Old Forest Other Stories PDF

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