cover image PETER TAYLOR: A Writer's Life

PETER TAYLOR: A Writer's Life

Hubert Horton McAlexander, . . Louisiana State Univ., $34.95 (360pp) ISBN 978-0-8071-2706-3

For many critics, Peter Taylor (1917–1994) is a quintessential artisan of the short story; small Taylor masterpieces like "Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time" and "Miss Leonora When Last Seen" can be found in any number of classic short-story anthologies. Nevertheless, he achieved limited public fame—particularly in comparison to the many literary eminences (Randall Jarrell, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop) he called his friends. As set forth in this meticulous account by McAlexander (professor of English at the University of Georgia and editor of a book of conversations with and critical essays on Taylor), Taylor's life and career were remarkable mainly because they were not. While all around him literary geniuses were being felled by nervous breakdowns, alcoholism and other literary demons, Taylor enjoyed a long and happy marriage, two children and steady work. It could be called a "writer's life," with its epiphanies and dry spells, awards (including a Pulitzer late in life) and rejections. But it was also a very ordinary life—cocktail parties, mortgages, rheumatism and the rest. Maybe for this reason, his biography makes for somewhat tepid reading, devoid of the secrets and revelations literary fans crave. At its worst, it reads like an endless list of social engagements in which our hero neither disgraced nor distinguished himself. But at its best, it captures some of the excitement of a pivotal era in American letters, when literary notables were like a small family and the New Criticism was still new. Were Taylor himself more renowned, this biography might succeed, as many do, on the strangeness of celebrity itself. As it is, this modest but faithful portrait of a good craftsman at work will have done its job well if it leads a few more readers to Taylor's work. Illus. not seen by PW. (Sept.)