[It] is time which is perhaps the most important force in Mr. Taylor's short stories, time and the past, a past which is like a ghost definitely uncomfortable in the clamour of post-Rooseveltian America, a past which for both good and ill lingers on in relatively few pockets of American life….

[For example, in the early stories of A Long Fourth and Other Stories, Mr. Taylor is] concerned with family relationships in respectable, urban, middle or upper middle class Tennessee. All of them depict the stresses and strains which are constantly undermining or threatening to undermine these family relationships. All of them are concerned with the confrontation of past and present and the deterioration of old standards of conduct. (p. 2)

[Confrontations] between past and present and their effects on family relations have continued to furnish subject and theme for most of Peter Taylor's best stories….

Most of Mr...