In some Southern regional writing, there is a tendency to bypass the ordinary processes of individual development in favor of an aura of mystery, as if the shape of human action was determined primarily by occult forces in the atmosphere, climate or topography of a place….

"The Captain's Son," one of the more ambitious stories in Peter Taylor's ["In the Miro District"], is a fair example of this Southern syndrome….

When we learn that [Tolliver] has not yet consummated his marriage, that he has turned his wife into an alcoholic, we don't know what to think. There is no way to think about Tolliver, who is no more than a manikin in the window of his milieu. We have been told that Tolliver's parents drink too much and make scenes that humiliate him. Are we to assume, then, that he is neurotic or impotent, afraid to make a...