THE OLD FOREST

As much as one may admire the stories of Peter Taylor (In the Miro District, The Widows of Thornton), it's somewhat dispiriting to see the constant recycling of his old stories into new collections--and grimly amusing to see unknowledgeable reviewers taken in by publisher misrepresentations: these ""fifteen glorious new"" tales include only two which have not previously appeared in Taylor collections. The substantial new offering is the title story, a bewitching tale of manners and morals--a New Yorker story which also appeared in the O. Henry Award anthology for 1980 (edited by William Abrahams). The others include reprints from A Long Fourth and Other Stories (1948), The Widows of Thornton (1954), and Happy Families Are All Alike (1959)--all of which are now out of print. So, while this is a falsely packaged, minor addition to the Taylor shelf, it's certainly a welcome sampling for those unfamiliar with this well-established figure in the Southern Renaissance of fiction-writing.