Taylor, “Taylor Made Tales” (reviewed by Mike Austin, 8/12/1995)

Review
Original Review Date: 8/12/1995

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Title: Taylor Made Tales
Author: Samuel Woolley Taylor
Publisher: Aspen Books
Genre: Nonfiction, Autobiography
Year Published: 1994
Number of Pages: 214
Binding: Paper
ISBN: 13: 978-1562362164
ISBN: 10: 156236216X
Status: Out of Print

Reviewed by Mike Austin for the Association for Mormon Letters
Review date: 8/12/1995

In both its form and its content Samuel Taylor’s new book Taylor-Made Tales calls to mind two of the most important works of literature ever created from the Mormon experience: John D. Fitzgerald’s Papa Married a Mormon (1955) and Virginia Sorensen’s Where Nothing Is Long Ago (1963). All three books come from well-known writers who grew up in Utah and went on to considerable success in the national literary marketplace. All three are organized as autobiographical reminiscences of a childhood in Utah. And all three deal with the often-neglected “middle period” of Mormon history — the time when the pioneer experience was quickly becoming a memory of the past while the prospect of an influential international Church was nothing more than a dream for the future. Yet beyond these surface similarities Taylor’s book has little in common with these earlier works. And though it is very enjoyable in places Taylor-Made Tales will probably not become — as the other two already are — an enduring classic of Mormon literature.

Unlike the other two books there are very few of the elements of fiction in Taylor-Made Tales. The episodes of Where Nothing Is Long Ago are all elegantly crafted as short stories while the narrative of Papa Married a Mormon is plotted and developed much like a novel. Taylor-Made Tales on the other hand is more carefully and self-consciously autobiographical. However read as straight autobiography the book is somewhat disappointing since its coverage of Taylor’s life is extremely spotty. Some incidents are emphasized in great detail while others — particularly those relating to his career as an author — are glossed over or altogether omitted.

The seventeen short chapters that make up the book can be roughly divided into three principal sections. The first section consisting of the first nine chapters contains a series of stories from Sam’s early life growing up as one of the 36 children of John W. Taylor the son of a prophet an apostle in the Church and the highest-ranking Church official to be excommunicated for continuing to perform plural marriages after the manifesto. Though Taylor deals with his father directly in only the first two chapters (John Taylor died when Sam was only eight years old) the elder Taylor remains a potent figure throughout the book. In the first place John W. Taylor’s take-charge attitude and picaresque spirituality exercised a tremendous influence on his son’s life and in the second place his excommunication provided Sam with a literary mission in life: clearing his family name and rehabilitating the practice of polygamy in books like Family Kingdom (1951) The Kingdom or Nothing (1976) and The John Taylor Papers (1984).

After reminiscing about his early childhood experiences with his father and about his life at his mother’s boarding house Taylor describes the time in his life when he made the decision to become a writer. in the four chapters that follow he recounts his experience working in the Hotel Roberts during the depression his lengthy courtship and marriage and most interestingly his work for the BYU student paper and his occasional success publishing stories in pulp magazines. The last two chapters in this section tell of his work with the Army Public Relations Office during World War II. In his war stories Taylor writes as comicly as irreverantly and as poignantly as he does in his best fiction and reminds us why he is considered one of Mormondom’s funniest and most important men of letters.

But while Taylor’s war stories are as cogent and enjoyable as anything he has ever written they are the last things in Taylor-Made Tales that can be so described. After telling the dramatic tale of a plane crash that nearly took his life Taylor loses both the focus and the sense of purpose that he had in the first two-thirds of the book. The remaining four chapters — which should cover the part of his life of most interest to students of Mormon literature — consists mainly of scattered autobiographical details punctuated by Taylor’s familiar complaints about all of the injustices inflicted on the Taylor clan in the name of Reed Smoot’s Senate seat. Taylor’s descriptions of Walt Disney and of his own work on The Absent-Minded Professor are interesting but the overall treatment of his remarkable literary career is extremely unsatisfying. As much as fans and students of Mormon literature would have benefited from a solid methodical treatment of Sam Taylor’s life in letters this book presents nothing of the sort. While the editors at Aspen Books should be credited for their attempts to revive interest in Sam Taylor’s career — both with this book and with their reissue of Heaven Knows Why(1948) they missed an excellent opportunity to make Taylor-Made Tales a useful resource. Had they but included a brief bibliography of Taylor’s more important books and stories — or at the very least included publication information on the occasional citation that Taylor gives himself — the book would have been an invaluable reference for students and scholars and a useful introduction to new readers interested in finding more of Taylor’s work.

None of this should be taken to mean that Taylor-Made Tales is not enjoyable or worthwhile. It is in fact both. But what it is not is a good introduction to Taylor’s considerable literary work. And it does not compare favorably with Taylor’s better works of fiction and non-fiction. Almost everything that Taylor-Made Tales does well is done better in another book. Family Kingdom is a better biography of the Taylor family; Heaven Knows Why is a better slice of Mormon life; and Rocky Mountain Empire (1978) is a better description of Mormonism’s middle period. Those who pick up Taylor-Made Tales expecting a useful introduction to the life’s work of one of Mormonism’s most important authors will undoubtedly be disappointed. However those who turn to it after reading Taylor’s best work will certainly be glad to find that their old friend is still alive kicking and spinning yarns with his 90th birthday only two years away.

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