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- [00:00]
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- [01:07]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
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- [01:36]
Deborah Treisman
This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker Magazine. I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker. Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month we're going to hear Two Pilgrims by Peter Taylor, which appeared in the New Yorker in September of 1963.
- [01:56]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Then I heard Mr. Louder and my uncle open the back doors of the car. While the car was still moving, they leaped out onto the ground. They both were big men, more than six feet tall and with sizable stomachs that began just below the breastbone. But they sprinted off in the direction of the house like two boys.
- [02:15]
Deborah Treisman
The story was chosen by Daniel Moyniddin, who is the author of the story collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, a winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the novel this Is where the Serpent Lives, which came out earlier this year. Hi Danielle.
- [02:29]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Hello.
- [02:29]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
How are you?
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Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
I'm good.
- [02:32]
Deborah Treisman
So you mentioned to me when we
- [02:33]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
were discussing this podcast that your mother knew Peter Taylor and interviewed him for the Paris Review.
- [02:39]
Deborah Treisman
Can you tell me a bit about that connection?
- [02:42]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, I'm not quite sure exactly how she came to know him first, but I know many years ago, back in the 60s, she'd done the interview of Catherine Ann Porter. And so I think that's how she got plugged in with Paris Review folks. And then I think she met him somewhere around and about in New York. She'd moved back to New York and was living there and had met him and thought that this would be an interesting conversation. She admired his stories a great deal. And I think that there was something about the stories that reminded her of Pakistan, where she'd spent all her time and about which she was writing. She was also a writer and was concerned with some of the same themes, I think, that he is.
- [03:20]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
And does that interest transfer to you who you have also spent a lot of time on the farm in Pakistan?
- [03:26]
Quince Brand Promoter
Yeah.
- [03:27]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
No, it's all very familiar, isn't it? The way in which he comes at his stories is familiar to anybody who's been in a place like Pakistan where some of the same sorts of hierarchies and class issues and race issues, even of a certain kind, you know, we're dealing with the same material to some extent.
- [03:48]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah. How did you first start reading Peter Taylor's work?
- [03:52]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
I think I would have read it because she turned me onto it probably quite early. My mother used to sort of feed me things that she thought would be useful to me or interesting to me. And so quite early on, probably when I was going off to college around in my early 20s, she would give me armfuls of books, and that was probably among them. I don't remember exactly which book she gave me, but I do remember at some point he glided into my horizons.
- [04:17]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
What do you remember what you thought of him on first reading?
- [04:20]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, I remember being initially, as I think a lot of readers will find, he seems a little sort of dry almost. It's a little bit very mannered. And then as one gets further into it, you know, the richness and also the sort of the bloodiness of it becomes more and more evident. At first, it might seem not very, you know, very, very controlled. And I think that underneath the control, it's so often with. There's a lot of much more violent and emotional movement than is initially evident.
- [04:53]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
And this story, Two Pilgrims, is one of more than 20 stories that Peter
- [04:58]
Deborah Treisman
Taylor published in the New Yorker between 1948 and 1981.
- [05:03]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Why did you choose this one to
- [05:05]
Deborah Treisman
read and talk about today?
- [05:07]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
I know you had initially wanted one
- [05:09]
Deborah Treisman
that was much longer, which we couldn't do, but what made this the second choice?
- [05:13]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Yeah.
- [05:14]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
This story, I think, has a lot of the. I've been.
- [05:17]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
My book has just come out, so
- [05:18]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
I've been dealing with themes of class and of manners in a way that I think that is very well represented in this story. These two men who are sort of very controlled in their storytelling and it's very sort of practiced, and then they encounter this wild scene of this fire and the ways in which they both do and don't confront the violence of the scene they come upon. This felt very familiar to me as somebody who writes about Pakistan and has just published a book with some of the same sort of conflicts in it between the way these men present themselves and the experience that's described in the story. There's a tension between the two which I found really interesting.
- [06:02]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
It is funny to hear Pakistan repeatedly compared to the American south because it's not a natural parallel one makes.
- [06:10]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, that's right. But yet I think there is so much. I mean, I think partly, as I said before, I think the stories of the American south have a lot of similarity or commonalities with the stories that come out of Pakistan. I think particularly the ones that are having to do with farming and feudal structures, because the south is sort of feudal in a quite different way externally. And then there's structural similarities which are quite striking and which make the work similar if you describe these places.
- [06:35]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah.
- [06:36]
Deborah Treisman
Just to introduce the story a little,
- [06:39]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
it was published in 1963. I'm guessing that the narrator of the story, who's a 17 year old, was probably 17, around the same time that Peter Taylor was 17. So in the 1930s.
- [06:54]
Deborah Treisman
Do you think that's when it's set?
- [06:55]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Doesn't speak to you?
- [06:56]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, I was thinking about this and I had settled on sort of the mid-30s. Exactly. It's before the war and sort of after the Depression, I would say.
- [07:04]
Deborah Treisman
Well, we'll talk some more after the story. And now here's Daniel Muinoddin reading Two Pilgrims by Peter Taylor.
- [07:14]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Two Pilgrims.
- [07:17]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
We were on our way from Memphis to a small town in northern Alabama where my uncle, who was a cotton broker, had a lawsuit that he hoped could be settled out of court. Mr. Lowder, my uncle's old friend and lawyer, was traveling with him. I had just turned 17 and I had been engaged to come along in the capacity of chauffeur. I sat alone in the front seat of the car. The two men didn't discuss the lawsuit along the way, as I would have
- [07:45]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
expected them to do.
- [07:47]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
I don't know, to this day exactly what was involved, or even whether or not Mr. Louder managed to settle the matter. On that trip, from the time we left the outskirts of Memphis, the two men talked instead about how good the bird hunting used to be there in our section of the country. During the two hours while we were riding through the big cotton counties of west Tennessee, they talked of almost nothing but bird dogs and field trials, interrupting themselves only when we passed through some little town or settlement to speak of the fine people they knew who had once lived there. We went through Collierville, La Grange, Grand Junction, Salisbury. At La Grange, my uncle pointed out a house with a neoclassic portico and said he had once had a breakfast there that lasted three hours at Salisbury. Mr. Lauder commented that it somehow did his soul good to see the name spelled that way. There was even some color still, dull pinks and yellows mixed with reddish browns, and under a bright, limitless sky, the trees and the broad fields of grayish cotton stalks, looking almost lavender in places, gave a kind of faded tapestry effect. After we crossed the Tennessee river at Savannah, the country changed, and it was as if the new kind of country we had got into depressed the two men. But it may have been only the weather, because the weather changed, too. After we crossed the river, the sky became overcast and everything seemed rather closed in. Soon there was intermittent rain of a light, misty sort. I kept switching my windshield wiper on and off until presently my uncle asked me in a querulous tone why I didn't just let the thing run for 30 or 40 miles. The two men had little to say to each other. Finally, as we were passing through a place called Waynesboro, a hard looking hill town with a cement block jailhouse dominating the public square. My uncle said that this town was where General Winfield Scott had made one of his halts on the notorious Trail of Tears when he was rounding up the Cherokees to move them west in 1838. The two men spoke of what a cruel thing that had been, but they agreed that one must not judge the persons responsible too harshly, that one must judge them by the light of their times and remember what the early settlers had suffered at the hands of the Indians. Not very long after we had left Waynesboro, Mr. Lauder remarked that we were approaching the old Natchez Trace section and that the original settlers there had been a mighty rough lot of people. My uncle added that from the very earliest days the whole area had been infested with outlaws and robbers, and that even now it was said to be a pretty tough section they sounded as though they were off to a good start. I thought the subject might last them at least until lunchtime. But just as this thought occurred to me, they were interrupted. We came over the brow of one of the low lying hills in that country of scrub oaks and pine woods, and there before us, in a clearing down in the hollow ahead, was a house with smoke issuing from one window toward the rear and with little gray geysers rising at a half dozen points on the black shingled roof. It was an unpainted one story house set close to the ground and with two big stone end chimneys. All across the front was a kind of lean to porch. There was an old log barn beyond the house. Despite my uncle's criticism, I'd switched off the windshield wiper a mile or so up the road, and then I had had to switch it on again just as we came over the hill. Even with the wiper going, visibility was not very good, and my first thought was that only the misty rain and the air was keeping the roof of that house from blazing up. Mr. Louder and my uncle were so engrossed in their talk that I think it was my switching the wiper on again that first attracted their attention. But instantly upon seeing the smoke, my uncle said, turn in down there, but be careful how you slow down, Mr. Lowder warned this blacktop slick. Already he and my uncle were perched on the edge of the back seat, and one of them had put a hand on my shoulder as if to steady me. The little house was in such a clearing as must have been familiar to travelers in pioneer days. There were stumps everywhere, even in the barn lot and among the cabbages in the garden. I suppose I particularly noticed the stumps because a good number were themselves smoldering and sending up occasional wisps of smoke. Apparently the farmer had been trying to rid himself of the stumps in the old fashioned way. There was no connection between these fires and the one at the house, but the infernal effect of the whole scene was inescapable. One felt that the entire area within the dark ring of pine woods might at any moment burst into flame. I turned the car off the macadam pavement and we bumped along some 200ft, following wagon ruts that led more toward the barn than toward the house. The wide barn door stood open, and I could see the figure of a man inside herding a couple of animals through a door at the other end where the barn lot was. Then I heard Mr. Louder and my uncle open the back doors of the car While the car was still moving, they leaped out onto the ground. They both were big men, more than six feet tall and with sizable stomachs that began just below the breastbone, but they sprinted off in the direction of the house like two boys. As they ran, I saw them hurriedly putting on their black gloves. Next they began stripping off their top coats. By the time I'd stopped the car and got out, they had pulled their coats over their heads, and I realized then that each had horsed his hat onto the back seat before leaping from the car. Looking like a couple of hooded night riders. They were now mounting the shallow porch steps. It was just as they gained the porch that I saw the woman appear from around the far side of the house. At the sight of the hooded and be gloved men on her porch, the porch of her burning house, the woman threw one hand to her forehead and gave such an alarmed and alarming cry that I felt something turn over inside me. Even the two intruders halted for an instant on the porch and looked at her. I thought at first glance that she was an old woman, she was so stooped. Then something told me, I think it was the plaintive sounds she was making, that she was more young than old. After her first outcry, she continued a kind of girlish wailing, which it seemed to me expressed a good deal more than mere emotional shock. The noises she made seemed to say that this all couldn't be happening to her, not hooded bandits added to a house burning. It wasn't right. Life couldn't be so hard, couldn't be as evil as this. It was more than she should be asked to bear. Anybody inside, miss? My uncle called out to the girl. She began shaking her head frantically. Well, we'll fetch out whatever we can, he called, glancing back at me. I was trying to make a hood of my own topcoat and preparing to join them. My uncle shouted, don't you come inside. Stay with that girl and calm her down. With that, he followed Mr. Louder through the doorway and into the house. Presently they were hurling bedclothes and homemade looking stools and chairs through the side windows. Then one or the other of them would come dashing out across the porch and into the yard, deposit on the ground a big pitcher and a washbasin, or a blurry old mirror with a carved wooden frame, and then dash back inside again. Now and then, when one of them brought something out, he would pause for just the briefest moment, not to rest, but to examine the rescued object before he put it down. It was comical to see the interest they took in the old things they brought out of that burning house. When I came up to where the woman was standing, she seemed to have recovered completely from her first fright. She looked at me a little shamefacedly, I thought. Her deep socketed eyes were almost freakishly large, and I noticed at once that they were of two different colors. One was a mottled brown, the other a gray green. When finally she spoke, she turned her eyes away and toward the house. Who are you all? She asked. We were just passing by, I said. She looked at me and then turned away again. I felt she was skeptical, that she suspected we had been sent by someone. Each time she directed her eyes at me, I read deceit or guilt or suspicion in them. Where are you coming from? She asked in an idle tone, craning her neck to see what some object was that had come flying out the window. She seemed abundantly calm now. Without answering her question, I yanked my coat over my head and ran off toward the house. My uncle met me on the porch steps. He handed me a dresser drawer he was carrying, not failing to give the contents a quick inventory. Then he gave me a rather heavy punch on the chest. You stay out there and keep that girl calm, he said. You hear what I say? She's apt to go to pieces any minute. The woman was taking a livelier interest in matters now. I set the drawer on the stump, and when I looked up she peered over me to see which drawer it was I had brought and what extra odds and ends my uncle might have swept into it. On top lay a rusty fire poker and a couple of small picture frames. With the glass so smashed up you couldn't make out the pictures underneath, there was a jumble of old cloth scraps and paper, dress patterns and packages of garden seeds. Seeing all this, the woman opened her mouth and smiled vacantly, perhaps a little contemptuously. She was so close to me that I became aware of the sweetness of her breath. I could not have imagined that her breath would be sweet, though the skin on her forehead and on her high cheekbones was clear and very fair. There were ugly pimples on her chin and at the corners of her mouth. Her dark hair was wet from the drizzle of rain and was pushed behind her ears and hung in clumps over the collar of her soiled denim jacket. She was breathing heavily through her parted lips. Presently, when our eyes met, I thought I detected a certain momentary gleefulness in her expression, but her glance darted back toward the house at once. The two men had pressed on beyond the front rooms and into the ell of the house. Now the woman took a couple of steps in order to look through one of the front windows and perhaps catch a glimpse of them back there. We were coming from Memphis, I said. We're from Memphis. But she seemed no longer interested in that subject. It's no use what they're doing, she said. Unless they like it. It's all right, I said, still hoping to distract her. We're on our way to a place in Alabama. They your bosses? She asked. She couldn't take her eyes off the window. No, it's my uncle and his lawyer. Well, they're right active, she commented. But there ain't nothing in there worth their bustle and bother yet. Some folks likes to take chances. It's just the worst lot of junk in there. We aired this place for my grandma when she passed on last spring. The junk was all hernandez. Just then Mr. Louder and my uncle came running from the house. Each of them was carrying a coal oil lamp, his right hand supporting the base of the lamp and his left clamped protectively on the fragile chimney. I almost burst out laughing. It's gotten too hot in there, Mr. Lowder said. We'll have to stop. When they had set down their lamps, they began examining each other's coats, making sure they weren't on fire. Next they tossed their coats on the bare ground and set about pulling some of the rescued articles farther from the house. I went forward to help, and the woman followed. She didn't follow to help, however. Apparently she was only curious to see which of her possessions these men had deemed worth saving. She looked at everything she came to with almost a disappointed expression. Then Mr. Louder picked up an enameled object, and I noticed that as he inspected it, a deep frown appeared on his brow. He held the thing up from my uncle to see, and I imagined for a moment that he was trying to draw laughter from all of us. It was a child's chamber pot, not much larger than a beer mug. Did you bring this out? Mr. Lowder asked my uncle. My uncle nodded, and still bending over, he studied the pot for a second, showing that he had not really identified it before.
- [20:18]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Then he looked at the woman.
- [20:21]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Where's your child, ma'? Am? He asked in a quiet voice. The woman gaped at him as though she didn't understand what he was talking about. She shifted her eyes to the tiny pot that Mr. Lauder was still holding aloft. Now her mouth dropped wide open, and at the same time her lips drew back in such a way that her bad Teeth were exposed. For the first time, it was impossible not to think of a death's head. At that instant, the whole surface of the shingled roof on the side of the house where we were standing burst into flames. A few minutes before this, the rain had ceased altogether, and now it was as though someone had suddenly doused the roof with kerosene. My back was to the house, but I heard a loud swoosh, and I spun around in that direction. Then I heard the woman cry out, and I spun back again. Mr. Louder set the chamber pot on the ground and began moving rather cautiously toward her. My uncle stood motionless, watching her as though she were an animal that might bolt. As Mr. Lowder came toward her, she took a step backward, and then she wailed, my baby. Oh, Lord, my baby. He's in Thar. Mr. Lowder seized her by the wrist and simultaneously gave us a quick glance over his shoulder. My uncle snatched up a ragged homespun blanket from the ground and threw it over his head. I seized a patchwork quilt that had been underneath the blanket, and this time I followed him inside the house. Even in the two front rooms, it was like a blast furnace, and I felt I might faint. The smoke was so dense that you couldn't see anything an arm's length away. But my uncle had been in those two front rooms, and he knew there was no baby there. With me at his heels, he ran right on through and into the first room in the living room, where there wasn't so much smoke, only raw flames eating away at the wall toward the rear. The window lights had burst from the heat in there, and there was a hole in the ceiling so that you could look right up through the flames to the sky. But my eyes were smarting so that I couldn't really see anything in the room, and I was coughing so hard that I couldn't stand up straight. My uncle was coughing, too, but he could still manage to look about. He made two complete turns around the room, and. And then he headed us on into the kitchen. There wasn't anything recognizable to me in the kitchen except the black range. One of the two window frames fell in as we ran through. The next instant, after we had leaped across the burning floorboards and had jumped off the back stoop of the house, the rafters and the whole roof above the kitchen came down. There must have been a tremendous crash, though I hardly heard it. Even before my uncle and I could shed our smoldering blankets, we saw the man coming toward us from the barn. You're afire, he called out to us, but we had already dropped the blankets before I understood what he was saying. He was jogging along toward us. One of his legs was shorter than the other and he couldn't move very fast. Under one arm he was carrying a little toe headed child of not more than two years. He held it exactly as though it might be a sack of cornmeal and he was bringing up from the barn. Do you have another baby? My uncle shouted at him. No, nary other, the man replied. My uncle looked at me. He was coughing still, but at the same time he was smiling and shaking his head. You all right? He asked me. He gave my clothes a quick once over and I did the same for him. We had somehow got through the house without any damage even to our shoes or our trouser legs. By the time the man came up to the house, my uncle had dashed off to tell the woman her baby was safe. I tried to explain to the man about the mistake his wife had made. Your wife thought your baby was in the house, I said. He was a stocky black haired man wearing overalls and a long sleeved undershirt. She what? He said, looking at me darkly. He glanced up briefly at the flames, which were now leaping 20 or 30ft above the framework of the kitchen. Then he set out again in the same jogging pace toward the front of the house. I caught a glimpse of the baby's intense blue eyes gazing up at the smoke and flames. She thought the baby was inside the house, I said, following the man at a trot. Like hell she did, he said under his breath, but loud enough for me to hear. As we rounded the corner of the house, I heard my uncle call out to the woman that her baby was safe. She was seated on a stump with her face hidden in her hands. My uncle and Mr. Louder once again began pulling rescued objects further away from the house. As the man passed him, Mr. Lowder looked up and said, did you get all the stock out? Yep, said the man. I guess you're lucky there's no wind, Mr. Lowder said, and my uncle said, it must have started in the kitchen and spread through the attic. You didn't have any water drawn? The man stopped for a second and looked at my uncle.
- [25:20]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
He shifted the baby from one hip to the other.
- [25:23]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
The pump's broke, he said. It was about wore out and she broke it for good this morning. Isn't that the way it goes? My uncle said sympathetically, shaking his head. Then, still carrying the baby, the man shuffled on toward his wife. The woman kept her face hidden in her hands. But I think she heard him coming. Neither of them seemed to have any awareness that their house and most of their possessions were at that moment going up in flames. I was watching the man when he got to her. He still had the baby under his arm. I saw him draw back his free hand and saw the hand come down in a resounding slap on the back of her head. It knocked her right off the stump. She hit the ground in a sitting position, and still she didn't look up at her husband. You aim to get them fellows burnt alive? He thundered. Mr. Louder and my uncle must have been watching too, because we all three ran forward at the same moment. Lay off that, Mr. Louder bellowed. Just lay off. Now she know this here young unworthy no house, the man said, twisting the baby to his shoulder. I reckon she'd like as not lose her head. That's how come I carried him with me. And I told her plain as daylight I was going to. Now you look here, mister, my uncle said. The girl was just scared. She didn't know what she was saying. Probably she couldn't remember in her fright, Mr. Louder said. The man stood staring down at his wife. She's feared of her own shadow, and that's how come I carried him to the barn. Well, you're not going to beat her with us here, Mr. Louder said firmly. She was scared out of her wits, that's all. Who sent you all out here? The man asked my uncle, turning his back on Mr. Louder. Ain't they gon send no fire engine? It was as he spoke the word that we heard the fire truck coming. The whine of the siren must have first reached us from a point three or four miles distant, because at least five minutes elapsed before the fire truck and the two carloads of volunteers arrived. It turned out that somebody else had stopped by before we did and had hurried on to the next town to give the alarm. I thought it strange that the woman hadn't told us earlier that they were expecting help from town, but of course there was little about the woman's behavior that didn't seem passing strange to me. As soon as we heard the siren, she began pushing herself up from the ground without a glance at any of the rest of us. She went directly to her husband and snatched the baby from him. The baby's little face was dirty and there were wide streaks on it where some while earlier there must have been a flow of tears, but his eyes were dry now and wore a glazed look. He seemed to stare up at the flaming house with total indifference. Almost as soon as he was in his mother's arms, he placed his chin on the shoulder of her denim jacket and quietly closed his eyes. He seemed to have fallen asleep at once. With her baby in her arms, the woman strode away into the adjoining field, among the smoking stumps and toward the edge of the pine woods. There she stopped at the edge of the woods, and there she remained standing with her back turned toward the house and toward us and toward all the activity that ensued after the fire truck and the other cars arrived. She was still standing there with the baby on her shoulder when we left the scene. We stayed on for only a few minutes after the local fire brigade arrived. Mr. Lowder and my uncle could see that their work here was done, and they were mindful of the pressing business that they hoped to transact in Alabama that afternoon. We lingered just long enough to see most of the articles they had rescued from the flames, thoroughly soaked with water. The sight must have been disheartening to them, but they didn't speak of it. The inexpert firemen couldn't control the pressure from their tank, and whenever there came a great spurt of water, they lost their grip on the hose. They seemed bound to spray everything but the burning house. We withdrew a little way in the direction of our car and joined a small group of spectators who would now come on the scene. I didn't tell my uncle or Mr. Lowder what I was thinking during the time that we stood there with the local people who had gathered. I could still see the woman down in the field, and I wondered if my uncle or Mr. Lowder were not going to tell some local person how
- [29:37]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
suspicious her behavior had been, and her
- [29:40]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
husband's too, for that matter. Surely there was some mystery, I said to myself, some question that ought to be answered or asked, but. But no questions of any kind seemed to arise in the minds of my two companions. It was as if such a fire were an everyday occurrence in their lives, and as if they lived always among such queer people as that afflicted poor white farmer and his simple wife. Once we had got back into the car and were on our way again, I was baffled by the quiet good humor and even serenity of those two men I was traveling with. The moment they had resettled themselves on the back seat of the car, after giving their topcoats a few final brushings, and after placing their wide, brimmed fedoras firmly on their heads again, they began chatting together with the greatest ease and nonchalance I could not see their faces. I had to keep my eyes on the road. But I listened, and presently I heard my uncle launch upon a reminiscence. I did the damnedest thing once, he said. It was when I was a boy of just eight or nine. The family have kiddied me about it all my life. One morning, after I had been up to mischief of some kind, Father took me into the kitchen and gave me a switching on my legs with a little chute he had broken off the privet hedge. When I came outside again I was still yowling, and the other children who were playing there in the house lot commenced guying me about it all at once I burst out at them, you'd cry too if he beat you with a shovel handle. I hadn't aimed to say it, I just said it. My brothers kid me about it to this day. Yes, said Mr. Louder. It's like that. The things a person will say. He liked my uncle's story immensely, he said. It sounded so true. As he spoke, I could hear one of them striking a match. It wasn't long before I caught the first whiff of cigar smoke. Then another match was struck. They were both smoking now. Pretty soon their conversation moved on to other random topics. Within the next half hour we got out of that hill country along the Tennessee river and entered the rich and beautiful section to the east of it, near the fine old towns of Pulaski and Fayetteville. I could not help remarking on the change to my uncle. Seems good to have finally got out of that godforsaken looking stretch back there, I said over my shoulder. How do you mean God forsaken? My uncle replied. I recognized a testiness in his tone, and his reply had come so quickly that I felt he had been waiting for me to say exactly what I had said. It's just ugly, that's all, I mumbled, hoping that would be the end of it. But Mr. Louder joined in the attack, using my uncle's tone. I wouldn't say one kind of country
- [32:24]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
is any better looking than another.
- [32:26]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Not really. And then my uncle again. To someone your age, it just depends on what kind of country, if any, you happen to be used to. Maybe so, said I, not wanting to say more but unable to stop myself. Maybe so, but I could live for a hundred years in that scrubby looking country without ever getting used to it. No doubt the rolling pasture land on both sides of the highway, now still green in November and looking especially green after recent rain, caused me to put more feeling into my statement than I might otherwise have done, and it may also have had its effect on the two men in the back seat. There was a brief pause, and then my uncle fired away again. Every countryside has its own kind of beauty. It's up to you to learn to see it, that's all. Then, Mr. Louder. And if you don't see it, it's just your loss because it's there. Besides, a lot you know about that country, my uncle went on, and in what seemed to me an even more captious spirit than before. And how could you? How could you judge, flying along the highway at 50 miles an hour, flapping that damned wiper off and on? More than that, said Mr. Louder with renewed energy, you would have to have seen that country 30 years ago to understand why it looks the way it does now. That was when they cut out the last of the old timber. I've heard it said that when the first white men came through, that section in it had the prettiest stand of timber on the continent. Suddenly I blurted out, but what's that got to do with it? I was so irritated that I could feel the blood rising in my cheeks, and I knew that the back of my neck was already crimson. It's how the country looks now I'm talking about. Anyway, I'm only here as your driver. I don't have to like the scenery, do I? Both men broke into laughter. It was a kind of laughter that expressed both apology and relief. My uncle bent forward, thumped me on the shoulder with his knuckle, and said, don't be so touchy, boy. Almost at once they resumed their earlier dialogue. One of them lowered a window a little way to let out some of the smoke, but the aroma of their cigars continued to fill the car, and they spoke in the same slow cadences as before and in the same tranquil tone. We reached the town in Alabama toward the middle of the afternoon, and we spent the night in an old clapboard hotel on the courthouse square. After dinner that night, the two men sat in the lobby and talked to other men who were staying there. In the hotel. I found myself a place near the stove and sat there with my feet on the fender, sometimes dozing off. But even when I was half asleep I was still listening to see whether in their talk either Mr. Lauder or my uncle would make any reference to our adventure that morning. Neither did. Instead, as the evening wore on and they got separated and were sitting with two different groups of men, I heard them both repeating the very stories they had told in the car before we crossed the Tennessee river, stories about bird hunting and field trials, and about my uncle's three hour breakfast in the old house with the neoclassic portico.
- [35:44]
Deborah Treisman
That was Daniel Moyniddin reading Two Pilgrims by Peter Taylor. The story appeared in the New Yorker in September of 1963 and was included in his story collection, Ms. Leonora When Last Seen and 15 other stories the following year. It appears also in Taylor's The Complete Stories, published in 2017.
- [36:04]
Alan or Sean (Prancing Pony Podcast Hosts)
I'm Alan. And I'm Sean, and together we host the Prancing Pony podcast. Every week. I explore Middle Earth with Sean or with other co hosts lately with in depth analysis and planning, plenty of nerd humor from the Hobbit to the Lord of the Rings and more. It's a great way for first timers to experience J.R.R. tolkien's captivating world, and for longtime fans, it's a deep dive into their favorite stories. So if you're ready to take the next step into the most beloved world in fantasy literature and become a part of a vibrant, active community of listeners, then look for the Prancing Pony podcast wherever you listen.
- [36:35]
Deborah Treisman
So, Daniel, this story starts very much in Media Race.
- [36:39]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
It starts with we were on our
- [36:41]
Deborah Treisman
way from Memphis to a small town
- [36:42]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
in northern Alabama where my uncle, who
- [36:45]
Deborah Treisman
was a cotton broker, had a lawsuit
- [36:46]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
he hoped could be settled out of court. There's so much packed into that first sentence and not a lot of time for us to absorb it because we're already on our way and it's very immediate. And then we're almost immediately thrown off because there's no talk of the lawsuit on the way. The narrator doesn't know what it was about, doesn't know what happened in Alabama. He, he doesn't know if the suit was settled. So suddenly we're adrift again and we realize the story's going to be about something else entirely. So that first paragraph is kind of disorienting. Why do you think Taylor chose to start that way?
- [37:21]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
It's such a strange story, isn't it, Deborah? I mean, as you say, you sort of fall right into it. And then there's immediately there's, you know, the story keeps starting several times until finally we encounter the burning house. But I mean, the point he's, I mean, clearly he's embedding the, the violence of the fire into the sort of sedateness and the manneredness of the lives
- [37:42]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
of these two men.
- [37:43]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
And part of, I think is what's going on is he's sort of, he's setting Us up for the fire that's going to come with this sort of slow movement forward and sort of aimlessness that I think puts us off our guard in a kind of useful way.
- [37:56]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah. And so we have this drive which does feel sort of like it's going on a long time. And they're repeating the same stories about, you know, bird hunting and so on again and again as they pass through this landscape.
- [38:11]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
And, Deborah, they're passing through this landscape
- [38:13]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
which is full of stories. You know, they talk about the Trail of Tears and the Natchez Trace and, you know, this is a very inscribed landscape. And you sort of feel that when we do finally get the violence of the fire, you feel that for them, those other stories, the stories that they've imposed on the landscape and on the place are much more important than anything that could happen to them in the present. Which I think is exactly one of the points that Taylor is making. I mean, it's about storytelling. Partly the story is.
- [38:42]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah, yeah.
- [38:43]
Deborah Treisman
And the story that they're telling on
- [38:44]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
the way there is very much about history. Right. They're not exactly seeing the landscape. They're saying, these people used to live here. Or I, you know, in the past, had a very long breakfast in this, you know, neoclassic house. And this town was a stop on the Trail of Tears. And then they're coming to terms with. Well, that was a bad thing. It was a tragic thing. But Scott was trying to do the decent thing. Winfield Scott. So, in a way, I think their observations, they don't seem to be actually seeing.
- [39:20]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Yeah.
- [39:20]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
And also, there's a kind of gentleness and a refusal to judge about the ways in which they move through the landscape, which I found really interesting and which, of course, will become important later when we get to the story of the fire. But even, you know, the Trail of
- [39:36]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Tears and the violence done to the
- [39:37]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Cherokee and the, you know, moving the
- [39:39]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Cherokee off the land and all that,
- [39:41]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
which was, you know, obviously a crime, a great crime. And yet even there, these men insist upon giving the general who was in charge of moving the Cherokee off the land, giving, you know, giving them due and saying, you know, for a man of the time, it would not have appeared as it was does to us now. So there's a kind of generosity and also refusal to judge, which I think would be really interesting as we go forward and then come to the central event of the story where they, again, I think, refuse to draw any inferences from what they see. In a really interesting way.
- [40:14]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah, they're really determined to sort of see the best in everything.
- [40:18]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Yeah.
- [40:19]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
And I found that really interesting. I mean, it's so. It's done so again and so many times. There's so many points at which Taylor underlines that. And I found it really interesting that that should be a point that he wanted to make so emphatically.
- [40:32]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah.
- [40:33]
Deborah Treisman
Why do you think that is?
- [40:35]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Well, clearly it's a very strangely shaped story.
- [40:37]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Right.
- [40:37]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
And he's setting us up for the story within the story. And part of what's going to trouble us throughout. We never find out what actually happened at the fire.
- [40:48]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Did the wife set the fire?
- [40:50]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
The husband?
- [40:50]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Of course.
- [40:50]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
It made sense, which it might not, to a modern reader, that he was off in the barn freeing the cattle because the most important thing they own,
- [41:00]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
the most valuable thing these people own, would be the cattle.
- [41:03]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
So, of course, the man's first concern would be to rush off to the barn and get them out.
- [41:07]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
But still, it's a little strange that
- [41:09]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
here he is off far away, the house on fire. He's released the cattle. He couldn't have that many of them, so he's released the cattle. And he hasn't sort of come rushing back to save the. Nor has his wife really making any effort to rescue any of her stuff. And so there's all this curious drama and puzzle at the heart of this.
- [41:27]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
What's happened here?
- [41:28]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
You know, the water pump has been broken, and that sort of is mentioned by the husband. And so we have to ask, you
- [41:33]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
know, did the wife set the fire?
- [41:35]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Is this something that's going on between them? And yet, you know, we don't find out. They just move on. The story moves on. And we never really get to any sort of conclusion about what actually happened at the fire, other than the fact that what we saw, which is that the two men save some of the furniture, which then gets destroyed by the firemen.
- [41:54]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah. I mean, I suppose that's a touch of realism in the story, because, you know, this narrator's not going to find out. There's no way he would find out. And so Taylor sort of avoids giving us an answer that's not inherent in the story.
- [42:11]
Deborah Treisman
And also, I suppose if the narrator
- [42:13]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
found out, you know, he's telling this retroactively, it would be a different story if he knew the answer to those questions.
- [42:22]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, but it's an odd choice to give us so little information about what. I mean, you know, of course, when you hear a story, you always want to know what happened, you know, and it's very strange to, as a Story writer to tell a story in which we never find out. It's an odd little question mark that's at the center of this story. But. And that, you know, of course, is intentional. And I think that tells. What he's talking about is about different ways in which these people, these people who are so concerned, the uncle and Mr. Lauder who are so concerned with stories, and yet this story doesn't concern them. Which is such a fascinating observation and also a reflection upon what. I mean, it says something very profound about Southern storytelling and also about Southern culture.
- [43:11]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yes. And about these men and what story
- [43:14]
Deborah Treisman
they want to walk away with.
- [43:16]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
And it seems the story that's important to them is simply the story of their own heroism.
- [43:22]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, but they don't even make a point of that, you see.
- [43:25]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
I mean, they don't tell it that night. That's true.
- [43:28]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Not only do they not tell it, they don't even tell it. When they've gotten back into the car and are driving off, they light their cigars and immediately turn to their old stories. Dogs in field trials, for them. It's an important part of their attitude about what they just did, which was very heroic. As soon as they see the fire, they immediately go. They tear their clothes off and go flying into the fire and try to save whatever they can. And then when they find that they think there may be a child in there, they show real profound heroism. And yet they're completely uninterested in it. And I think that they're not just
- [44:00]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
pretending to be modest. This is truly who they are.
- [44:03]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
They do not question the fact that, of course, when they saw a fire, they rushed in and tried to save what they could. And yet they don't think that's an important story.
- [44:13]
Deborah Treisman
Is it that or is it that
- [44:14]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
it's not a satisfying story? Because it was all sort of ambiguous, Right. You know, the man whose house they're trying to save hits his wife and knocks her over. The wife is kind of crazy and lies to them that the baby's in the house and sends them into danger. I mean, it doesn't add up to the story they want it to be.
- [44:36]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Well, their stories are all sort of rich in several senses. You know, field trials and the house where they ate the three hour breakfast. These are sort of easy, gentlemanly stories that you could sort of laugh about them over a whiskey as they do that night. And, you know, nobody gets harmed. It's the best of all possible worlds in which these things happen. It's definitely not the best of all possible Worlds in which this poor, you know, half crazed woman has her house burned down while her husband and her husband then hits her over the head. And clearly it's not the first time he's done that. In a way, it's a world that they don't want to engage with. They're willing to engage with it in
- [45:11]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
a very dramatic way.
- [45:12]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
And when they affect this rescue or an attempted rescue, but they're not willing to engage with it in any larger sense, they don't bring this into their world. They live in a much more ordered and peaceful and gentlemanly world in which these things sort of don't happen.
- [45:28]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Mm. And it's. What's interesting is that just the strangeness of this whole event is fascinating to the nephew, to the narrator, right. He's completely bewildered and curious and so on.
- [45:45]
Deborah Treisman
And he.
- [45:45]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
So he has none of what the uncle and the, you know, aptly named Mr. Louder have. He doesn't have that sense of sort of decorum and keeping up appearances and falling back on the sort of manners of a gentleman. He really wants to know what's going on.
- [46:06]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
He's modern, you see. I mean, he's modern in a way that they're not. And that, again, I think, is one of the questions that Taylor is querying here, that clearly there have been sort of changes in the culture. Partly this is about Southern culture and about the way Southern culture is changing, has changed. The boy is much more sort of a Northerner in the way.
- [46:23]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
He's sort of. He wants to know all the dirty
- [46:24]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
details about what really happened. And, you know, he notices that the woman, the wife, is pretty until he notices that she's not, and so on. The uncle and Mr. Lauder would never notice a thing like that. Yeah. So clearly it's part of what we're
- [46:37]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
being shown here is the way in
- [46:39]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
which the culture is changing and has changed. That these are people from different generations who are radically different.
- [46:44]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Coming to the notion of class, you know, they don't think twice. The uncle and Mr. Louder, right? They pull in, they're already putting their gloves on and pulling their coats over their heads. They jump out of a moving car to dash into this house. Obviously, as the narrator says, this is a poor white couple, not from the same world as these two men. And they don't, you know, there's no sense of that in the way that they behave.
- [47:18]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Yeah.
- [47:18]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
What's interesting, Deborah, here, is that there's
- [47:22]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
almost a kind of rudeness. And these are men who are supremely
- [47:24]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
not rude, and yet there's a kind of rudeness in the fact that they completely do not engage with either the woman or the husband. They treat them as if they're only part of a problem which they had to solve. And the problem.
- [47:36]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
They come there, they see a problem
- [47:38]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
and they solve it to the extent they can, and then they go away and they don't think about it again. And. And there's a kind of contempt in that, which I found surprising that it would seem to me, really good manners would require them to engage with the people who are, you know, lost their house. You know, there's a tragedy there. And yet their Southern good manners, in a way, almost required them not to engage. And I found that very interesting. An aspect of their manners that I didn't quite understand.
- [48:03]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah.
- [48:04]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
There's a lack of sympathy or empathy there that is quite striking, though, in a way.
- [48:10]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
I think they're also staying on the side of being respectful. Right. Yeah. You know, that they take care of this woman. You know, they're telling the nephew to take care of her. They're really even quite mild when the man hits the wife. They're just like, no, no, no, more of that.
- [48:27]
Deborah Treisman
We're not doing that. My sense is they're trying not to be nosy.
- [48:32]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Mm.
- [48:33]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yet they are so nosy. I mean, the interest with which they look at all the stuff they pull out of the house.
- [48:38]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
I know. I know. All that junk, which, you know, belonged to her grandmother anyway. And she's got no interest in it. She's sort of curious as to what was in those drawers, which she may not have known.
- [48:50]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Yeah.
- [48:51]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
And then what do you think is going on with the woman?
- [48:54]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Well, I couldn't figure. I mean, I've read the story a number of times and I mean, clearly. I mean, I don't think we're supposed to know, and I don't think we've been given enough information. Now, that was clearly intentional, but just
- [49:05]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
from the way in which the wife
- [49:06]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
and the husband engage with each other, clearly there's some kind of trouble. And he certainly thinks that the fact that the water pump was broken so that the fire couldn't be put out, he seems to find some sort of significance in that. Either just it was, you know, classic bad luck of this woman or something more. But certainly the narrator doesn't seem to think so. He seems to think there was more to it.
- [49:27]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah. And it's possible that if she did set the fire, then it's possible that her sort of crying and baring her teeth and yelling about her Baby is a performance. Right. In a way of deflecting any suspicion that she said it.
- [49:45]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
I love the way that Mr. Lowder and the uncle, you know, explain away
- [49:49]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
the whole matter with the child because,
- [49:51]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
you know, that's very strange to put two strangers lives at risk by telling them there's a baby in the house. And yet he manages to explain it away quite perfectly easily with that story of the having been beaten and having lied about it and saying that he was beaten with a shovel instead of with just a little twig. And so that's supposed to cover that up for themselves. That's their answer to the question of
- [50:13]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
why the hell did this woman do this? But that's a reach. Right.
- [50:18]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
They're trying quite hard to cover up.
- [50:20]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah. There's no direct parallel there. And really I feel that they just want it to be a story in which they did the right thing for some poor people. They don't want it complicated.
- [50:32]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Yeah.
- [50:33]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
And yet Mr. Lauder is a lawyer and he's clearly used to examining problems like this in a more thorough way than what they do. It's a very strange response that they have, and not very human either. I mean, people are so curious and in a way you have to get civilized, that curiosity would have to be brushed out by your manners in order to. Your manners would be boring with your curiosity. But it's quite lurid what's going on here. And yet they're not interested. Well, if they're interested, we never see any indication of it.
- [51:06]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah. I feel like they just want to. They just want a straightforward, clean narrative in which they're heroes racing into the burning house and saving what they can, and they just don't want that complication.
- [51:19]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Of course we did the right thing. You know, that's what they would like to. I mean, the story that they would tell, which they wouldn't even tell is we saw the fire, we did what we could, and we left.
- [51:27]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah.
- [51:28]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
And they would certainly downplay their own heroism. And yet it's a dramatically heroic thing to do to, you know, go running into a fire like that. I mean, very few people would do that.
- [51:38]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yes. There's an interesting sentence in that moment where the nephew looking at them says, they look like a couple of hooded Knight Riders.
- [51:47]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, I love that.
- [51:48]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Which is just the opposite of what they're intending to be. You know, the Knight Riders were. Were terrorists and in fact kidnapped Peter Taylor's grandfather. I believe he managed to escape, but the person who was kidnapped with him was hanged. So there's a Family history there. So throwing that illusion at these two men who were engaged in an act of heroism is a very strange moment.
- [52:18]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Yeah.
- [52:19]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Well, that was his own little footnote for his own private relaxation.
- [52:23]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yes.
- [52:24]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Writers like to do this, to put in little pieces that nobody will know about, except when we study it afterward. Yeah. It's such a strange story. And in terms of the shape of it, it's so strange. I mean, it's not really got a. It doesn't have the classic development of belling towards a crescendo and then dropping off. It sort of trundles along and then
- [52:45]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
has this blob in the middle and
- [52:46]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
then trundles along again. It's a very odd shape. And the first time I read it, I found it strangely unsatisfying. It was only as I got deeper into it, it's very hidden, this story. One doesn't initially see how much is going on. It's put so laconically, partly. But as you get deeper into it, the richness of it emerges. It's a very rewarding story, I think.
- [53:11]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah. And, you know, we're not the only people with questions. Right. The narrator has. He's saying, surely there was some mystery, some questions that ought to be answered or asked that Mr. Louder and the uncle, as we've said, are not asking or answering. And the nephew, you know, the nephew is the one telling this story. Right. Within it, The uncle and Mr. Louder tell stories, but the nephew is telling this story. So it's something that stays with him over time, where he never gets answers, but perhaps through telling, telling it perhaps gives him some answers. I mean, as you were saying before, this is also a story about telling stories.
- [53:51]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
I'd be very curious to know where this came from for Taylor, how he came to write this story. I suspect what happened is that he was driving along one day and saw a burning house with a wife. You know, tenant, poor white farmers. Like this. I bet the grain of the story is something like that.
- [54:09]
Deborah Treisman
It's possible.
- [54:10]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
You know, I saw that. You know, the typescript, the original typescript of the story is in an archive, and there's a handwritten note on it in Peter Taylor's handwriting that says, trip to Alabama with Uncle.
- [54:25]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Aha. Okay.
- [54:27]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
So that doesn't necessarily imply that this happened or that's, you know, drawn from his life, but it could be.
- [54:34]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, I bet. I bet that makes sense then. So he was 17, but then he probably put together two things. One would be this trip that he took with his uncle in which this particular Thing probably didn't happen because then he would have been writing a story about the trip with the uncle. And then he needed. Then it wasn't deep enough. And then you would. Into it put the second story, I suppose. I don't know. We'll never know, probably. Unless the notes are very complete. It's fun to speculate on how the devil. He chose this strange, strange shape for this story. Because it's an odd one.
- [55:07]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah. Yeah. What do you think happens in the second part of the drive when the narrator doesn't like the landsc. Says it's ugly, and they get really angry with him?
- [55:19]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Yeah.
- [55:19]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
What do you think's going on there?
- [55:21]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Well, I think that there's all these points at which you think that the story. That he's gotten the story deep. As deep as he's gonna get it.
- [55:27]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
He. Taylor.
- [55:29]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
And then he manages to go deeper yet. And I find that's really wonderfully done. And I think that's sort of the final point at which he does that. They don't want the boy to make judgments about who they're. The farmer is who the wife is. I think that they're almost like refusing judgment. That, you know, there's no such thing
- [55:47]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
as better or worse.
- [55:48]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
And it's all part of. I think they would think of it as being part of their own being. Gentlemen. That we don't think we're better than anybody else. You know, there's no such thing as absolutes. And because we do come from a. You know, from a wealthier and more cultured place. Therefore, we have to be even more careful to not make judgments about places and people and situations that are, you know, ones in which people less fortunate than us are moving about. There's a kind of a. There's, again, I think it's about manners.
- [56:18]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
Right.
- [56:19]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
We're the kind of people who don't draw these judgments.
- [56:22]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
We don't.
- [56:22]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
There's nothing we don't like. We never say a country is ugly. There's no such thing as ugly country. There's only misunderstanding of country. These are very sort of aristocratic, almost judgments. Right. Or an insistence upon not allowing judgment
- [56:38]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
and allowing these people, even as strange as they are, to be endowed with some form of dignity.
- [56:44]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, exactly. It's very generous. Right. I mean, there is a real generosity there.
- [56:49]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah. I suppose it's hard to say if it's the kind of generosity where these men are saying to themselves, we're all equal. It doesn't matter if some people have money and others don't or if it's more what you were saying earlier about there still being a kind of feudal system in the south, and in a sense they're the lords who are watching over the peasants and making sure that their houses don't burn down.
- [57:18]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
I guess if these were people of their own class and people in town, say, their own friends, and they encountered this kind of strange situation, they'd be much more likely to analyze it. I should think in a way, their refusal to analyze exactly what happened is proof that they are looking at it from a certain height, looking down upon it, just by the refusal to judge and to analyze.
- [57:46]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah. I was reading a review of the collection that the story appeared in from 1964 in the New York Review of Books, and the. The critic talked specifically about this story and the end of it at that moment where, you know, they, they say to the, to the narrator, every countryside has its own kind of beauty. It's up to you to see it, that's all. And the critic said, well, what the men pretend to see is what used to be there years ago.
- [58:13]
Deborah Treisman
The prettiest stand of timber on the continent.
- [58:16]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
And the boy is left to learn to see what is not there and to learn man's business of saving the non existent inhabitants of worthless houses. So in this person's interpretation, I suppose the story's about how life is just a charade and the heroism is a sham because there was nothing worth saving. That seems maybe a more cynical. I don't buy that than you or I have. Yeah.
- [58:43]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
And that's not very much like Taylor. I mean, whatever he is, he's never cynical.
- [58:47]
Deborah Treisman
Right.
- [58:48]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
He's always generous and gives everybody. I mean, what's wonderful about him, among other things, is that he gives each person his due, which of course is essential to writing. Well, I think.
- [59:02]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah, let's talk about the title, Two Pilgrims. So obviously I think the two pilgrims are the uncle and Mr. Lauder. But why are they called pilgrims? They're not really on a very sacred journey.
- [59:17]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, I mean, I found that I thought about it a lot because I couldn't figure it out. I suppose they're sort of.
- [59:24]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
They're there as observers in a certain way.
- [59:27]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Right.
- [59:27]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
I mean, they're there and they.
- [59:30]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
You come to a place and then you, you know, they find something there. I don't know. I wasn't able to come to terms with exactly why, what he meant by that.
- [59:41]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
What do you think?
- [59:42]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah, I'm with you. I don't really know, but pilgrims are usually on a sort of holy journey. Right. And perhaps it's this idea that they're sort of saintly by running into this burning house and doing good deeds. Perhaps, you know, it's intended slightly ironically.
- [60:03]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, I wondered about that. I wondered how much irony was intended. I mean, I guess if you were being fanciful, you could say there's something, you know, the family, you know, the
- [60:12]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
child and the mother and the father.
- [60:13]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
There's something this sort of the holy family. But they're not very holy.
- [60:17]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Certainly they are in a barn, Right?
- [60:22]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, exactly. No, it's an interesting title and. Yeah. One that certainly had me thinking. And, you know, they are on this journey, but they're on a journey to go to sort of go to Memphis to settle a. I love that they're trying to have it mediated so they don't have to be a conflict. So even the whole purpose of the journey is to avoid conflict, is to
- [60:46]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
avoid going to court.
- [60:47]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, avoid going to court, exactly. So there are pilgrims in that sense, too, that they're on their way towards that outcome. But, yeah, I found it. I wasn't quite sure for it to work.
- [60:59]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
I think they would have to have some revelation on the way after this, when in fact they have the opposite.
- [61:07]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, that's what's so wonderful.
- [61:08]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Refuse the revelation.
- [61:10]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
But maybe that is the revelation, Right. That nothing can shake these men out of their. Not complacency, but out of their absolutely rigid adherence to the manners that they were born to.
- [61:21]
Deborah Treisman
Right.
- [61:21]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
To the code.
- [61:23]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
To the code. I guess that's right. There's so much code in this. Right. These are the kinds of guys, A, who, when they see a burning house, they run into it and try to save everything and everybody, and B, they don't talk about it again. That's all part of the code.
- [61:36]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yes. And it's quite funny that when the fire brigade actually gets there, they're completely incompetent. The people who actually should know how to put out a fire and rescue people are. It's just spraying everywhere but the house.
- [61:51]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Well, that's why you need fancy pants like these two guys to come and do the real work.
- [61:58]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
So do you learn anything from this story as a writer yourself?
- [62:02]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, I mean. I mean, it's such a one off that it's, you know, you wouldn't want to draw too much from it in that way. But I mean, yeah, certainly there's a. It's wonderful how much he's willing to leave unsaid and unexplained. There's just.
- [62:17]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
There's a lot of question marks in
- [62:19]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
there and that it left such an odd taste in my mouth that I'm not sure I would emulated. You wouldn't want to write more than
- [62:26]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
one story like this, I think.
- [62:29]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
This isn't a template by any stretch, but yeah. And just in terms of leaving things unsaid and leaving things unexplained and letting the fact that things are unexplained and unsaid, letting that be part of the meaning of the story, that's certainly very useful as something to think about when writing.
- [62:48]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
It's definitely a not a trick, but it's a tactic that makes people feel implicated in the story because we're struggling to make sense of it. We're struggling to feel what the narrator's feeling or to ask ourselves the same questions. So we're very deep in this story. There's no way not to be.
- [63:11]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah. And because it's not tied up, it sticks with us.
- [63:16]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
So that's very useful.
- [63:18]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
As you say, a technique, not a trick. But yeah, the story did stay with me again and again for a long time because I kept trying to understand it.
- [63:28]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
You'll never get to make it make
- [63:30]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
perfect sense as you can with so many stories where at the end you sort of say, okay, that's what happened here. We just don't know.
- [63:36]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah, we're like the narrator still thinking about it years later.
- [63:40]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah.
- [63:41]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Well, thank you so much, Daniel.
- [63:43]
Daniel Moyniddin (Author/Guest)
Yeah, thank you, Deborah. That was really nice.
- [63:48]
Deborah Treisman
Peter Taylor, who died in 1994, published 11 books of fiction in his lifetime, including the story collections Ms. Leonora, When Last Seen and 15 other stories, and the Old Forest and Other Stories and the novel A Summons to Memphis, which was awarded the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Complete Stories of Of Peter Taylor was published by Library of America in 2017. Daniel Moinuddin's collection in other Rooms, Other Wonders, which has been translated into 16 languages, won the Story Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His novel this Is where the Serpent Lives, was published earlier this year. You can Download more than 220Previous episodes of the New Yorker fiction podcast, including episodes in which Marissa Silver reads stories by Peter Taylor and Daniel Moinudin, or subscribe to the podcast for free and Apple podcasts On the Writer's Voice podcast, you can hear short stories from the magazine read by their authors. You can find the Writer's Voice and other New Yorker podcasts on your podcast app. Tell us what you thought of this program on our Facebook page or rate and review us in Apple Podcasts. This episode of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast was produced by John Lamay. I'm Deborah Treisman. Thanks for listening.
- [65:13]
David Remnick
Hi, I'm David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker. At this year's Academy Awards, Timothee Chalamet and Teyana Taylor aren't the only major nominees. The New Yorker will be there too, with two nominated short films, which you can watch@newyorker.com video two people exchanging saliva was executive produced by Julianne Moore and Isabel Huppert, and it's set in a dystopian Paris where kissing is illegal. Our animated short film Retirement Plan follows a man as he dreams about all the things he's going to do when he's done working. You can enjoy both of those films and our full library of acclaimed short films at newyorker. Com Video.
- [66:02]
Daniel Moyniddin (Narrator)
From prx.