When writing about something that happened years ago, should you stick to the story, or should you interject speculations about what could have happened? Should you also comment on your speculations? People who write stories about things that happened to them regularly consider these questions. Pulitzer Prize recipient Peter Taylor’s narrator frequently interrupts his story with commentary. In fact, “The Old Forest” reveals more about the narrator than anything else. Tension builds when we discover that the narrator is unreliable, and is in fact, oblivious to things we see for ourselves. Suddenly, we have to reexamine all of our assumptions.
Taylor, Peter. The Old Forest and Other Stories. Dial Press, 1985, p. 38.