The Duration

When Richard Taylor's novel, The Duration, was returned unopened by Charles Scribner & Sons in 1964, apparently Taylor didn't have the heart to ever send it out again and it sat in its original mailing wrapper for 46 years until his stepson found it. The Duration clearly was based at least in some part on Taylor's own experience working for a newspaper during World War II. The novel follows the amorous adventures of a reporter for the San Francisco Observer, "John Edwards," dealing with life in the City by the Bay, rationing, the manpower shortage, and women whose husbands and boyfriends are away in uniform. Taylor is a talented wordsmith who uses his prodigious vocabulary and arcane knowledge of history and literature to paint a very detailed picture what life was like for civilians in wartime, especially single men in a city replete with unpaired young ladies.

About the Author :
Richard Taylor was a talented, educated and erudite writer. Unfortunately, not a very tenacious one. He died without seeing his novel, The Duration, published. When former Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Taylor sent his novel to Charles Scribner & Sons in 1964 and it was returned unopened, he gave up. It sat in a box, still in the brown paper mailing wrapper, until his stepson discovered it in 2009. After a long career in newspapers, including a stint as editor of the East County Californian, Taylor had died in 1979. Richard Taylor grew up in San Francisco in the 20s and 30s. Although he was a young man during WWII, he did not serve in the military. He was a gifted student who graduated from Stanford. While a student there he was part of a longitudinal study of students with extremely high I.Q.s that followed their careers over a 30-year period. He was a journalist, writer, and an editor during his entire professional life. The last publications he edited were The Valley News in El Cajon, California and the Labor Leader in San Diego. He was also a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and had articles published in San Diego Magazine as well as a history of the Lakeside-Santee area for the County of San Diego. As a history buff, Richard could have been a brilliant college history professor but thought college teaching was too political. He could talk for hours about battles that most of the population had never heard of. The Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, just 13 days before the Battle of Hastings, was one of his favorites. He had read every word he could find on it and would quote things reportedly said by Harold of Norway the day prior to the battle as if they had been said the day before he stated his own eloquent recollections. Walter G. Meyer is the co- or ghost-writer of six nonfiction books including "The Respectful Leader", an Amazon-best-selling and Axiom Award-winning business fable. His critically-acclaimed, award-winning, and Amazon-bestselling novel "Rounding Third" was published just before the bullying crisis started making the news and he created a presentation "Accept and Respect: the keys to ending bullying," which he has taken to colleges, high schools, and corporations across the country. He has been on radio and television programs including NPR and he has spoken at colleges, libraries and community centers across the country. Mr. Meyer's articles have appeared in Kiplinger's Personal Finance, the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register, Westways, Baja Explorer, Out, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and dozens of other magazines and newspapers. He is the co-author and a widely-produced stage play GAM3RS which spawned Gam3rCon, a "Made of Awesome" gaming convention built around the play. Several of his screenplays have been optioned, but never quite made into movies--yet. To support his writing habit over the years he has worked a variety of jobs, some of which are chronicled in his plogs. He began writing his plogs during the Covid quarantine, publishing them one story at a time on Facebook to entertain himself and his friends and followers. Originally from Pittsburgh, Mr. Meyer has a degree from the School of Communications at Penn State and currently resides in San Diego.