The Man Back There: Stories

By David Crouse

Book Overview

In her introduction to The Man Back There, Mary Gaitskill writes simply, "I chose these stories because they made me feel. . . ." The reader of David Crouse's collection is bound to agree, but the reasons are not easily explained. Crouse crawls inside the heads of a dozen male protagonists and tells us how they think. They are not always likeable. They are often losers--their thoughts hurry ahead or dawdle behind, disconnected from what little action occurs around them.

And yet, somehow, we wince for the dog-catcher who crashes his ex-wife's Thanksgiving dinner in "The Castle on the Hill." We sympathize with the latch-key kid who pillages toys in a dead boy's closet in "Time Capsule." And in "The Long Run," we find it hard to condemn a ninety-two-year-old senator trying to salvage his career after his ex-wife publishes a scandalous tell-all book about his life.

In this deceptively quiet collection, the truth is something that simmers up through what is not said. A hero is a man who saves himself from himself, who placates his temper with self-awareness and, most importantly, self-forgiveness. The Man Back There is a feat of empathy and razor sharp vision.

David Crouse is the author of Copy Cats, which received the 2005 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. He lives in Fairbanks, where he teaches at the University of Alaska.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1932511636
• ISBN13: 9781932511635
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Sarabande Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.6" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

artistry

David Crouse is a consummate artist. His writing is precise, clear, and compelling. Just when you think a story is not terribly consequential, the meaning suddenly comes into focus and the result is a thunderbolt of enlightenment. Crose is magical that way. Story collections this good have too few readers, and Crouse chronicles our times with his lucid eye and ear. Don't pass this up.

Literary fiction with a darker edge

This is another great story collection from David Crouse, focusing on men in trouble who make bad decisions. Although the stories are firmly in the mode of literary fiction, a nearly Gothic darkness sneaks into some of them: a castle and murdered children loom over a dogcatcher's Christmas, the lover of a vanished college professor finds a shallow grave in the woods, and a physical therapist watches a VHS tape with very, very bad things on it. I highly recommend it.

gripping collection that stays with you

David Crouse's new collection The Man Back There is tightly held together by its silences, its mysteries, the reader's implication in each story's resolution. Crouse highlights how meaning is retroactive and searching, a dynamic speculation. As we journey through these stories, we confront our own imaginations: Is the brother in "Show & Tell" really dead? What did the ex-wife in "Posterity" tell in her tell-all book? And finally, we are haunted by our own guess of what was on the video in "Torture Me." These uncertainties reflect the characters' inner probings that are often at a disconnect with what is happening around them--as the title story's Sweet, who seeks to understand his girlfriend by imagining her with her previous boyfriend, or Peter in "The Observable Universe," who only begins to feel for himself by viewing, almost studying, himself as a spectator would. As each character tries to make sense of his life, we fill in what is not known and thereby learn something of our own making. This is a vivid and moving collection of short fiction that I could not put down until I had read it all.

Stumblebummed

My usual method of reading short story collections is to take them with me to doctor's appointments, or on the bus. It might take me a month to finish. David Crouse's collection The Man Back There contains tales linked by male main characters who deal with an emptiness and loss so profound and undefinable, as a reader, I subconsciously shared their need to flail and stumble toward the "anywhere but here." Each story fed the pervasive sense that one's soul can be stripped away if one fails to pay attention, to love, to connect fully with others. The final story tells of a man so disillusioned that his longing for who he once was, or should have been, has turned him somehow to vapor. He can no longer see the reflection of his own decency in the mirror. The Man Back There is haunting work, recommended to anyone deeply fascinated by the paradoxes of human nature.

Insightful, Unsettling, Funny Book

Once again David Crouse deftly delves into the minds of characters down and out, unable to make meaningful decisions, unable to even know themselves. Many are despicable, but Crouse makes them so human this reader can't help but care, empathize, even see a bit of self in those that over-think, struggle to find meaning in their lives, or suffer from making one wrong decision after another. But there are moments of tenderness and forgiveness, too, and maybe this is the real skill of this writer. I especially recommend "The Forgotten Kingdom," about a man who works for a nearly defunct gaming company fielding help calls to its 1-800 line; everything in his life seems to be coming to an end: his mother is dying, he can't seem to stop visiting his exgirlfriend though he doens't love her--or does he? Other favorites: the title story, "The Man Back There," "Show and Tell," and "The Observable Universe." A gripping cast of characters. As good or even better than his first collection Copy Cats. Good for giving as a gift! It's worth waiting for this writer's next book.