What do you think?
Rate this book
The Man Back There and Other Stories
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.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
177 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2008
24 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 18, 2014
These are dark stories. Whereas most dark stories I’ve run across come from a deep cynicism, these stories originate inside a particular form of discontent. The discontent leads many of these characters to make mistakes, to indulge fantasies or cruelties that put them into conflict with the normal people around them. The stories’ protagonists seem to be living the kind of boredom Paul Tillich defined as “rage, spread thin.” The cities are ghost towns; the people, detached from their own basic needs. One character is hungry nearly all the time, wolfing down a stranger’s leftover hospital food, but he spends all his money on ecstacy and action figures. Another character notices he’s hyperventilating but seems unconcerned with doing anything about whatever caused it. He is trapped in the present, trying hard to close off what came before and terrified of what’s to come.
Whatever is missing inside these stories’ characters is almost always missing inside the stories themselves. The missing pieces take shape by their absence. The rest of the story coalesces around the missing pieces like a jigsaw puzzle coming together around a missing segment. Readers can always see the missing piece by the contours of its absence, and when the characters’ secrets are finally exposed, we’re left to watch them struggle with shame and judgment.
These stories occur almost entirely in the present moment, dishing out the back story in small doses only when it helps to illuminate the present. This technique has often irritated me, especially when it feels like a contrived attempt to make the plot more important than it is, or when the back story reveals extraneous information. But Crouse’s writing is too controlled to reveal unnecessary exposition of any kind. He wants to take unhappy people, disturbed people, disappointed or disenfranchised or traumatized people, and make them grapple with some of life’s hardest, most basic existential questions: Who are you? Where are you? At times the stories spend themselves building to these questions, thrusting the big question upon the character and then leaving while the character gropes for an answer. And the answers are never final; rather, they’re like a temporary patch, settling an existential crisis just long enough to get the characters through another day or two. In Crouse’s world the big questions seem to lack final answers.
All the stories end in uncertainty. They have delivered their freight by presenting the crisis, or by revealing the shameful secret. The effect is eerie, mostly satisfying, and sometimes breathtaking. This is good contemporary short fiction.
Whatever is missing inside these stories’ characters is almost always missing inside the stories themselves. The missing pieces take shape by their absence. The rest of the story coalesces around the missing pieces like a jigsaw puzzle coming together around a missing segment. Readers can always see the missing piece by the contours of its absence, and when the characters’ secrets are finally exposed, we’re left to watch them struggle with shame and judgment.
These stories occur almost entirely in the present moment, dishing out the back story in small doses only when it helps to illuminate the present. This technique has often irritated me, especially when it feels like a contrived attempt to make the plot more important than it is, or when the back story reveals extraneous information. But Crouse’s writing is too controlled to reveal unnecessary exposition of any kind. He wants to take unhappy people, disturbed people, disappointed or disenfranchised or traumatized people, and make them grapple with some of life’s hardest, most basic existential questions: Who are you? Where are you? At times the stories spend themselves building to these questions, thrusting the big question upon the character and then leaving while the character gropes for an answer. And the answers are never final; rather, they’re like a temporary patch, settling an existential crisis just long enough to get the characters through another day or two. In Crouse’s world the big questions seem to lack final answers.
All the stories end in uncertainty. They have delivered their freight by presenting the crisis, or by revealing the shameful secret. The effect is eerie, mostly satisfying, and sometimes breathtaking. This is good contemporary short fiction.
February 18, 2009
David Crouse's newest collection didn't seem to start off as strongly as his previous collection, but it got better. In fact, it got very good. And this was a relief. Discussing the book with a friend, after I'd first started it, my friend warned that, if it's a book of stories and I'm not terribly excited about the first ones, then that doesn't bode well. But this collection builds steam. And sometimes, a collection needs that. Sometimes, the sum total is more than its parts. I left the collection wanting more rather being relieved I was done--and for that I am very happy.
Crouse writes dark stories. These particular stories are set around the lives of lonely men. My favorites--there are quite a few--would be "Show & Tell" (the tale of a toy thief), "What We Own" (about a young man who tries to commit suicide), and "Torture Me" (about a man whose porn tape his wife finds). But the piece I liked most is "The Forgotten Kingdom." This story, about man working in an office at the tail end of a set of going-out-of business layoffs, captures so much so well--the surreal, sad environment in such an office building; the longing one sometimes feels for one's past, even though one doesn't really want to return to the past; and the desire just to talk--to anyone. "The Forgotten Kingdom" is a forgotten video game, one through which the narrator bonds with another lonely soul. This story, more than any other in the collection, struck me with its presentation of me alone and wanting.
Crouse writes dark stories. These particular stories are set around the lives of lonely men. My favorites--there are quite a few--would be "Show & Tell" (the tale of a toy thief), "What We Own" (about a young man who tries to commit suicide), and "Torture Me" (about a man whose porn tape his wife finds). But the piece I liked most is "The Forgotten Kingdom." This story, about man working in an office at the tail end of a set of going-out-of business layoffs, captures so much so well--the surreal, sad environment in such an office building; the longing one sometimes feels for one's past, even though one doesn't really want to return to the past; and the desire just to talk--to anyone. "The Forgotten Kingdom" is a forgotten video game, one through which the narrator bonds with another lonely soul. This story, more than any other in the collection, struck me with its presentation of me alone and wanting.
May 29, 2009
This collection was the winner of the 2007 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction as chosen by Mary Gaitskill. In the foreword, Gaitskill writes, "I chose these stories because they made me feel. . . . (not) a particular emotion, (but) that the outcome of almost every story here mattered to me." The protagonist of every story is a male and each one lacks something in his life for which he is desperately searching - a person, an object, an emotion. These stories were tremendously well written and each was a gem. My favorites were "Posterity" - based on the author's perception of a Strom Thurmond-like aged senator - and "Dear". The endings are satisfying in the sense that the reader is left to wonder/imagine what occurs later in the protagonists' lives. Each of these stories sparkles like the gem it is. Highly recommended.
Grade: A-
Grade: A-
December 17, 2008
Author David Crouse, winner of the 2007 Mary McCarthy Prize, introduces his short story “Posterity,” from the collection The Man Back There (Sarabande Books, 978-1-932511-63-5):
“’Posterity’ might be as close as I’ve ever come to historical fiction, in that the protagonist here is a culmination of a certain amount of research and so forth, but the story has to stand or fall on its own, not as a comment on a particular person or political period. The research I did is hopefully so unobtrusive as to be invisible.”
“Posterity” by David Crouse, as well as more of his introduction, is available for the whole week at the ForeWord Book Club.
“’Posterity’ might be as close as I’ve ever come to historical fiction, in that the protagonist here is a culmination of a certain amount of research and so forth, but the story has to stand or fall on its own, not as a comment on a particular person or political period. The research I did is hopefully so unobtrusive as to be invisible.”
“Posterity” by David Crouse, as well as more of his introduction, is available for the whole week at the ForeWord Book Club.
October 22, 2008
So far I am really enjoying the hell out of this collection, which Mary Gaitskill selected for this year's Mary McCarthy Prize. More details soon...
Update: This has suddenly become my favorite book I've read this year. The story "Show & Tell" is worth the price of admission alone. Beautiful!
(Full disclosure--David is a very good friend, but that doesn't mean I'd go light on him.)
Update: This has suddenly become my favorite book I've read this year. The story "Show & Tell" is worth the price of admission alone. Beautiful!
(Full disclosure--David is a very good friend, but that doesn't mean I'd go light on him.)
May 17, 2012
Yet another great Mary McCarthy Prize winner from Sarabande - I've haven't read one I didn't like. Crouse's stories are intense, but very good. Looking forward to reading his Flannery O'Connor award-winning collection, Copy Cats.
September 14, 2008
Another great collection from David Crouse. I hope he manages a novel one of these days.
Read
November 20, 2008The Man Back There: Stories (Mary Mccarthy Prize in Short Fiction) by David Crouse (2008)
September 19, 2009
a remarkable collection of stories.
September 14, 2008
Beautifully written complex stories.
October 11, 2008
I liked this one even more than his last book Copy Cats.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews