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 (winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction) is bound to agree. But the reasons, as Gaitskill notes, 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 with the vague sense that he needs to warn her, about what he doesn't know, "possibly the simple fact that there was danger in the world." ("The Castle on the Hill") We sympathize with the latch-key kid ("Time Capsule") who pillages toys in a dead boy's closet. 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.

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From "The Man Back There"

After all the noise and mad action—after the thrown drink, the knocked over chair as Sweets jumped to his feet and ducked his head, after Sharon's near-fall too as he almost pushed her out the door—they stood on the sidewalk without speaking.

Sweets took off his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. It had grown cold—they could see their breath—and he wanted to comfort her, but he didn't want to hold her.

She jammed her hands down into the broken-buttoned pockets of the jacket and looked back at the door. She was probably expecting it to open, and for the man to charge out and then up the stone steps, his face wet from Sharon's White Russian. But Sweets guessed he was probably not even off the floor; and even if he was, he was probably just talking to his friends, twisting the story around as fast as he could, making it his own. Did you see them hightail it out of here? Must have been her time of the month. Crazy People. This town is full of crazy people.

As he looked across the road at the fire-scarred mill building, Sweets imagined the river the building obscured, moving past his life on its way from the White Mountains to the Atlantic. The moon was full and it had rained lightly about an hour ago and people were coming outside just to take a look around.

The bar was packed anyway, which was probably part of the reason what had happened had happened—too many people bumping shoulders. Rationalization, Sweets knew, but who really cared, right? "We should get out of here," he said, but they didn't move except to step closer together.

Blurbs

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Winner of the 2007 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, selected by Mary Gaitskill

"In this virtuoso collection of stories, David Crouse guides us directly to where the shadow lies—the disorienting loss, the surprising heartache, the forgotten wound—those inevitable areas of the psyche we all share and through which only truth, illuminated with a such a light touch here, can deliver us; The Man Back There and Other Stories is the work of the real thing."

—Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog

"Looking back in anger, the men in David Crouse's second collection of short fiction acknowledge 'the simple fact that there [is] danger in the world,' that it sometimes resides in their own fists, clenching and unclenching. Like Barry, the loveless, regretful dogcatcher in "The Castle on the Hill," characters in The Man Back There (Sarabande) also give in to bouts of tenderness. Crouse makes you believe, if not in miracles, then in life after the implosion of the heart."

—O, The Oprah Magazine

"Crouse's beautiful, plainspoken prose reveals a deeply personal—yet often dark and even cold—humanity. His characters are exposed simply and mysteriously, allowing readers to see through austere facades into their most unguarded moments. All of which perfectly evokes the writer's New England roots."

—Scott Allie, Editor, Hellboy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, The Umbrella Academy

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