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 w...