CRAWL SPACE AND OTHER STORIES OF LIMITED MANEUVERABILITY
Crawl Space and Other Stories of Limited Maneuverability is a collection of stories about the fallout from limited maneuverability, whether it be the horror inside the walls of a New York City apartment, the firing of a professor on a college campus, bullying in the basement of an orphanage, the restraint a father feels reaching out to touch a youth, the confinement inside jockey underwear, the consolation of a typewriter over an unreported violence, an actual hanging by boys after a church service, the fatal end of a patient’s world following a hospital miracle, the shyness of a classical pianist breached by a man named Ray Rice, the drama inside a Madrid bullring, the consequences of an old man’s collapse at a urinal in Yokohama, the rejection of the vegetarian Cain by God, the torment of a pelican under a bridge in Mexico, Presidents shooting bears or obsessing about scratches on a cherry table, a preoccupation with curtains when preparing for a visitor, how a house full of knickknacks replaces people, the power of beets exposing sibling rivalry, a predicted automobile accident enlarging the stunted lives of two lovers, the claustrophobia over a book of Matisse art, the triumph after the modest boasts of an actual stuntman, the recollections of a stubborn liver in a frying pan, the weekly ritual of Pop paddling young boys, a pearl family’s revenge for the horrors of World War II, the secret life of a British aesthete in Japan, or the results of reduced mobility inside an actual crawl space.
Fiction (Short stories)
ISBN: 978-1-950730-81-0
Publication Date: October 31, 2021
Crawl Space and Other Stories of Limited Maneuverability is a collection of stories about the fallout from limited maneuverability, whether it be the horror inside the walls of a New York City apartment, the firing of a professor on a college campus, bullying in the basement of an orphanage, the restraint a father feels reaching out to touch a youth, the confinement inside jockey underwear, the consolation of a typewriter over an unreported violence, an actual hanging by boys after a church service, the fatal end of a patient’s world following a hospital miracle, the shyness of a classical pianist breached by a man named Ray Rice, the drama inside a Madrid bullring, the consequences of an old man’s collapse at a urinal in Yokohama, the rejection of the vegetarian Cain by God, the torment of a pelican under a bridge in Mexico, Presidents shooting bears or obsessing about scratches on a cherry table, a preoccupation with curtains when preparing for a visitor, how a house full of knickknacks replaces people, the power of beets exposing sibling rivalry, a predicted automobile accident enlarging the stunted lives of two lovers, the claustrophobia over a book of Matisse art, the triumph after the modest boasts of an actual stuntman, the recollections of a stubborn liver in a frying pan, the weekly ritual of Pop paddling young boys, a pearl family’s revenge for the horrors of World War II, the secret life of a British aesthete in Japan, or the results of reduced mobility inside an actual crawl space.
Fiction (Short stories)
ISBN: 978-1-950730-81-0
Publication Date: October 31, 2021
Crawl Space and Other Stories of Limited Maneuverability is a collection of stories about the fallout from limited maneuverability, whether it be the horror inside the walls of a New York City apartment, the firing of a professor on a college campus, bullying in the basement of an orphanage, the restraint a father feels reaching out to touch a youth, the confinement inside jockey underwear, the consolation of a typewriter over an unreported violence, an actual hanging by boys after a church service, the fatal end of a patient’s world following a hospital miracle, the shyness of a classical pianist breached by a man named Ray Rice, the drama inside a Madrid bullring, the consequences of an old man’s collapse at a urinal in Yokohama, the rejection of the vegetarian Cain by God, the torment of a pelican under a bridge in Mexico, Presidents shooting bears or obsessing about scratches on a cherry table, a preoccupation with curtains when preparing for a visitor, how a house full of knickknacks replaces people, the power of beets exposing sibling rivalry, a predicted automobile accident enlarging the stunted lives of two lovers, the claustrophobia over a book of Matisse art, the triumph after the modest boasts of an actual stuntman, the recollections of a stubborn liver in a frying pan, the weekly ritual of Pop paddling young boys, a pearl family’s revenge for the horrors of World War II, the secret life of a British aesthete in Japan, or the results of reduced mobility inside an actual crawl space.
Fiction (Short stories)
ISBN: 978-1-950730-81-0
Publication Date: October 31, 2021
Praise for CRAWL SPACE AND OTHER STORIES OF LIMITED MANEUVERABILITY
These 31 stories have a way of inhabiting the reader's mind, working their various ways into the reader's very heart. How do they achieve that? It's the tone, the mesmerizing mood of the prose. Richard Krause is something of a hypnotist; he is an Ancient Mariner who has not necessarily shot his albatrosses personally, yet he certainly knows how to bring them forward in the service of a good story. And a reader can be suddenly startled by an image, by a series of events, thinking: How did he know I was thinking that? I hope I am not overstating the pleasing yet uncanny feeling this collection awoke in me. Permit me an anecdote. The day before I began to read the stories, I prepared a garnish from the seeds of a pomegranate. This is not something I do often. The vision on the cutting board reminded me of bloodshed, of smashed brains scattered on the ground; I have photographic evidence. Then my cutting board rose up in my memory as I read in 'The Handkerchief' that a 'little white boy' in an orphanage was 'hastily beaten to a pulp' 'like a pomegranate crushed under foot'. I had the recent memory for reference. The fact of children in orphanages runs through the collection like a distant toxic river of dark blood. Here, in the strangeness of the everyday present, the various violences of the past, whether they are from bullying or war or the boxing ring or the carnage of the highway, fling their twisted shadows forward. So often in the history of the characters there huddles a small and powerless child. Perhaps the most vivid and potent of all the stories is 'Crawl Space' itself, one of the longer stories in the book. It documents the converse of the odor of sanctity. This is a disgusting pervasive smell death and decay of that emanates from the dark and breathless claustrophobic gap between the earth and the house. Returning to the matter of the tone - I must hasten to say that, for all the torments of the characters and situations, the reader is in fact not tormented. No, the reader is perfectly safe in the prestidigitation of the writer, and can, while being startled and moved, somehow remain the wide-eyed serene observer. An innocence flows just beneath the surface of the terrors and catastrophes that beset the characters, and there is a sense throughout the collection that hope and goodness are sometimes just possible, that beauty exists in spite of everything. Yet adulthood and experience can be grotesque. There is 'something implicitly frightful about adults'. And, 'violence is always just around the corner'. Does anyone really escape the memory, no matter how small the enclosure or how secure the locks?' Do yourself a favor and take a dive into the crawl space.
—Carmel Bird, author of Field of Poppies and countless others
About RICHARD KRAUSE
RICHARD KRAUSE'S collection of fiction, Studies in Insignificance, was published by Livingston Press, and Unsolicited Press published his second collection, The Horror of the Ordinary. His epigram collection, Optical Biases, was published by EyeCorner Press in Denmark, and Propertius Press published his second collection, Eye Exams. Fomite Press will publish another collection of his epigrams, Blind Insights into the Writing Process, in January 2022. Krause grew up in the Bronx and on farms in Pennsylvania. He drove a taxi in NYC for five years and taught English for nine years in Japan. Currently, he is retired from teaching at a community college in Kentucky.
