‘Loitering’: Collection invites reader to loiter

In the preface to his new collection of essays, Charles D'Ambrosio writes of his initial attraction to the form: 'Essays were the work of equals, confiding, uncertain, solitary, free, and even the best of them had an unfinished feel, a tentative note, that made them approachable. A good essay seemed to question itself in a way that a novel or short story did not - or perhaps it was simply that the personal essay left its questions on the page, there for everyone to see; it was a forum for self-doubt, for an attempt whose outcome wasn't assured.”

The essays in 'Loitering” (Tin House Books, 368 pages, $15.95) bear this out - we are witness to D'Ambrosio's efforts to puzzle things out on the page. He draws conclusions, but leaves himself, and the reader, room to consider other possibilities. The exception is when issues of language - its meanings, uses, possibilities - are the topic at hand. So, for example, in 'Casting Stones” he is far more generous to a woman guilty of a crime than to a columnist who writes about her. In the context of his project, this is wholly appropriate.

D'Ambrosio, a graduate of and new faculty member in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, is deeply invested in the power and limitations of language to help us understand our lives - or, more specifically, to help him understand his life. His personal struggles and tragedies - including the suicide of one brother and attempted suicide of another - are often the explicit subject or the defining subtext of the essays in 'Loitering.” He employs language both colloquial and elevated - words like scilicet, entelechy, and pleonasms pepper the prose - to shape these incisive essays, all the while inviting the reader to loiter with him as he thinks things through.