Loitering: New and Collected Essays - Softcover

Charles D’Ambrosio is the author of two collections of short stories, The Point and The Dead Fish Museum, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the essay collection Orphans. He’s been the recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award and a Lannan Fellowship, among other honors. His work has appeared frequently in The New Yorker, as well as in Tin House, The Paris Review, Zoetrope All-Story, and A Public Space. He teaches fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

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*Loitering makes NPR's 2014 Best of the Year list
*Time Out New York names Loitering one of the Top Ten Books of the Year
*Loitering makes the Pacific Northwest Bestseller List
*Loitering shortlisted for the PNBA awards

"[W]e can see he is one of the strongest, smartest and most literate essayists practicing today. This, one would hope, is his moment. . . .These [essays] are highly polished, finished, exemplary performances.”
- Phillip Lopate, New York Times Book Review

“... Powerful... highlights D’Ambrosio’s ability to mine his personal history for painful truths about the frailty of family and the strange quest to understand oneself, and in turn, be understood.”
- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Erudite essays that plumb the hearts of many contemporary darknesses.”
- Kirkus

“Important . . . one of the most profound essayists at work today.”
- Bookforum

“Loitering: New and Collected Essays should help position D’Ambrosio as one of the major essayists now working in the genre.”
- Los Angeles Review of Books

“[D'Ambrosio's] toolkit, finite and familiar, is the English language, the same one ticker-taping through your conscious mind and mine, but with it he constructs sentences, paragraphs, entire pages of such sustained insight and fluency that you can’t help but feel a little fraudulent as a fellow user of the same mother tongue.”
- The L Magazine

“Loitering seems at heart an act of remembrance, a collection that grapples with the past in order to bring it to us still warm and pulsating. The brutality of D’Ambrosio’s nostalgia saves it from romanticism and instead transforms it into a deeply physical experience.”
- The Carolina Quarterly

“Loitering, by Charles D’Ambrosio, gets something deeply right about being uncertain, being in-between, being human. Its essays refuse the violence of imposing too much resolution on the world. This praise might sound abstract, but it’s more like a kind of closed-eye, clenched-fist gratitude: Thank you. These essays help me believe in what’s holy in the mess.”
- Leslie Jamison, New York Times

“D'Ambrosio hasn't published anything less than brilliant, but Loitering is remarkable even by his standards.”
- Portland Mercury

“Throughout the collection, D'Ambrosio's words conjure metaphorical 'thought light bulbs' in the reader's mind as he strikes feelings deep within ― about TV news reporters, whale conservation and the magic of trains ― all eloquently described in his rich, affecting prose.”
- The Inlander