The Point: Stories

Literature & Fiction

D'Ambrosio, Charles

Short Stories & Anthologies

Flamingo/ HarperCollins

Eight stories by the 1993 winner of The Paris Review's Aga Khan Fiction prize are set in the Pacific Northwest, the deep South, New York, and Los Angeles, and follow themes of loss, grief, and devotion. 15,000 first printing. Tour.

United States

Back Bay Books

A collection of stories set in the Pacific Northwest, the deep South, New York, and Los Angeles, follow themes of loss, grief, and devotion

Little,Brown

These eleven essays span continents, culture, and class. Fiction writer and essayist Charles D'Ambrosio inspects manufactured homes in Washington state; tours the rooms of Hell House, a Pentecostal "haunted house" in Texas; visits the dormitories and hallways of a Russian orphanage in Svrstroy; and explored the textual space of family letters, at once expansive and claustrophobic. In these spaces, or the people who inhabit them, he unearths a kind of optimism, however guarded. He introduces us to a defender of gray whales; the creator of Biosquat, a utopian experiment in Austin, Texas; and a younger version of himself, searching for "culture" in Seattle in 1974. He analyzes the nuances of Mary Kay Letourneau's trial and contemplates the persistence of rain and of memory.

Orphans

History & Criticism

Clear Cut Pr Llc

“In the fall, I went for walks and brought home bones. The best bones weren’t on trails—deer and moose don’t die conveniently—and soon I was wandering so far into the woods that I needed a map and compass to find my way home. When winter came and snow blew into the mountains, burying the bones, I continued to spend my days and often my nights in the woods. I vaguely understood that I was doing this because I could no longer think; I found relief in walking up hills. When the night temperatures dropped below zero, I felt visited by necessity, a baseline purpose, and I walked for miles, my only objective to remain upright, keep moving, preserve warmth. When I was lost, I told myself stories . . .” So Charles D’Ambrosio recounted his life in Philipsburg, Montana, the genesis of the brilliant stories collected here, six of which originally appeared in The New Yorker. Each of these eight burnished, terrifying, masterfully crafted stories is set against a landscape that is both deeply American and unmistakably universal. A son confronts his father’s madness and his own hunger for connection on a misguided hike in the Pacific Northwest. A screenwriter fights for his sanity in the bleak corridors of a Manhattan psych ward while lusting after a ballerina who sets herself ablaze. A Thanksgiving hunting trip in Northern Michigan becomes the scene of a haunting reckoning with marital infidelity and desperation. And in the magnificent title story, carpenters building sets for a porn movie drift dreamily beneath a surface of sexual tension toward a racial violence they will never fully comprehend. Taking place in remote cabins, asylums, Indian reservations, the backloads of Iowa and the streets of Seattle, this collection of stories, as muscular and challenging as the best novels, is about people who have been orphaned, who have lost connection, and who have exhausted the ability to generate meaning in their lives. Yet in the midst of lacerating difficulty, the sensibility at work in these fictions boldly insists on the enduring power of love. D’Ambrosio conjures a world that is fearfully inhospitable, darkly humorous, and touched by glory; here are characters, tested by every kind of failure, who struggle to remain human, whose lives have been sharpened rather than numbed by adversity, whose apprehension of truth and beauty has been deepened rather than defeated by their troubles. Many writers speak of the abyss. Charles D’Ambrosio writes as if he is inside of it, gazing upward, and the gaze itself is redemptive, a great yearning ache, poignant and wondrous, equal parts grit and grace. A must read for everyone who cares about literary writing, The Dead Fish Museum belongs on the same shelf with the best American short fiction.

The Dead Fish Museum: Stories

KNOPF

Each of these eight burnished, terrifying, masterfully crafted stories is set against a landscape that is both deeply American and unmistakably universal. A son confronts his father’s madness and his own hunger for connection on a misguided hike in the Pacific Northwest. A screenwriter fights for his sanity in the bleak corridors of a Manhattan psych ward while lusting after a ballerina who sets herself ablaze. A Thanksgiving hunting trip in Northern Michigan becomes the scene of a haunting reckoning with marital infidelity and desperation. And in the magnificent title story, carpenters building sets for a porn movie drift dreamily beneath a surface of sexual tension toward a racial violence they will never fully comprehend. Taking place in remote cabins, asylums, Indian reservations, the backloads of Iowa and the streets of Seattle, this collection of stories, as muscular and challenging as the best novels, is about people who have been orphaned, who have lost connection, and who have exhausted the ability to generate meaning in their lives. A must read for everyone who cares about literary writing, The Dead Fish Museum belongs on the same shelf with the best American short fiction.

The Dead Fish Museum: Stories (Washington State Book Award)

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Description: Every Room Tells a Story offers the most interesting and provocative interiors published to date in the first 12 issues of the widely acclaimed interiors and design magazine, nest. Called, among other things, "Homes and Gardens for the decadent and deranged" (Wallpaper), the special chemistry of nest brings it all under one roof: not only David Mlinaric's interiors for the Rothschild home at Waddesdon Manor, Gabhan O'Keeffe's redecoration of Sao Schlumberger's Paris apartment, a recreation of Louis Comfort Tiffany's lost designs for the White House Blue Room, but also an Inuit igloo, the tents of Tibetan nomads, a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine, and women's prison cells. And because process is as interesting as result, Editor in Chief and Art Director Joseph Holtzman takes readers behind the scenes and shares the way his unique features are hatched and achieve adulthood. The book includes photography and text by more than 50 of the magazine's contributors, as well as examples of specially commissioned design projects: a flipbook by Matt Groening, a flocked wallpaper by Rosemarie Trockel, a chair by Tom Sachs, and a textile by Todd Oldham. Every Room Tells a Story will be a must for all fans of the magazine, and will also introduce its one-of-a-kind sensibility to the uninitiated.

Every Room Tells a Story: Tales from the Pages of Nest Magazine

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

CUNNINGHAM, Michael

Plante, David

Alvarez, Julie

Gomes, Reverend Peter

Skoggard, Carl

SPARK, Muriel

Crafts & Hobbies

D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.

New York TimesNotable Book Winner of the Washington State Book Prize D'Ambrosio is already considered one of America's premier short story writers, but Loitering cements his place as one of our great living essayists. Charles D’Ambrosio’s essay collection Orphans spawned something of a cult following. In the decade since the tiny limited-edition volume sold out its print run, its devotees have pressed it upon their friends, students, and colleagues, only to find themselves begging for their copy’s safe return. For anyone familiar with D’Ambrosio’s writing, this enthusiasm should come as no surprise. His work is exacting and emotionally generous, often as funny as it is devastating. Loitering gathers those eleven original essays with new and previously uncollected work, so that a broader audience might discover one of our great living essayists. No matter his subject―Native American whaling, a Pentecostal “hell house,” Mary Kay Letourneau, the work of J.D. Salinger, or, most often, his own family―D’Ambrosio approaches each piece with a singular voice and point of view; each essay, while unique and surprising, is unmistakably his own.

Loitering: New and Collected Essays

Essays & Correspondence

Tin House Books

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Books by D'Ambrosio, Charles