The Point: Stories

The Point: Stories by Charles D'Ambrosio. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1995. 243 pages. $19.95.

With the so-called short story renaissance of the early 1980s now more than a decade old, with everyone and her cousin cranking out stories for creative writing courses, and with short story submissions to literary journals escalating monthly, one might expect the general quality of the form to diminish. Thankfully, for the quiet legions of short story readers, this is not so. Charles D'Ambrosio's first collection, The Point, proves that fine short stories continue to be written and published. D'Ambrosio's stories demonstrate the versatility and perspicuity of the form, two qualities that continue to make it uniquely suited to the contemporary world.

With the growing popularity of short-short stories as journals limit their maximum-allowed word count, D'Ambrosio's lengthy fictions make for a refreshing read. D'Ambrosio's stories--to mince genres--verge on being novellas. They evenly and unhurriedly weave narrative and reflection, allowing readers to become well acquainted with characters. This familiarity means that context, as much as situation, creates the stories' tension. In "The Point," 13-year-old Kurt is assigned by his mother to escort a drunken house guest home. The significance of this duty emerges only as we learn about the area residents, young Kurt's theories on drunks, his mother's drinking habits, and his father's traumatic history as a medic in Vietnam. Without such an accumulation of context, Kurt's efforts to coax the staggering and obstreperous Mrs. Gurney home would amount to little more than slapstick tinged with pathos. Instead, we see how a kid sadly yet bravely endures the mess that adults make of their own and others' lives.

D'Ambrosio understands adolescence. "American Bullfrog" is a classic story of male teenage coping. Climbing out of windows, partying in abandoned houses, copulating on bare mattresses, roaming the streets, spew-ing the argot of adolescence ("pooty," "dink," "bohunk"), and suffering from acute alienation, John Torrence experiences all the muck and muddle of teenagerhood. He is "a poignancy freak, an addict for the stuff ... when I wasn't feeling emotionally connected to a better life, when I wasn't feeling all sad and desirous and shitty and angry, I suffered withdrawal and bemoaned my lowly status and planned revenges on the indifferent world."

D'Ambrosio just as pointedly depicts the wrenching efforts of young adults to get by. In "Her Real Name," a story that takes on a gritty Sam Shepard-like surrealism, a discharged Navy man hooks up with an evangelical woman dying from cancer and sets off across the country. In "Jacinta," a story with a near-fairy-tale tone, a young woman meant for Vassar marries a logger and, after her baby drowns, struggles to free herself from the abusive marriage. In "All Aboard," a newly married couple expecting their first child must reckon with the death of a friend from their past. And in "Open House," one of the more startling stories, a 20-year-old man wrestles with his family's Catholicism and history of mental illness.

Throughout these stories, drinking compounds the problems that confront both the teenagers and adults. The father in "Open House" adds a violent streak to his dementia by pounding down the gin. The husband in "Jacinta" mourns his daughter by retreating to the barn with a bottle of vodka. The Navy man in "Her Real Name" desperately seeks medical help from an alcoholic doctor who claims, "Quitting's a drastic measure." Kurt in "The Point" develops a theory of life's "black hole," recognizing that "when you got drunk, thinking to escape, you only noticed it more." And when John in "American Bullfrog" starts hitting the keg, he is "surprised at the effect it had on my comprehension," and when he stumbles home, his father welcomes him by guzzling a beer "in such a way that would've put to shame any of the boys over at Carbone's."

With one exception, these stories take place in the Puget Sound area. This regional emphasis provides the stories with a distinctive atmosphere, as inescapable as the slow drizzle for which the Northwest is renowned. The importance of place is conveyed by the particularity lent it: "a tug hauling a barge north through the Passage, up to the San Juans"; "salmon fishing"; "the clean, wet smell of rain"; "a ferry to Port Townsend." Remarkably evocative of Seattle's geography, history, and character, "American Bullfrog" belongs in any anthology of stories devoted to that city.

To say that The Point is a promising first collection would be to diminish the actual achievement of these stories. D'Ambrosio will undoubtedly develop and advance as a writer. Yet if he only ever writes more stories of the quality presented here, readers will be well served.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Studies in Short Fiction
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning