Throughout D’Ambrosio’s collection of essays dubbed Loitering, D’Ambrosio has a stark and frank language and word choices. He holds nothing back and isn’t afraid to throw in the f-word to wake up the audience’s nerves. He’s unapologetic most of the time and isn’t out to please anyone. Evident in his essay “American Newness,” D’Ambrosio explores his experience with manufactured homes that felt as fake to him as the town itself did using imagery constructed by a specific word choice and language. The reader can experience the fakeness and lost feeling the word choice provides. Whether the reader has ever set foot in a manufactured house or not, D’Ambrosio sets the scene from the beginning that by the end the reader is going to have a pretty
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He describes the scent as an “American Newness, that smell everyone knows but cannot name,” (133). Already the reader is given this inkling about how D’Ambrosio is portraying these houses. The houses feel fake to him. He goes on to describe the walls. He compares them to a thick frosty that appears to cake the walls almost a sickeningly sweet feel to it. He isn’t so direct though; he uses the words “had the texture of,” “didn’t look entirely dry,” and “sink your finger in,” to imply that the walls are thick with paint and almost unreal to him. Everything in these houses is manufactured. “Those sundaes will never melt, nor will they be eaten,” (141). D’Ambrosio doesn’t use the word fake, at least not often, but he does use the word empty several times. These items are void of reality, so everything feels empty. The sundaes are just plastic replicas set on the …show more content…
He turns the sentence on its head so the reader feels the upset and notices the imagery. “This woman and all these people, they are the good people, whereas I was just walking around in the factory faking my enthusiasm and hiding a creepy low-grade horror,” (137). He doesn’t stop at describing the people. He continues the sentence, turning it on its head to show how jarring his feelings are. And it is these little additions and details that just encapsulate his experience. He doesn’t need much more than the descriptions he gives. Even when he is describing the river that runs adjacent to the town as “now the Lewis is only the ghost of itself, flowing emptily into the Columbia,” (138) he is implying how empty everything else is. These surroundings are shells of a former self. Of course, his implications for these words can be argued one way or the other but the more he does it the more concrete his imagery gets. D’Ambrosio is still a little vague but that adds to the majesty of his essays. He may not be going after only one image or feeling, the ones mentioned simply appear the strongest. One of the other instances that D’Ambrosio utilizes specific words is on pages 138 and 139. He uses the words modular and karaoke twice each. For the word, modular he uses it the same way but once for the homes and once for the Mexican restaurant. With the word karaoke, it is used once in the normal noun
He describes the scent as an “American Newness, that smell everyone knows but cannot name,” (133). Already the reader is given this inkling about how D’Ambrosio is portraying these houses. The houses feel fake to him. He goes on to describe the walls. He compares them to a thick frosty that appears to cake the walls almost a sickeningly sweet feel to it. He isn’t so direct though; he uses the words “had the texture of,” “didn’t look entirely dry,” and “sink your finger in,” to imply that the walls are thick with paint and almost unreal to him. Everything in these houses is manufactured. “Those sundaes will never melt, nor will they be eaten,” (141). D’Ambrosio doesn’t use the word fake, at least not often, but he does use the word empty several times. These items are void of reality, so everything feels empty. The sundaes are just plastic replicas set on the …show more content…
He turns the sentence on its head so the reader feels the upset and notices the imagery. “This woman and all these people, they are the good people, whereas I was just walking around in the factory faking my enthusiasm and hiding a creepy low-grade horror,” (137). He doesn’t stop at describing the people. He continues the sentence, turning it on its head to show how jarring his feelings are. And it is these little additions and details that just encapsulate his experience. He doesn’t need much more than the descriptions he gives. Even when he is describing the river that runs adjacent to the town as “now the Lewis is only the ghost of itself, flowing emptily into the Columbia,” (138) he is implying how empty everything else is. These surroundings are shells of a former self. Of course, his implications for these words can be argued one way or the other but the more he does it the more concrete his imagery gets. D’Ambrosio is still a little vague but that adds to the majesty of his essays. He may not be going after only one image or feeling, the ones mentioned simply appear the strongest. One of the other instances that D’Ambrosio utilizes specific words is on pages 138 and 139. He uses the words modular and karaoke twice each. For the word, modular he uses it the same way but once for the homes and once for the Mexican restaurant. With the word karaoke, it is used once in the normal noun