I've spent many hours of my life browsing in stores. At 21, I admired clothes I couldn't afford. At 30, I bought them. At 40, I sometimes go simply for the pleasure, of seeing what is new, of learning what counts as beautiful now.
In a strange way, Louise Erdrich is perhaps our least famous great American writer; she is not reclusive, but she is reticent, and her public appearances give the impression of a carefully controlled performance. But Erdrich has also shared many of her most intimate emotions and experiences, in some form, in her novels.
I grew up in the D.C. suburbs, and what I like about that place is that there's not a strong regional affect in the cultural imagination like there is in Dallas or San Francisco or New York City. You have a little more freedom as a novelist this way. The suburbs become a generic idea, and the place doesn't intrude into the narrative.
Shot glasses make me think of youth and a mode of drinking and living that was never mine, even when I was the age for it.
Obama-as-dad is my favorite Obama. Obama-as-executive, with his stubborn faith in reasonableness in times absent of reason, presided over the country during its descent into madness. I find it a comfort that Obama-as-dad presided over a family that leaves the White House healthy and happy.
When we had our first son, four different people gave us the same present: a copy of Ezra Jack Keats' 'The Snowy Day.' A new child often inspires duplicate gifts - we were given a dozen mostly useless baby blankets, just one more thing to spit up on - but this one was different.
There is a tendency to presume autobiography in fiction by women or minorities. Guys named Jonathan write universal stories, while there's this sense that everyone else is just fictionalizing their own small experiences.
By a considerable margin, my family's largest-ever financial expenditure was the adoption of our two sons.
Contemporary families can be made in many ways. You might step up when relatives or friends are unable to meet their obligation to their children. You might marry someone who is already a parent. Or you might, as in my case, yearn to create a family and decide to adopt.
Uzodinma Iweala is a fine and confident novelist.
Genre is a useful thing when organizing texts in a bookshop but immaterial to the particular exchange between writer and reader.
When I was somewhere between child and adult, my father left us. My first family broke apart, but this liberated me to create a new family as I pleased.
Family is whatever you say it is.
I don't have a Winslow Homer or a Renoir, but I do have the liberty to live as I like.
That's part of fashion's promise: that a girlfriend or boyfriend or a promotion are just one tie or sweater or pair of shoes away.
Fashion is about fantasy.
Instead of a passion for the Yankees or fly-fishing or birding, I want to pass on to my sons a love of books, music, and art. I accept that this is partly about the gratification of my own ego, but it's also one of the only ways I know of making a rich life. That's what we all want for our progeny.
Some writers are prolific; some are shape-shifters. It's rare and intimidating to encounter one who is both.
There are probably some readers who don't want a great American writer to acknowledge that cleaning out the bottom drawer of the refrigerator has ever crossed their mind.
For many writers, the endless performance of being a writer - tweeting, appearing, making the rounds - is required simply to attract enough attention to make a living.
