M.C. Easton

I’m Not There

What does it mean to have had a home once–and then to give it up? I mean, who does that? And why? And how can you know it will turn out all right? “It gets better,” a friend told me when I first left. “It has to.” I said at New Year’s. But you neverContinue reading “I’m Not There”

Art: What Is It Good for?

So a student came into the writing center with a poem in hand: Maxine Kumin’s “Henry Manley, Living Alone, Keeps Time.” Her professor had forced her to read it, and now she had to write an essay about it. “And I hate poetry,” she said. But as we talked about the poem, I could seeContinue reading “Art: What Is It Good for?”

Ex-Mormon, Book-Shelver Girl

So here we go, people. I’m going to blog my way through the year—365 days of it. One blog for every day. Call me crazy, and you’d be right. I guess I should start off by introducing myself. I’m 31. I’m a one-time published author… but we don’t talk about that. Poems of teenage angstContinue reading “Ex-Mormon, Book-Shelver Girl”

The Virtue of Waiting

Gail Sheehy, journalist and author, once wrote, “Growth demands a temporary surrender of security,” and waiting perhaps requires the greatest surrender. Because, in waiting, we face the truth that we are not in control. And we associate this, in the western world, with passivity. Nothing could be further from the truth. We wait to beContinue reading “The Virtue of Waiting”

On the Usefulness of Art-Making

In lecture halls and galleries and college art departments, people make extravagant claims about the importance of art and artists–how necessary these are, how the human spirit could not exist without them. Pish-posh. In the real world, it is the artist who benefits. Art is a byproduct of a free society, and its usefulness comesContinue reading “On the Usefulness of Art-Making”

Susan Minot’s Evening

From that synesthetic description of the suitcase (“a smooth shellacked surface with yellow stitching underneath the glaze…Ann Lord could almost taste the surface of it at the back of her throat.”) and the initial car ride, dizzying with the thrill of sexual magnetism and New England summer, I knew I was in the hands ofContinue reading “Susan Minot’s Evening”

Review of The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Much as in her collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, the emotional force of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, depends upon the silence of her characters. As the protagonist’s mother Ashima enters labor in the opening pages, she refrains from calling out her husband’s name, which she views as “something intimate and therefore unspoken.”Continue reading “Review of The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri”

Why Be Good

In periods of personal crisis and upheaval, my first response is to find a quiet place and think. I’m not sure this is useful, but it is what I do. I map out how I arrived at this point. I ponder my choices and reconsider my worldview, and I wonder if and where I haveContinue reading “Why Be Good”

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Those who loved the understated, quiet prose of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus will not be disappointed by her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun. Winner of the 2007 Orange Prize, besting work by such notables as Anne Tyler and Kiran Desai, the novel is full of halves—characters, and a nation—wandering in search ofContinue reading “Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie”

The Ten Commandments of Quality, or How Gordon Ramsay Kicked My Ass into Gear

I have been watching reruns of Kitchen Nightmares every night for the last couple weeks, and after a while, Ramsay climbed into my head and camped out there, a cussing, hard-driving, belligerent drill sergeant. To whom I am very grateful. So here’s some of the Ramsay wisdom, distilled into caveats helpful to any artist (and eerilyContinue reading “The Ten Commandments of Quality, or How Gordon Ramsay Kicked My Ass into Gear”