{"id":33651,"date":"2012-06-18T09:11:35","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T13:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=33651"},"modified":"2013-01-29T10:43:30","modified_gmt":"2013-01-29T15:43:30","slug":"sheila-heti-on-how-should-a-person-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/18\/sheila-heti-on-how-should-a-person-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Sheila Heti on How Should a Person Be?<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photograph by Sylvia Plachy.<\/p><\/div>\n

If you\u2019ve been loving Lena Dunham\u2019s <\/em>Girls, you should most certainly pick up a copy of Sheila Heti\u2019s new novel, <\/em>How Should a Person Be?<\/a> In it, fictional Sheila struggles to answer the titular question through conversations with her friends (including Margaux<\/a>, Misha<\/a>, and Sholem<\/a>), blowjobs, impulsive trips to Atlantic City and … a whole lot more. The novel is a blend of the real and the imaginary\u2014and somehow, in the process of recording her life, real Sheila blends into fictional Sheila, creating a work of metafiction that is playful, funny, wretched, and absolutely true. Sheila and I Gchatted not long ago. Sheila is an impressive writer (see her full bio here<\/a>) as well as the interviews editor at <\/em>The Believer. Below is an edited version of our conversation. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Let\u2019s talk about your process. How did you take your conversations from your life and weave it into fiction?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know. I did lots of different things. But the conversations were not meant for a book. I was just taping friends. I didn\u2019t have a plan for where I was going.<\/p>\n

Did you think you were writing your play?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t sure. I\u2019d spent the previous five years working on Ticknor<\/em>, and I wanted to sort of shake that off me. So all the transcribing I was doing was kind of like drinking a glass of water\u2014it was refreshing, like a palate cleanser\u2014a way of getting out of my imagination. Taping and transcribing was part of looking around to see what things were really like in my environment. I\u2019d been completely in my room, in my head, not looking at anything.<\/p>\n

That reminds me of something Tilda Swinton once said about filmmaking\u2014it\u2019s a social way of making art. What do you think happens when you\u2019re working like this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, the writing becomes more like life in that you don\u2019t know where you\u2019re going to end up, and you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to end up being important. It\u2019s like how in life you can meet somebody and not think much of them, then a few years later you\u2019re married and in love, but the person you were really drawn to and thought, This is it!\u2014you forget about them six months later. When I began transcribing, I was certain that I wanted to write a book with no people in it, about the workings of a supermarket.<\/p>\n

That sounds so different than the book you ended up writing!<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

I know! It just seemed really relaxing to write a book that was not about feelings and not about people. Of course, what ended up happening was completely the opposite. My friend, the writer Lee Henderson, actually e-mailed me a dream he had after I told him that my new book was not going to have any people in it. He was like, \u201cI had a dream that you wrote your new book and there were people in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Is the question \u201cHow should a person be?\u201d a question that really preoccupies you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It did. But I only realized that when I figured out the title. Then it became even more of a preoccupation. I think I wouldn\u2019t necessarily have put it in those words before that; it was a general feeling, of not trusting myself and anxiety and wondering, and also a feeling that there were these Platonic truths out there, that if only I could have access to \u2026<\/p>\n

I see.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it was Margaux who said it should be the book\u2019s title when she saw it on the wall in big block letters when she came to visit me one summer at Yaddo. I can\u2019t remember if I was thinking about it as a title or just thinking about it.<\/p>\n

Margaux sounds like a terrific friend. Though, of course, I know her mostly through this fictional lens of your novel.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She is. We\u2019re both incredibly bossy, but not with each other.<\/p>\n

I loved how stark you were about ambition. But why does the Sheila character desire fame over, say, wealth or power?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was thinking a lot about Paris Hilton and all those girls like Lindsay Lohan who were in the tabloids. I was wondering what I might have in common with them, to find the seeds of them in me, then think about those aspects, and emphasize those. I don\u2019t see their drive as being riches so much as fame.<\/p>\n

Do you think this is a modern obsession of ours?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Renown is something people have always wanted, but maybe what\u2019s modern is that it\u2019s considered a virtue, this desire, rather than a vice. I might be wrong about this.<\/p>\n

I think you could be right; that makes a lot of sense. I know that Lena Dunham recently recommended your book in Entertainment Weekly<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0Have you been watching Girls<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love it so much. I was on the train down to New York yesterday and I watched episode 6, then watched my favorite scenes from the first five episodes. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever done that before\u2014rewatched scenes from something I\u2019ve liked. It felt like rereading the scenes you love in a book.<\/p>\n

Totally! Which scenes?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love her expression in the sixth episode where she\u2019s watching the dance performance at the benefit; that\u2019s a very subtle expression, looking around at her hometown and evaluating it. I like when Adam admires her pencilled eyebrows in another episode and says, \u201cYou look like a Mexican teenager,\u201d and she\u2019s like, \u201cI\u2019m NOT here to talk about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a curiosity she has about being wretched, of not desiring the pure or innocent life.\u00a0And I see that in your book, too.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. But also, that\u2019s something very normal to go into.<\/p>\n

But I think some people are repulsed by wretchedness. Others want beauty. Which I think that doesn\u2019t interest you or Lena as much. But maybe I\u2019m wrong.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But there\u2019s beauty in what\u2019s real. I perceive much more beauty in her show than shows featuring “beautiful people” living “beautiful lives.” Showing that kind of beauty doesn\u2019t create beauty. It creates awful feelings. In my book, Sheila\u2019s big problem is related to that: she wants a perfect, beautiful, ideal self. That turns out to be ugly.<\/p>\n

And where does that want come from?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Who knows? It\u2019s partly what the world wants from you, or for you. But it also strikes me as controlling, and fearful, and coming out of a lack of humor or imagination.<\/p>\n

Can you articulate the differences between you and alter-ego Sheila?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think of it as an alter-ego, but yeah, I\u2019ll try to explain how I experience it. Writing, for me, when I\u2019m writing in the first-person, is like a form of acting. So as I\u2019m writing, the character or self I\u2019m writing about and my whole self\u2014when I began the book\u2014become entwined. It\u2019s soon hard to tell them apart. The voice I\u2019m trying to explore directs my own perceptions and thoughts.\u00a0But that voice or character comes out of a part of me that exists already. But writing about it emphasizes those parts, while certain other, balancing parts lie dormant\u2014and the ones I\u2019m exploring become bigger, like in caricature. That sounds really orderly but I never realize it\u2019s happening, because who is \u201cthe first person\u201d becomes confused. Of course, this transformation happens very gradually over many years. Then, months after the book is done, all that falls away\u2014the ways I was behaving and thinking while writing the book\u2014and a different self from the original one is left, with the qualities I was emphasizing much less prominent than originally. But I\u2019ve only realized after finishing this book that it happened with Ticknor<\/em> and now with this book, too. During the times it was happening, I didn\u2019t realize that was going on.<\/p>\n

That makes sense. On page four you write: \u201cOne good thing about being a woman is we haven\u2019t too many examples yet of what a genius looks like.\u201d Can you elaborate?<\/strong><\/p>\n

On which part?<\/p>\n

Well, I found myself questioning that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s a pretty good joke. The next line is \u201cIt could be me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, here I am, very earnestly reading your book.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sure. I do honestly think there isn\u2019t an archetype. Like, we know what a male genius artist\u2014at least from the 1950s\u2014looks like, right? Wanton sexuality and the like. But what does the female genius look like? Does she have babies? Does she go off alone into the desert? Does she plan secret rendezvous with lovers while showing the world a moral face?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s complicated, it\u2019s true. Much more complicated than it is for men.\u00a0I guess I always saw female genius as something that was enshrouded by men, by marriage.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What do you mean?<\/p>\n

Well, haven\u2019t we learned about how many great men were supported by their wives? And how that genius was often a collaboration between the spouses but presented as one name?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So you think Vera Nabokov was a genius?<\/p>\n

Not exactly. But I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s fair to credit one<\/em> person for the genius of Nabokov.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And what about for the women geniuses. Do you see their partners as having functioned in the same, supportive way? Or were they beating them all the time?<\/p>\n

I think that if you were a woman you didn\u2019t have that many options. You usually had to marry. If you didn\u2019t want to, you had to be quite independently wealthy\u2014but even then, I gather without certain social standing, it\u2019s an awkward position to maintain. I always thought marriage hurt female genius more than it helped.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We don\u2019t really know, is the thing. There\u2019s this book I love called Creativity<\/a><\/em> by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He interviewed many people at the tops of their fields\u2014in science, art\u2014people who pushed their realms forward. And he says most of them, men and<\/em> women, spent their lives in long, stable marriages. But then you think, He\u2019s talking to people in their seventies<\/em>. Isn\u2019t that just the world they were raised in? Wasn\u2019t that true of most people? What about today? I was distressed about the lack of models. But now I am not so distressed.<\/p>\n

How did you get to the state of being not so distressed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I now feel like I know so many startling, brilliant, enchanting women, and their particularities satisfy me in a way I think no composite image could.<\/p>\n

And as for your quest to figure out how a person should be\u2014you make it clear you\u2019re reading the Old Testament. But were you or Sheila in the novel trying to look at any other texts?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was reading Kierkegaard\u2019s Either\/Or<\/em> at the beginning. Kenneth Goldsmith\u2019s Soliloquy <\/em>was important to me. Art and Artist<\/em> by Otto Rank. Art as Experience<\/em> by John Dewey. I Love Dick<\/em> by Chris Kraus. Lots of self-help books, some Alain de Botton, The Second Sex<\/em>, Julian Barbour\u2019s The End of Time<\/em>, different things.<\/p>\n

Do the ugly paintings really exist?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was afraid of this question. Sure. But to me, their importance was as a thought. A question. A metaphor for other things.<\/p>\n

What do you suppose the metaphor is?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s there in the book\u2014Sholem\u2019s approach to making an ugly painting is like Sheila\u2019s attempt to construct a beautiful life\u2014thinking she ought to marry and whatnot; follow the rules of how she thinks she should be, just as Sholem has rules about what\u2019s beautiful and what\u2019s ugly and tries to follow them in his painting.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Sheila Heti, Ryan Kamstra, Sholem Krishtalka, Margaux Williamson. Photograph by Lee Towndrow.<\/p><\/div>\n

I see. All those \u201coughts\u201d equal something very different from beauty.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. Trying to live the image of the life which you have in your head … it\u2019s really hard not to do that, but I do think maybe it\u2019s cheating.<\/p>\n

How do you mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cheating life. Cheating yourself out of a real engagement with life, which involves surprise, not just you moving through your environment with this pre-determined idea of what you intend to do with it and how it should react to you. It\u2019s like thinking you\u2019ve been put on this earth to master life and make it submit.<\/p>\n

Do you believe in destiny?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unfortunately yes. I wish I didn\u2019t, because I have no reason to believe in it, no proof, no love of it. I must come from a superstitious line. My brain doesn\u2019t want to believe in it, but my body does.\u00a0It\u2019s a stupid belief, I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n

But if you\u2019re a writer, you spend your time writing stories, you\u2019re always trying to make everything hang together, so it\u2019s hard not to apply that same thinking to your life. Maybe that\u2019s where destiny-thinking comes in: Ah! this all makes sense! And I can see what\u2019s going to happen next!<\/em> It\u2019s very hard to limit that to books, and not let it seep into your life. I have found it impossible.<\/p>\n

Of course, you could reverse it. We write stories in order to understand the meaning of our own lives.<\/strong><\/p>\n

True. Everyone\u2019s always telling themselves stories about their lives, writers or not. Don\u2019t you think?<\/p>\n

Yes, I agree.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s part of why people see shrinks, isn\u2019t it? They help you rewrite your story? People should go see novelists instead.<\/p>\n

Or maybe a shrink just reassures you that the story will have a good ending. I\u2019m not sure novels always do that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The novelist would say, Yes, you will ultimately be undone by your flaws. No one wants to hear that! Maybe people shouldn\u2019t see novelists!<\/p>\n

It could be very fun, though, if one were up for it. Who would you see?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jane Bowles. You?<\/p>\n

I think I\u2019d see Borges. I admire his tone\u2014it\u2019s like a phony academic. Which is how I would imagine my shrink would talk. Why Jane Bowles?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because what she would say would be so surprising and unpredictable and not traditionally or predictably moral. Her worlds seem emotional and fun. I think she respected the individual.<\/p>\n

Buy a copy of <\/em>How a Person Should Be?<\/a> or read an excerpt<\/a>. And if you\u2019re in New York City, join Sheila Heti at Powerhouse Arena tomorrow night for the book\u2019s launch<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve been loving Lena Dunham\u2019s Girls, you should most certainly pick up a copy of Sheila Heti\u2019s new novel, How Should a Person Be? In it, fictional Sheila struggles to answer the titular question through conversations with her friends (including Margaux, Misha, and Sholem), blowjobs, impulsive trips to Atlantic City and … a whole […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[17,71,6942,1619,7874,7876,7875,2824,7877,7873,2526],"class_list":["post-33651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-books","tag-fiction","tag-how-should-a-person-be","tag-lena-dunham","tag-margaux-williamson","tag-metafiction","tag-misha-glouberman","tag-sheila-heti","tag-ticknor","tag-ugly-painting","tag-writing-process"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSheila Heti on How Should a Person Be? by Thessaly La Force<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"June 18, 2012 \u2013 If you\u2019ve been loving Lena Dunham\u2019s Girls, you should most certainly pick up a copy of Sheila Heti\u2019s new novel, How Should a Person Be? 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