How Should a Person Be?

Jul 01, 2012 Jeniffer Almonte rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads, fiction, reviewed, quit-reading

I really dislike this book. To be honest, the best word to describe my dislike for this book is "petty". A quarter of the way through I started to resent that Miranda July and Margaret Atwood wrote kind blurbs that appear on the back cover. As in, I held the book in my hand, flipped it over, re-read the comments from these two writers that I admire, and sat there resenting them. Petty, right?

"How Should a Person Be", by Sheila Heti, is a very experimental, stream-of-consciousness novel/"fictiona...more I really dislike this book. To be honest, the best word to describe my dislike for this book is "petty". A quarter of the way through I started to resent that Miranda July and Margaret Atwood wrote kind blurbs that appear on the back cover. As in, I held the book in my hand, flipped it over, re-read the comments from these two writers that I admire, and sat there resenting them. Petty, right?

"How Should a Person Be", by Sheila Heti, is a very experimental, stream-of-consciousness novel/"fictionalized memoir" about a woman named Sheila that lives in Toronto and has a lot of artsy friends, with one friend in particular, a painter named Margaux, becoming extremely important to her. Heti often writes in short declarative sentences and sometimes uses startling images. She has a talent for describing moments where we feel awkward or uncertain. A lot of this book is written in the format of a play. There isn't really a plot; just a series of moments that rarely last more than a few pages.

Heti is (obviously) a talented writer and I was often very impressed with her observations. Still, this book was extremely pointless. Much of it is transcripts of conversations that contain a Witty Moment. Invariably, this Witty Moment was the end of the conversation. And then when you turned the page, it was a new chapter, a new conversation.

"Ta-da!", Heti seems to be saying. "That was deep, right?"

Sometimes, instead of a conversation we got a quirky scene. A man runs into a bar and starts smashing bottles and quoting Milton. And the Witty Moment of that scene is the following exchange: asked if he ever read Milton, a character responds

"I read an introduction to one of his books. I only read the introductions. That's where all the information is, and that is where it all happens."

Sheila is presenting this as wisdom. I think it is stupid. Mind-numbingly stupid.

The thing is that "Witty Moments" have limited value. They are like the literary version of junk food. You enjoy the first 5 or 6 chocolate squares, the first two handfuls of french fries. But then you start longing for a glass of water, an apple, a spinach salad, and a nice brisk walk. Reading too many pages of this book made me long to pick up Barbara Pym's "Quartet in Autumn" which I had started reading around the same time. Pym's novel is about 4 elderly office workers whose lives are defined by loneliness. Nothing much ever happens but it is a stunning, quietly brilliant book. And the more of it I read, the more I lost patience with "How Should a Person be"; the more I wanted Heti to grow up and to actually do the hard work of writing a book.

One last complaint...Heti subjects us to pages upon pages of absolutely horrible erotic prose. The words "c*ck", "f*ck*ng", "c*m" and "c*nt" have never been so overused or so boring. This woman is in her 30's but she writes about sex like a virgin with an overactive imagination.

I'm not someone who's cynical about the avant garde. When I go to a museum, I don't make tired jokes about abstract art. I embrace what's different and ambitious. I'm open and open-minded. Which is to say that it feels very lonely to be excluded from what makes this book special, since Margaret Atwood and Miranda July seem so convinced that it is....

But I've decided to be okay with that. Whatever is good about this book, whatever parts of it have value, are floating around in a sea of self-indulgence. I would much prefer to stay in Barbara Pym's carefully realized world than spend time in Sheila Heti's witty fragments.

(Thank you to the publisher for my Advanced Reader's Copy.)(less)

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Apr 07, 2013 Blair rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: via-netgalley, contemporary, read-on-kindle, 2013-release

How Should a Person Be? is a combination of fiction, non-fiction and philosophical musings. It's perhaps best described as semi-autobiographical fiction - although that description could, I suppose, be applied to a lot of fiction, but the difference here is that it's deliberately made that way. Without doing enormous research into whether every character depicted is actually a real person, it's impossible to tell what is real and what is made up, so I decided early on to treat the book as a twea...more

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Oct 22, 2012 Jenny rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wanted to really like this, because people have been talking about how "experimental" and "feminist" this novel is. Margaret Atwood wrote a blurb for it, and she's my fave author of all time.

However, (and I suppose that this is a testament to Heti's writing, hence a couple of stars): I know this chick. (I use that word unironically.) And I hate her. She's pretty, she's twee, she is self obsessed and shallow. She probably has some ironic mustaches and twitter birds floating around her house. S...more

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Aug 21, 2012 J.S.A. Lowe rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Yeah, okay, I fell for it. Read it in a great swooping gulp. Perfect book for me to read in the anguishing throes of a girlfight which is taking up every inch of mental real estate. Chloe & Olivia, &c. Want to reread it immediately, want to post swathes of excerpt for everyone and myself and the world and preach the Gospel of Heti's style. The faux-naif flatly mannered simplicity, Hemingway by way of Lydia Davis, only even more stripped down and artless—people have said Patti Smith and t...more Yeah, okay, I fell for it. Read it in a great swooping gulp. Perfect book for me to read in the anguishing throes of a girlfight which is taking up every inch of mental real estate. Chloe & Olivia, &c. Want to reread it immediately, want to post swathes of excerpt for everyone and myself and the world and preach the Gospel of Heti's style. The faux-naif flatly mannered simplicity, Hemingway by way of Lydia Davis, only even more stripped down and artless—people have said Patti Smith and they're not wrong maybe I think (only I'm personally convinced that Patti had one hell of an overworked, inexhaustible editor, and probably handed that woman a thousand pages of crap which she tore apart and reworked and put back together in order). Like y'all I liked the chapter on fucking too, which is scary and gross and pretty much perfect in its abject obsessiveness. But, I guess in the end I could see the seams of the book too clearly, and its ambition diminished. I could see exactly how the chapters were written separately and at different times and stitched together like a quilt, and this is how some books are, it does open out the form and give it a possibility to be mine, because it's that kind of narrative where I keep thinking: maybe I too can pursue a long prose form, maybe I can hang my tattery rage <—typo for rags! of beautiful post-flarf onto these kinds of story-bones.

Here's the thing: I'm simultaneously reading House of Leaves, which is just stunning, and with every page I think yes, yes, I want to do THIS, I want to write that Big Baggy Book of Me, that maximalist wonder that can contain everything, all of it—guitar, magic, science, Jesus, fundamentalism, Texas, piano, Chopin, Bach, astronomy, Plato, Aristotle, having your faith ruined by attic Greek playwrights, sex, mise en abîme, the abysmal, the degraded, women's colleges, radical feminism, lovers, betrayal, two psych units, drugs and drugs, Cambridge as academic fairyland, the semi-automated mechanics of heterosexual marriage, Paris, Florence, Venice, Boston, workshop, losing your soul, Santa Fe, Zen, sexual harassment, bewilderment, broken bones, throwing up in a motel room in Arkansas, shaving your own head, adultery,—and everything afterward, including two more psych units and a lesbian psychiatrist in a black leather jacket and no hope. And that's just the personal stuff, you want it to stretch and expand like an accordion to fit in the craziness of our culture, two Gulf Wars, the decline of the academy, the distortion and/or fruition of what Americanness meant, was meant to mean, as even the most brilliant intellectual neo-cons became stupid and stubbornly reactionary despite the social equality movements taking place right in front of all our faces, the resistance to a seemingly inevitable Hegelian process making the US into the EU, no the UAE, no the EU, no the UAE, because dammit we refuse to evolve, we will remain a theocracy; and all the while the oceans are heating up that last two degrees centigrade which has already doomed us. A darkly female Bildungsroman with its healthy latte foam of late-capitalist diagnosis.

(Never finding it, by the way. Never finding it again.)

And when I think about all this somehow Danielewski's more capacious form (form also of many female novelists as many of you and I have discussed many times) seems righter to/for me than the deliberately simplified one Heti crafts and occupies so perfectly, which fits her like a shoe. My preference for the overwritten or overwrought or just over- does not mean that I produce pages, though, so what the fuck do I know. Also, it is very funny at times. Also, I winced a lot. Also, I want my friend to read this book, and my best friend. And I think fondly, foolishly "maybe I can write a novel about our friendship someday" since my best friend also is a painter/visual artist and since I too cannot ever finish this one-act play I started in a hospital bed 2 and 1/2 years ago. Because the friends get back together at the end of the book I like to think friends can always get back together. I can't finish this review without subtweeting disgustingly because I pretty much have a one-track mind at the moment, but this is close enough. I liked it and am glad I have the hardback, I will read it probably every year for a long time.

Also, this is pretty much what being in your twenties is like: doing a lot of geographicals. Thinking you can figure stuff out by buying an expensive bus ticket and then getting to the beach and realizing: no, you still have to deal with it on its own terms, you can't go to Atlantic City and have an epiphany, not really.

Also, I had that first boyfriend too—the one who basically sat down and wrote out what a cheap, shabby failure I would inevitably become, artistically and romantically and for all my life. It casts a long shadow over your adult life, that sneering prognostication. That curse, so well articulated that you can never quite slip out from under it. Even when you turn to face it squarely and deliberately choose to reclaim its ugly labelling. Probably the title of the novel—my novel, I mean—should just be, Stupid Bitch.(less)

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May 03, 2011 Pamela rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After reading several positive reviews and waiting a three tantalizing weeks for the book to free up at the library, I was surprised by what I found. Some of the passages were insightful and charming (Heti's description of Puer aeternus (or Peter Pan Syndrome) comes to mind); others made my skin prickle with eery familiarity (Sheila's last night with Israel). For the most part, though, the protagonist's reflections on herself, her friends and their art-making read like an extended therapy sessio...more

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Mar 12, 2013 Stephen rated it 5 of 5 stars

I could see people hating this book. I can imagine many criticisms that I would totally accept as valid. It has taken me weeks to figure out what I liked about the book. But, despite this I thought it a brilliant illumination of contempary life of youngish city-dwellers. It felt complete and rounded and sincere. It may be a bit hollow and inconsequential - almost vapid - but that feels so much part of the novel's characters existence that it is itself a commentary on their lives and experiences....more I could see people hating this book. I can imagine many criticisms that I would totally accept as valid. It has taken me weeks to figure out what I liked about the book. But, despite this I thought it a brilliant illumination of contempary life of youngish city-dwellers. It felt complete and rounded and sincere. It may be a bit hollow and inconsequential - almost vapid - but that feels so much part of the novel's characters existence that it is itself a commentary on their lives and experiences. I found it engrossing and satisfying, but I would still hesitate to recommend this generally, because I'm not confident enough in its general appeal.

The book is written as a memoir - I don't know how true it actually is, but it conveys the impression that it's pretty close. The narrator, Sheila of course, is a writer, and feckless in the manner of the modern world. It is a fairly scattershot narrative, and deliberately idiosyncratic. It meanders, and jumps around, and is not overly concerned with plot. This mirrors the attitudes and character of the writer, and the themes of the book very cleverly. You don't just read the memoir, but in reading it you feel the experience of it.

She suffers from writers' block and her continuing failure to work on a play that she is contracted to write runs through the novel. She doesn't seem overly bothered by it. However, the main focus of the narrative is Sheila's intense friendship with a painter, Margaux. The strength of this friendship is the dominant, most emphatic thing in the book. It subsumes everything else, she feels brilliant with Margaux and feels that everyone else feels that about them. Really Sheila just wants to be successful at and famous for being the most wonderful friends with Margaux. She realises this isn't realistic (particularly the latter; it's quite possible she believes the former already), but it is still her honest and sincere wish. In reviews, much has been written about the abusive, exploitative (and explicit) sexual relationship she is in during the novel. It is another major theme of the book - and is juxtaposed with her friendship with Margaux, her unsuccessful playwriting, and her struggling to discover how a person should be. However, it doesn't take up that many actual pages. It is not what the book is about (nonetheless, it is another reason why I would hesitate to recommend it to people).

Sheila's fecklessness manifests in a number of ways. She and her friends discuss things seriously and intelligently, but at a fairly superficial level. She longs for fame, but not a fame she has to work at, or even earn, and one that she does not wish to interfere with her current lifestyle. There is also her casual, relatively banal drug use, her under-developed work ethic. Of particular note, though, is her treatment of her divorce after three years of marriage. It is mentioned several times, but almost in passing, never really examined. She relates how her actions have affected other people, but, apart from when it affects her relationship with Margaux, is not overly concerned about it.

Despite all this, I found her to be a likeable protagonist. She is not amoral, nor particularly decadent in the context of the society in which she lives. She is self-centred, but in a natural and believable way. While she certainly doesn't always behave admirably, neither does she defend her actions. She is entirely plausible, and highly recognisable - in her desires and fears and behaviours - in people that I know. She worries how a person should be, and relates how life is.
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Mar 26, 2013 John Spillane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The grandiose title immediately attracted me when this came across my goodread's friends feed last year and the outraged reviews drew me in further. Slate covered it in an episode of their bookclub podcast (highly recomended) where, I guess in a reaction to the "all the hype", they almost panned it, or basically said that it had interesting bits but that was it. However, they mentioned that Carl Wilson (Celine Dion 33 1/3 author) was the author's ex-husband and that further intrigued me.
There wa...more The grandiose title immediately attracted me when this came across my goodread's friends feed last year and the outraged reviews drew me in further. Slate covered it in an episode of their bookclub podcast (highly recomended) where, I guess in a reaction to the "all the hype", they almost panned it, or basically said that it had interesting bits but that was it. However, they mentioned that Carl Wilson (Celine Dion 33 1/3 author) was the author's ex-husband and that further intrigued me.
There was lots of stuff I underlined and really liked here. I guess it really depends on whether or not you give people the benefit of the doubt that when they say something indulgent or crazy that they are self aware enough to know how that sounds and have chosen to trust you, the listener, to grant them latitude and work with them in pursuing an interesting conversation. The preceding is almost impossible to do if you always assume you're infinitely smarter than everyone you talk to. I think this book was supremely edited, I can't remember the last time I propelled my self through pages like I did here, wait yes I can Moneyball, but that was an audiobook : ). I've had little experience with art school types (that the author would seem to represent) and that I found to be frustrating and disappointing, but a bad argument is preferable to a bland conversation any day. I thought the character of the author seemed pretty insufferable, but still thought there were way more than the average amount of interesting sentences being put down. I think the "Ugly Painting Contest" deserved the amount of time she gave it. I thought that I was passed maxed out on the discussion of Jewishness but she found fresh bits. The nice feel and pace of the book actually reminded me of my favorite author Leonard Michaels, maybe that's my mental flub. I could have done without the more explicit paragraphs in the book, but I guess they helped break up the rest of the prose.

Give it a chance you'll probably hate it!

http://www.slate.com/articles/podcast...(less)

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Dec 30, 2012 Kendra rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own-it

This novel 'from life' is certainly not an easy read, but rather a thoughtful, feminist interrogation into friendship, art, and what it means to be human in our urban world today. The characters are certainly drawn from life (the protagonist is named Sheila Heti) and readers are invited to draw conclusions that the author herself is sharing an autobiographical story. This type of narrative is tricky in its conflation with reality, lending the conclusions more weight.

How Should A Person Be? draws...more

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Jun 05, 2011 Jimmy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: female, canada, poetic-essay, and-a-half-stars, year-2010s

How should a person be?

For years and years I asked it of everyone I met. I was always watching to see what they were going to do in any situation, so I could do it too. I was always listening to their answers, so if I liked them, I could make them my answers too. I noticed the way people dressed, the way they treated their lovers — in everyone, there was something to envy. You can admire anyone for being themselves. It’s hard not to, when everyone’s so good at it. But when you think of them all

...more

How should a person be?

For years and years I asked it of everyone I met. I was always watching to see what they were going to do in any situation, so I could do it too. I was always listening to their answers, so if I liked them, I could make them my answers too. I noticed the way people dressed, the way they treated their lovers — in everyone, there was something to envy. You can admire anyone for being themselves. It’s hard not to, when everyone’s so good at it. But when you think of them all together like that, how can you choose? How can you say, I’d rather be responsible like Misha than irresponsible like Margaux. Responsibility looks so good on Misha, and irresponsibility looks so good on Margaux. How could I know which would look best on me?

Smart, funny, disgusting, insightful, this is a self-help book for people who don’t believe there are easy answers, or even any answers at all. When I first read the excerpts of this book, I thought where has this book been all my life? These are the questions I’ve been asking myself since forever!!! I’m surprised this exact book hasn’t been written before, so obvious are the questions asked that it seems oddly new. Perhaps because everyone asks themselves these questions and everyone also thinks ‘Nobody else asks these questions. Everybody else already knows the answers, everybody has their shit together and has figured this all out’. Or perhaps, like me, the questioner also lives with the fear that they are asking the wrong questions all along. What if all this time I’ve been missing the point entirely?

Questions like how should a person be? How do you be someone, secure in your selfhood? Also, should you stick with something even though it’s hard? Should you give up? Should you change that hardness into something that comes easily to you? Should you just be yourself? What does it mean to be yourself? Should everything be a lesson on how to become yourself? To what lengths, self improvement? What is the value of greatness versus the price of greatness? What is beauty and is it better than ugliness? How do we appear to ourselves and to others? Even when we are at our ugliest, is there still a beauty there? Are we just an object, reduceable to aesthetic value? Where should we find the answers to these questions, in others or in the self?

Then just as you think no answers are coming, they do come, genuine answers that aren’t meant to be generalized or widely applied. Not big Hollywood aha! moments, but tiny little semi-satisfactory resolutions. And the very ending of the book is really good in that it avoids hammering anything home but at the same time captures a little something ineffable. It was spectacular precisely because it was perfectly un-spectacular. I asked myself ‘how did she come up with that ending?’

In that moment, I wanted so much for someone to say of me: She is the most consistent person you have ever known. Even at home, she never changes! p.49

This book is not available in the USA yet, but you can order it from Canada.(less)

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Apr 16, 2013 Hira rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sheila Heti's novel is a remarkable piece of work - and you may love, or hate, it but if you read this book, you will surely learn something from it. Heti very groups herself amongst "ones who live their lives not just as people but as examples of people. They are destined to expose every part of themselves, so the rest of us can know what it means to be human." And in having exposed her innermost thoughts to the reader, Ms. Heti is able to explore her own psyche and life, and the universal ques...more

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Apr 12, 2013 Vicki rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"For most of my life, one thing led to the next. Each step bore its expected fruit. Every coincidence felt preordained. It was like innocence, like floating in syrup."

... and while "floating in syrup" is indeed, well, sweet, the deceptively easy to read How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti follows a just-how-semi? autobiographical Sheila who comes across for stretches of this book as a flat affect Carrie Bradshaw. But then unlikely moments - like a spider on the bathroom wall - bring Sheila up...more

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Mar 25, 2013 Carrie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Quotes

For years and years I asked it of everyone I met. I was always watching to see what they were going to do in any situation, so I could do it too. I was always listening to their answers, so if I liked them, I could make them my answers too.(1)

You can admire anyone for being themselves.(1)

I know that personality is just an invention of the news media. I know that character exists from the outside alone. I know that inside the body there’s just temperature. So how do you build your soul? At...more

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Mar 24, 2013 Kay rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is very of the literary moment. In a time when Lena Dunham (who professes to be a fan of Heti's) writes self-indulgent scripts and the memoir is king, the vaguely autobiographical How Should a Person Be? also seems to be from a slightly older literary tradition: that of the Tropic of Cancer and Fear of Flying. At least, I perceived it to be that way. Each is the slightly exaggerated account of an artist struggling to create, and getting sidetracked by life—some parts of which are meani...more

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Mar 04, 2013 Megan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I don't know if I've ever read a book like this! Purely in it its form I find it quite unique, especially in the dialogue and characters' address of one another in letter and email and how that is handled throughout the story. The main character Sheila is trying to write a play and so the actual form of the story takes on the feel and form of a play at times. It is one of the most relatable stories I've read in a long while in terms of the relationships, particularly the female friendships, in t...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Laura rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I was really sucked into the first third of this book -- by the newness of the style, I suppose, and Heti's sometimes very astute and poetic observations -- but I found the main "character" so reprehensibly self-involved, I just can't in good faith recommend it. Heti has some beautiful prose; I admire her bravery with the narrative form and not holding back with creating a negative character. But that doesn't make it any easier to read.

Like another review I read, I questioned if I would feel th...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Damaskcat rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had high hopes of this novel when I first read the blurb but unfortunately it left me completely cold. The main character has been commissioned to write a feminist play but she really doesn’t have a clue where to start. She decides to find out more about people and starts tape recording conversations with friends – especially Margaux – with whom her relationship is somewhat ambivalent. Sheila is divorced and is currently having an abusive relationship with a man called Israel whose tastes seem...more

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$Radiantfracture$

Feb 01, 2013 Radiantfracture rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So in the end I liked this. I do think, though, that Sheila Heti (the character in the novel, obviously, and not the author, whatever either of them insist) -- anyway, I think Sheila Heti/Sheila Heti′ should stop worrying about writing and just write. She's a perfectly capable writer.

I read it because Heti's ideas about writing seem so completely alien to mine.

How Should a Person Be is a kind of personal nonfiction novel, not quite a memoir since it has the freedom of fiction to include inventio...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Steph rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Favorite parts:

"There's taking airplanes and waiting for airplanes, but another possibility is to make the difficult choices and decide. You remember the puer aeternus-the eternal child-Peter Pan-the boy who never grows up, who never becomes a man? Or it's like in The Little Prince-when the prince asks the narrator to draw him a sheep. The narrator tries and tries again, but each time he fails to do it as well as he wishes.He believes himself to be a great artist and cannot understand why it's n...more Favorite parts:

"There's taking airplanes and waiting for airplanes, but another possibility is to make the difficult choices and decide. You remember the puer aeternus-the eternal child-Peter Pan-the boy who never grows up, who never becomes a man? Or it's like in The Little Prince-when the prince asks the narrator to draw him a sheep. The narrator tries and tries again, but each time he fails to do it as well as he wishes.He believes himself to be a great artist and cannot understand why it's not working. In a fit of frustration, he instead draws a box-something he can do well. When the prince asks how it's a picture of a sheep, the narrator replies that it's a picture of a sheep in a box. He is arrogantly proud of his solution and satisfied with his efforts. This response is typical of all puers. Such people will suddenly tell you they have another plan, and they always do it the moment things start getting difficult. But it's the everlasting switching that's the dangerous thing, not what they choose.(...)In their quest for a life without failure, suffering, or doubt, that is what they acheive: a life empty of all those things that make a human life meaningful.(...)The problem is the puer ever anticipates loss, disappointment, and suffering-which they foresee at the end of every experience, so they cut themselves off at the beginning, retreating almost at once in order to protect themselves. In this way, they never give themselves to life-living in constant dread of the end. Reason, in this case, has taken too much from life."

"You know, sometimes I get really excited thinking about autism (...) and I think maybe it's an advantageous human trait. Maybe it's sort of wonderful to- To lack an overwhelming empathy. I sometimes feel pretty paralyzed by my own feelings of empathy. And it's still such a problem-shame. Maybe what I want in my life is to cut out a bit of the empathy and a bit of the shame."

"...a threat I had felt since childhood that at any moment a relationship might disappear with a poof because of something little I had done or said."

"I began to see that the worst thing about child abuse would be the empathy you would have for the grown-up, who feels compelled to do those things. Worse would be the tenderness you would feel for the adult because you love them-because you believe they are being forces by something inside of them to do these terrible things. You would want to help them-to make them feel better-and you would help them feel better by complying, and complying without judgement. To do otherwise would leave you feeling guilty for making them feel so bad. But the next thing that would happen is you would confuse their desire with yours-but your desire would be to love, not for the act itself. Forever after, though, it would be really hard to untangle how you imagined other people wanted you to behave from how you wanted to behave. How would you even know what you wanted, when at such a young age, desire had been all mixed up with empathy and guilt?"

"...into my head came the idea of fences; how when you have something you value, the next thing you do is build a fence around it...These fences do not protect what we value from other people, like those fences that prevent things from being stolen away...I told myself, Catalog what you value, then put a fence around these things. Once you have put a fence around something, you know it is something you value. Put a fence around what you want to make holy, and crown it with the seventh day...There was only one Margeaux-not Margeauxs scattered everywhere, all throughout the darkness. If there was only one of her, there was not going to be a second one...I said to myself, You are only given one. The one you are given is the one to put a fence around. Life is not a harvest. Just because you have an apple doesn't mean you have an orchard. You have an apple. Put a fence around it. Once you have put a fence around everything you value, then you have the total circle of your heart."(less)

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Nov 25, 2012 zan added it

"The child of Fear Of Flying and Tove Jansson's Fair Play raised on a steady diet of Tumblr" is how I wanted to describe this book and just be done with it. It angered me, and bored me ("I like boring people. I think it's a virtue. People should be a little bored."), and fascinated me, and I was ready to throw it across the room during the whole "Interlude For Fucking" and link to the article someone wrote in the New Yorker about this and Lena Dunham's Girls, because what could I say that it did...more

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Nov 05, 2012 Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

From a conversation about How Should a Person Be? that I had with Jason Tougaw, over at Californica, and sponsored by the Tottenville Review:

Jason Tougaw:
You recommended How Should a Person Be?, and when you said Heti’s book read like no other, I picked it up immediately. I guess you’d call it a docu-novel. Most of the characters are based on Heti’s circle of friends, named as they are in life—with the apparent exception of her love interest (er, fuck buddy) Israel. (I’ll get to him later.) I’d...more From a conversation about How Should a Person Be? that I had with Jason Tougaw, over at Californica, and sponsored by the Tottenville Review:

Jason Tougaw:
You recommended How Should a Person Be?, and when you said Heti’s book read like no other, I picked it up immediately. I guess you’d call it a docu-novel. Most of the characters are based on Heti’s circle of friends, named as they are in life—with the apparent exception of her love interest (er, fuck buddy) Israel. (I’ll get to him later.) I’d love to hear more about what you thought was so unique about Heti’s writing. For me, it’s not just that she’s walking the line between fiction and nonfiction, which writers do all the time. It’s the wavy, vernacular path she carves between documenting and fictionalizing her own experience. In the process of fictionalizing art and feeling and drugs and sex, she manages to document a very right now cultural moment and to feel like more Keats or the Shelleys than your Kerouacs and Ginsbergs (who did something similar in their time). And she’s rawer than most contemporary writers, offering a close look at her own scrapes and humiliations. There’s some prurience involved. But there’s also plenty of reflection and philosophy.

Scott Cheshire:
I like your Romantic take on the book. I hadn’t precisely thought of it that way and yet that does describe how I feel about the book. It reads like a deliberate and genuine search, and less like experiment, which is how most critics seem to be reading it (although I did think of Kerouac, too, while reading). I believe Heti. The book feels honest. Which is sort of an odd thing to say because for some it’s absolutely not that because it explicitly presents itself as a distortion of the “truth.” But for me that is what makes it such an exciting read. The book reads as a sort of middle finger at truth and authenticity, two words that I hear a lot more lately, especially by younger people. These are also words I don’t particularly like or trust. And yet this book comes closer to what I think we imagine those words mean more than most books. I find that tension thrilling...

For the rest of out conversation: http://californica.net/2012/09/19/how...

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Oct 29, 2012 Tuck rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: music-and-other-700-s, oh-loyd-i-wanna-be-hearkbroken

a dramatic novel in a small, almost scared voice, searching for what it means to be a person, and what kind of person to be. Set in boho toronto, on the longest street in the world, asking what it means to be an artist, a great artist, maybe a great rich genius artist. or asking what it means to be a friend, a great friend, a worthy friend. or asking what it means to be in love, great love, fantastic love and lover that blows your head off with climaxes and love. or what it means to be none of t...more

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Oct 08, 2012 Stella rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I actually believed the hype surrounding this book, including quotes from the New Yorker. I read the novel in growing disbelief. For the character to consider her observations 'epiphanies' -- as she seriously (seriously!) seems to do -- she'd have to start off as a major jerk. Give this book to the jerk in your life, they will only love themselves more. I fear this writer is the Paulo Coehlo of the privileged set.

Confused by the reviews, I went and actually dug up the supposedly positive New Yo...more

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Sep 22, 2012 Sharon Pelletier added it

I don't know whether to give this book a four or a two. I didn't like it - not at all, didn't agree with it, didn't enjoy it, didn't feel it told the truth about itself. But maybe having such a strong reaction to the book means it's an excellent book? I had heard this book raved about by smart people who think deeply and hold in high regard the same issues and values that I also carry. So I was surprised to read such a confused and confusing book. The main character, who many readers consider a...more

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Sep 21, 2012 Jen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: autobiographical-fiction, art, relationships, sex

No, this book doesn’t reflect everyone’s experiences. Or even every woman’s experiences. Which seems to be the most common criticism: “Sheila Heti is not like me, or someone I don’t like has something in common with her, therefore this was a crappy book.”
She’s not just writing about herself. She’s writing about friendship and art and ideology and how when you try to destroy your own self to please everyone else, you eventually realize that neither of those things is possible.
I guess if you can...more

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Sep 13, 2012 Bajir rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An interesting book to read after some of Mavis Gallant's short stories The Cost of Living: Early and Uncollected Stories. Beyond the obvious parallels (Canadian female writer writing semi-autobiographical fiction about young 20 and 30-something artists trying to figure out how to be), both reads are valiant reflections of individuality, friendship, authenticity, and purpose.

I'm glad I didn't read this in my 20s. It would have struck too close to home, it's honesties both too close to the wounds...more

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Sep 12, 2012 Tara rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian, ebook

Being a woman of Heti's generation currently living in Toronto, this book embarrasses me. Heti thinks she is truly having a revelation about living by discovering that her life might at times be 'ugly', so much so that she feels the need to share it with everyone in a book called 'How should a person be?: A novel from life'. It reminds me of that time when Tyra Banks wore the fat suit for five minutes, had a crap experience, cried and then thought she could teach the world how it felt to be obes...more Being a woman of Heti's generation currently living in Toronto, this book embarrasses me. Heti thinks she is truly having a revelation about living by discovering that her life might at times be 'ugly', so much so that she feels the need to share it with everyone in a book called 'How should a person be?: A novel from life'. It reminds me of that time when Tyra Banks wore the fat suit for five minutes, had a crap experience, cried and then thought she could teach the world how it felt to be obese. Why are we suddenly incapable of understanding something unless someone from a place of privilege interprets it for us? And maybe that's the point... maybe she is providing a lens through which to see this generation and how it understands the world. But I really think that might be giving her too much credit. When she adds in the little off topic anecdotes or stories (i.e. the gravedigger), it seems like a plea for the reader to believe and feel her experience, not just see it.

And since I think she truly believes what she is saying, here are some choice quotes:
"I had looked around at my life and realized that all the ugly people had been weeded out. Sholem said he couldn't enjoy a friendship with someone he wasn't attracted to. Margaux said it was impossible for her to picture an ugly person, and Misha remarked that ugly people tend to stay home." Where 'stay home' more realistically means 'stay the f out of Queen West and other related areas to avoid judgements from Heti and her quirky-named crew'.

As a lesbian, I can't help but be offended by statements like this: "A woman can't find rest or take up home in the heart of another woman – not permanently. It's just not a safe place to land."
Or this (on the frequency of gay male relationships in France): "That's why there's suddenly a big increase in homosexuality... It's simpler to be with a man because I don’t have to deal with these issues." (these issues = relationships with women) (said earlier in the same breath, "the men in France are really messed up. They’re all afraid of women.")

The writing is OK. The chapter 'The White Men Go to Africa' was clever. Most intolerable was the lengthy exploration of her typing of sould instead of soul, as it is so representative of much of the book. Heti wants us to believe with her that this is some troubling subconscious behaviour related to her feeling like she's sold her soul. After bringing it up for the second time, she writes, "I shouldn't dwell on it" (me: yes) "Who gives a fuck in this fucked-up world" (me: ... we agreed to not dwell on it) "There are problems so vast and so deep that a young woman sitting alone in her room should slit her throat and die sooner than bother about the state of her soul, when so many great artists before her spent decades recalibrating a single blank canvas in their studio, fifteen, sixteen hours a day, as their marriages crumbled into the soil" (me: REALLY?). To write so much about what is likely a common typo related to keyboard muscle memory (would, should , could, soul… sould) is ridiculous. Surely no one takes themselves this seriously. It's so telling that her mom lives only a 15 minute bus ride away. Someone so deeply involved in self-analysis of every banal action seems never far from a parent.
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Sep 06, 2012 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, canadian

How Should a Person Be? radiates simplicity. There's a certain naïvety about it - I think some people have misunderstood it, thinking it was nothing more than what it claims to be: some things a writer named Sheila wrote, while trying and failing to write a play, and working in a hair salon and wasting lots of time with interesting artist friends. It's about art, and what it means and takes to make art, but it's easy to read without realizing how artfully put together the book itself is.

It's a...more

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Aug 10, 2012 Vanessa rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So, there's part of me that actually wants this book burned. I feel it may reveal (or perhaps I mean confirm) too much about how truly shallow, self-obsessed, pathetic, and insecure most women are. Especially pretty ones. Never having been a pretty girl myself I found I couldn't really relate directly to the Sheila character, but I can recognize the type. There are some very shallow, self-obsessed, pretty girls with pretensions to write who I know personally, and I kinda wanted to text them now...more

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Aug 06, 2012 Anne rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Well, not as sugary and twee as I had feared. Though far far from the "experimental" novel that it is often slotted to be. It makes a gamble on baring all, showing/telling all, etc., but the all is not really that interesting. But the fact that the narrator "Sheila" can make a good personable and wry foil out of the Margaux character speaks well of a potential to detach from her own spin cycles. At heart, this is a book about self-obsession, and whether or not it can transcend said self to find...more

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Jul 21, 2012 christa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sheila has been considering the sociological question of who and how we are. For years she has been asking the sorta novel’s titular question of everyone she meets: “How Should a Person Be?” Take the concept of responsibility, for instance, in all of its spectrums. Her friend Misha is a responsible person and it looks good on him, whereas her friend Margaux doesn’t have it and that looks good, too. She notices how people take cues from others in dress and gesture, and how relationships can be an...more

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