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Ticknor
On a cold, rainy night, an aging bachelor named George Ticknor prepares to visit his childhood friend Prescott, a successful man who is now one of the leading intellectual lights of their generation. With a hastily baked pie in his hands, and a lifetime of guilt and insecurity weighing upon his soul, he sets out for the Prescotts' dinner party--a party at which he'd just as soon never arrive. Distantly inspired by the real-life friendship between the great historian William Hickling Prescott and his biographer, Ticknor is a witty, fantastical study of resentment; and a biting history of a one-sided friendship.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
15 people are currently reading
947 people want to read
About the author
Sheila Heti
55 books2,181 followersSheila Heti is the author of ten books, including the novels Motherhood and How Should a Person Be? Her upcoming novel, Pure Colour, will be published on February 15, 2022.
Her second children’s book, A Garden of Creatures, illustrated by Esme Shapiro, will be published in May 2022.
She was named one of "The New Vanguard" by The New York Times; a list of fifteen writers from around the world who are "shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century." Her books have been translated into twenty-three languages.
Motherhood was chosen by the book critics at the New York Times as one of the top books of 2018, and New York magazine chose it as the Best Book of the year. How Should a Person Be? was named one of the 12 “New Classics of the 21st century” by Vulture. It was a New York Times Notable Book, a best book of the year in The New Yorker, and was cited by Time as "one of the most talked-about books of the year.”
Women in Clothes, a collaboration with Leanne Shapton, Heidi Julavits, and 639 women from around the world, was a New York Times bestseller. She is also the author of a children’s book titled We Need a Horse, with art by Clare Rojas.
Her play, All Our Happy Days are Stupid, had sold-out runs at The Kitchen in New York and Videofag in Toronto.
She is the former Interviews Editor of The Believer magazine, and has conducted many long-form print interviews with writers and artists, including Joan Didion, Elena Ferrante, Agnes Varda, Sophie Calle, Dave Hickey and John Currin. Her fiction and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Bookforum, n+1, Granta, The London Review of Books, and elsewhere.
She has spoken at the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, the New Yorker Festival, the 92nd Street Y, the Hammer Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and at universities across North America, and festivals internationally. Her six-hour lecture on writing, delivered in the Spring of 2021, can be purchased through the Leslie Shipman agency.
She is the founder of the Trampoline Hall lecture series, and appeared in Margaux Williamson’s 2012 film Teenager Hamlet, and in Leanne Shapton’s book, Important Artifacts. She lives in Toronto.
Her second children’s book, A Garden of Creatures, illustrated by Esme Shapiro, will be published in May 2022.
She was named one of "The New Vanguard" by The New York Times; a list of fifteen writers from around the world who are "shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century." Her books have been translated into twenty-three languages.
Motherhood was chosen by the book critics at the New York Times as one of the top books of 2018, and New York magazine chose it as the Best Book of the year. How Should a Person Be? was named one of the 12 “New Classics of the 21st century” by Vulture. It was a New York Times Notable Book, a best book of the year in The New Yorker, and was cited by Time as "one of the most talked-about books of the year.”
Women in Clothes, a collaboration with Leanne Shapton, Heidi Julavits, and 639 women from around the world, was a New York Times bestseller. She is also the author of a children’s book titled We Need a Horse, with art by Clare Rojas.
Her play, All Our Happy Days are Stupid, had sold-out runs at The Kitchen in New York and Videofag in Toronto.
She is the former Interviews Editor of The Believer magazine, and has conducted many long-form print interviews with writers and artists, including Joan Didion, Elena Ferrante, Agnes Varda, Sophie Calle, Dave Hickey and John Currin. Her fiction and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Bookforum, n+1, Granta, The London Review of Books, and elsewhere.
She has spoken at the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, the New Yorker Festival, the 92nd Street Y, the Hammer Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and at universities across North America, and festivals internationally. Her six-hour lecture on writing, delivered in the Spring of 2021, can be purchased through the Leslie Shipman agency.
She is the founder of the Trampoline Hall lecture series, and appeared in Margaux Williamson’s 2012 film Teenager Hamlet, and in Leanne Shapton’s book, Important Artifacts. She lives in Toronto.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
January 7, 2023
I appreciated Ticknor more for the way it plays with language, narrative form, and writing conventions, rather than the actual story. With quite a confusing, and often times unreliable, narrator, who regularly switches between first and second points-of-view, Sheila Heti successfully plays with what writers can achieve through the usage of perspective.
My main issue with the novel is that it doesn't lead to anything. There's no crux, no conclusion. It presents a thoughtful rumination on jealousy within friendships and a curious case of platonic obsession, but we're essentially at a fictive standstill. It's interesting because the novel's tendency to lean into introspection seemed to be both its strongest and weakest points.
However, being a lover of language, I was mesmerized by how accurately the writing portrayed anxiety, in particular, social anxiety—something I could relate to. The prose was entirely self-absorbed, incessantly self-critical, and had the perfect, frantic energy of a socially anxious person's stream of consciousness. It read like Ticknor's actual thoughts, which I was impressed by.
My main issue with the novel is that it doesn't lead to anything. There's no crux, no conclusion. It presents a thoughtful rumination on jealousy within friendships and a curious case of platonic obsession, but we're essentially at a fictive standstill. It's interesting because the novel's tendency to lean into introspection seemed to be both its strongest and weakest points.
However, being a lover of language, I was mesmerized by how accurately the writing portrayed anxiety, in particular, social anxiety—something I could relate to. The prose was entirely self-absorbed, incessantly self-critical, and had the perfect, frantic energy of a socially anxious person's stream of consciousness. It read like Ticknor's actual thoughts, which I was impressed by.
February 21, 2013
What happens, in biography, when people become word-people? I experienced Ticknor as an exhibit-puzzle, or documentary sculpture, about this question. The book is on to this meta-dynamic in a cunning way. The oracle-sage is speaker who is stumbling with neurosis, unconfident, and of existentially cloudy presence. He is cognitively "wrong" in term of literary makeup, choices, and "quality", but his timid anthems are extraordinarily interesting. Why? They coagulate into an extended, oblique riddle on being. Build a seminar on it, theorists.
Reading Ticknor is a weird experience in self-assessment. It is written in a modern interpolation of late 19th-century period language that is studded with rereadable profundities that wink and peek out of the dross. Picture someone reading about someone writing about someone else, and, in a leap of imagination, watch imaginary tracers buzz through the resulting stream of consciousness. You might approach a kind of frontier. In front of you is the broad expanse of things have to do with reading and writing that no one acknowledges. It is a space of false silence: things ride on words that pass through us unrecognized, but with noisy effects.
How do the words you use: create trust, make people change their mind about you, erode you? What is forgotten? What is essential? Why do some paragraphs seem relevant, while others are obtuse? How much can you skip over and still get by? What makes an approach obsessive, or crass? What creates influence? Why are some people prattling into the void, while others are lionized? How does this happen? These are Ticknor's problems, Ticknor's problems, and yours.
Reading Ticknor is a weird experience in self-assessment. It is written in a modern interpolation of late 19th-century period language that is studded with rereadable profundities that wink and peek out of the dross. Picture someone reading about someone writing about someone else, and, in a leap of imagination, watch imaginary tracers buzz through the resulting stream of consciousness. You might approach a kind of frontier. In front of you is the broad expanse of things have to do with reading and writing that no one acknowledges. It is a space of false silence: things ride on words that pass through us unrecognized, but with noisy effects.
How do the words you use: create trust, make people change their mind about you, erode you? What is forgotten? What is essential? Why do some paragraphs seem relevant, while others are obtuse? How much can you skip over and still get by? What makes an approach obsessive, or crass? What creates influence? Why are some people prattling into the void, while others are lionized? How does this happen? These are Ticknor's problems, Ticknor's problems, and yours.
February 16, 2023
a book about the dread of the dinnerparty
October 21, 2009
This review appeared in The Peterborough Examiner in December, 2005.
TICKNOR
by Sheila Heti
House Of Anansi Press
April 2005 HC
112 pages
$19.95
ISBN: 0-88784-191-0
Review by Ursula Pflug
515 words
Ticknor is Toronto writer Sheila Heti’s first novel. Her previous book, also published by Anansi, was a collection of confounding, quirky, clever short stories about, among other things–an old woman who lived in a shoe. And since rewritten fairy tales or in this case nursery rhymes written for the adult contemporary reader are one of my absolutely favourite things, well, I was smitten by The Middle Stories. Even the stories that weren’t based on fairy tales read like fairy tales.
The Middle Stories garnered lots of attention, most of it praise, along with a little puzzlement. And Heti was young and cool and lived in New York as well as Toronto and had her stories published in McSweeney’s, and got people feeling cranky because of it. I wasn’t cranky. I ate the stories like the chocolates I thought they were.
Ticknor is about a couple of 19th century male writers in Boston, but it’s not a historical novel in any traditional sense. It all takes place on one night, in one man’s mind, that of George Ticknor, a Prufrockian sort who sporadically publishes long dull articles about canals, and lives in rented rooms while his few suits get shabbier and shabbier. He’s a bit of a sad sack, our George, and envies his childhood friend William Prescott, who is an ambitious, driven, and wildly successful historian in spite of compromised eyesight due to a bun catching him in the eye at boarding school, which really happened. Ticknor and Prescott are historical figures, but this novel in no way tries to give us an accurate account of their lives. Heti was inspired to write it after swiping a Ticknor biography of Prescott from an Annex pub down in the big smoke. But she didn’t read the book from end to end; she slipped in and out of it, engaging in a process wherein the style and the feelings in Ticknor’s book influenced the style and psychology of her own.
In Ticknor, Ticknor has been invited to a soiree at Prescott’s home, a place awash in good food and drink, pretty women, and the leading lights of the time. Anyone who has ever dithered even a little about an invitation will empathize with poor George, who does nothing but dither. The novel is basically a meditation on failure and envy and the aspects of friendship often little discussed. Poor George’s mental tape loops go over and over the same ground for over a hundred pages as he worries about what to wear and what to bring and whether to even go and changes his mind on each count a dozen times. We feel sorry for Ticknor; we pity him; we don’t particularly like the Prescott we are shown, and wonder if George couldn’t have pulled more out of the fabric of his own life and gifts than to spend most of it looking over his shoulder at his friend, feeling he compares badly, hoping for attention.
Like The Middle Stories, Ticknor is sharp and clever and short and fearsomely original. But I liked The Middle Stories more.
TICKNOR
by Sheila Heti
House Of Anansi Press
April 2005 HC
112 pages
$19.95
ISBN: 0-88784-191-0
Review by Ursula Pflug
515 words
Ticknor is Toronto writer Sheila Heti’s first novel. Her previous book, also published by Anansi, was a collection of confounding, quirky, clever short stories about, among other things–an old woman who lived in a shoe. And since rewritten fairy tales or in this case nursery rhymes written for the adult contemporary reader are one of my absolutely favourite things, well, I was smitten by The Middle Stories. Even the stories that weren’t based on fairy tales read like fairy tales.
The Middle Stories garnered lots of attention, most of it praise, along with a little puzzlement. And Heti was young and cool and lived in New York as well as Toronto and had her stories published in McSweeney’s, and got people feeling cranky because of it. I wasn’t cranky. I ate the stories like the chocolates I thought they were.
Ticknor is about a couple of 19th century male writers in Boston, but it’s not a historical novel in any traditional sense. It all takes place on one night, in one man’s mind, that of George Ticknor, a Prufrockian sort who sporadically publishes long dull articles about canals, and lives in rented rooms while his few suits get shabbier and shabbier. He’s a bit of a sad sack, our George, and envies his childhood friend William Prescott, who is an ambitious, driven, and wildly successful historian in spite of compromised eyesight due to a bun catching him in the eye at boarding school, which really happened. Ticknor and Prescott are historical figures, but this novel in no way tries to give us an accurate account of their lives. Heti was inspired to write it after swiping a Ticknor biography of Prescott from an Annex pub down in the big smoke. But she didn’t read the book from end to end; she slipped in and out of it, engaging in a process wherein the style and the feelings in Ticknor’s book influenced the style and psychology of her own.
In Ticknor, Ticknor has been invited to a soiree at Prescott’s home, a place awash in good food and drink, pretty women, and the leading lights of the time. Anyone who has ever dithered even a little about an invitation will empathize with poor George, who does nothing but dither. The novel is basically a meditation on failure and envy and the aspects of friendship often little discussed. Poor George’s mental tape loops go over and over the same ground for over a hundred pages as he worries about what to wear and what to bring and whether to even go and changes his mind on each count a dozen times. We feel sorry for Ticknor; we pity him; we don’t particularly like the Prescott we are shown, and wonder if George couldn’t have pulled more out of the fabric of his own life and gifts than to spend most of it looking over his shoulder at his friend, feeling he compares badly, hoping for attention.
Like The Middle Stories, Ticknor is sharp and clever and short and fearsomely original. But I liked The Middle Stories more.
July 14, 2022
This book follows the real person George Ticknor, heading out to his friend and (real) american historian William Prescott’s party in Boston in the early 1900s, and is completely in Ticknor’s head. If you have social anxiety, this book might feel too close to home as he wonders whether Precott even likes him, if he’s being invited out of pity, if his pie will be welcome, if he will know anybody, if we will make a favourable impression or be an awkward loner, if his suit will smell from the rain, if the pie will be accepted only out of pity, if he will be *too* late for the party (if only he’d left earlier!) or maybe he shouldn’t have left at all, is it too late to go home, he probably won’t really be missed…. (iykyk).
Amongst those thoughts is Ticknor reflecting on his friendship with Prescott, and the jealousy he has for Prescott’s success. Ticknor feels like a failure, and reflects on all the what-ifs that could have made him successful, even blaming Prescott’s success on societal pity of his visual impairment. It is a fascinating read because Ticknor is so unreliable. I couldn’t parse out whether his relationship with Prescott is toxic, and Prescott himself has curated Ticknor’s social unease and personal lack of faith, or whether Ticknor is just shy and lacks confidence. I couldn’t tell whether Ticknor was at all successful or a complete failure, whether he was truly awkward and unlikable or just thought he was. Of course, with all things in our own heads, do we ever really understand objective reality and our place in it (without therapy)?
This is a slow, painfully introspective book. Heti was particularly interesting as she pulled from real sources, including Florence Nightingale, throughout her book to inform the relationship between Ticknor and Prescott and their histories together. For a first introduction, I really enjoyed this book (beyond the constant cringing from secondhand anxiety) and am really excited to read more from her.
Amongst those thoughts is Ticknor reflecting on his friendship with Prescott, and the jealousy he has for Prescott’s success. Ticknor feels like a failure, and reflects on all the what-ifs that could have made him successful, even blaming Prescott’s success on societal pity of his visual impairment. It is a fascinating read because Ticknor is so unreliable. I couldn’t parse out whether his relationship with Prescott is toxic, and Prescott himself has curated Ticknor’s social unease and personal lack of faith, or whether Ticknor is just shy and lacks confidence. I couldn’t tell whether Ticknor was at all successful or a complete failure, whether he was truly awkward and unlikable or just thought he was. Of course, with all things in our own heads, do we ever really understand objective reality and our place in it (without therapy)?
This is a slow, painfully introspective book. Heti was particularly interesting as she pulled from real sources, including Florence Nightingale, throughout her book to inform the relationship between Ticknor and Prescott and their histories together. For a first introduction, I really enjoyed this book (beyond the constant cringing from secondhand anxiety) and am really excited to read more from her.
November 10, 2015
one of my favorite books. you can read it in an afternoon. there are some unforgettable lines. i had three of them in my head for a year without realizing where they were from: TICKNOR. the writing is crisp and elegant: TICKNOR. i loved the sad & pathetic narrator: TICKNOR.
October 1, 2007
A great little book that really exploits the first-person lens, both in voice and perspective. She's too young to write this good!
January 15, 2017
What is there to say about this book? Has some good prose in it at times but overall the story did not draw me in. Did it even have a story? Hard to say. Very tangential or free flowing writing
June 15, 2024
“- and still you lack the courage to think what you're thinking.” / “shedding the skin we had both worn, that now only I wore.”
In the midst of the story, it already reminded me of that anecdote about Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky: the first learned that the latter was fond of honey, and a few days later Rachmaninoff showed up at Stravinsky’s doorstep in the middle of the night with an enormous jar of honey and no explanation.
And as it turns out later in the book, Mr. Gardiner does make a present out of his ginger harvest to Prescott and leaves it on his doorstep: “boxed it up in red and gold and made them a present of it, leaving it on their doorstep with no note.”
However, it is indeed an original, witty, fantastical, devastating history of a one-sided friendship.
“But you do not love him as you profess to, to him and to yourself. You love him in a cold way. It wasn't always in my mind this way, but he has changed somewhat. After the success of his book there was a slight change of emphasis. I would have liked to sit closer, but other people pushed in beside him and he didn't seem to care.”
PS For more on R & S’ cold-hearted honey/love story: https://www.academia.edu/16092712/Rac...).
In the midst of the story, it already reminded me of that anecdote about Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky: the first learned that the latter was fond of honey, and a few days later Rachmaninoff showed up at Stravinsky’s doorstep in the middle of the night with an enormous jar of honey and no explanation.
And as it turns out later in the book, Mr. Gardiner does make a present out of his ginger harvest to Prescott and leaves it on his doorstep: “boxed it up in red and gold and made them a present of it, leaving it on their doorstep with no note.”
However, it is indeed an original, witty, fantastical, devastating history of a one-sided friendship.
“But you do not love him as you profess to, to him and to yourself. You love him in a cold way. It wasn't always in my mind this way, but he has changed somewhat. After the success of his book there was a slight change of emphasis. I would have liked to sit closer, but other people pushed in beside him and he didn't seem to care.”
PS For more on R & S’ cold-hearted honey/love story: https://www.academia.edu/16092712/Rac...).
June 19, 2024
I encountered Sheila Heti about 20 years ago in the back issues of McSweeney's, where I was getting a chaotic introduction to the strange world of experimental fiction. A few favorites emerged from that feverish reading period (Steven Millhauser, Anthony Doerr, Deb Olin Unferth). Sheila Heti grabbed my attention through her distinctive style, and I've followed her work since (while missing, unintentionally, her two most popular titles).
Ticknor is modeled on George Ticknor, a 19th century Bostonian academic, who wrote a biography of his close friend William Prescott, another Bostonian academic. While they're both semi-obscure now, they were prominent in their lifetimes, leaving plenty of historical material for Heti to draw upon. She recently told Adam Moss that writing this book was "painstaking," only completing about 20 pages per year. Ticknor is a biographical portrait of a fawning biographer, and Heti places us in Ticknor's head, who is fully preoccupied with his relationship with Prescott, dancing between admiration and envy.
The plot, to the extent it's there, is Ticknor's walk to Prescott's house for a dinner party. Ticknor fears that not only is he going to be late, but he will embarrass himself in front of Prescott and his company who (in Ticknor's view) have left him behind. Ticknor fully inhabits his doubts, taking on an inverse esprit d'escalier where he imagines all of the ways in which he's going to bungle the evening's conversations.
The opening pages are a bit destabilizing. As Ticknor walks in the rain, pie in hand, the narration slides between the first and second person as he chides himself, second-guesses himself, reassures himself. The first lines show how this works:
To be clear, Ticknor is just talking to himself here. The novel proceeds like this, so nervous and agitated, to the point that I set down Ticknor after about 25 pages to pull up Ticknor's actual biography on Prescott. Was Heti having fun with a bit of pastiche? Turns out, no, not at all. Ticknor's Life of William Hickling Prescott is a dutiful, competently written biography that leans into hagiography, sure, but in a charming way. I'm glad I read it. For one, that book was weirdly engaging for a 19th century biography about a historian. But, more importantly, Chapter 2 of Ticknor's (real) biography describes the incident that altered the course of Prescott's life. While a junior at Harvard, Prescott was leaving a dining hall, when, upon hearing a disturbance behind him, turned around only to be struck in the left eye with a stale bread roll that had been thrown his way. He was blinded in that eye.
Heti saves this scene for the close of the novella, and, if I hadn't read the real biography, I would have assumed that Heti's description of the scene was invented given how absurd it sounds. Blinded by a piece of a bread. Huh? Not only did it (mostly) play out as she describes it, she adapted several lines directly from Ticknor's biography. I was not expecting that. Then, elsewhere, she takes liberties. Moments that feel like they were lifted from the history, given their plausibility, were not.
So, it's a novella that keenly disguises how much of it is historical. The style settles down a little bit about midway through the book, and I enjoyed the book more when the scenes started to rise above Ticknor's agitated mind. The prevailing inquiry of Ticknor is about what it's like to lead an inferior life. Ticknor yearns for Prescott's attention and approval. Ticknor even lewdly admires Prescott's wife. Meanwhile, Ticknor realizes that he doesn't have the work ethic, charm, and self-assured style that gives rise to greatness. His remonstrations collide with his justifications. Ticknor takes a pitying and pitiful approach on a writer's proximity to greatness. A few years after releasing this book, Heti was credited with heralding the arrival of autofiction as the fashionable literary form of the moment. I can't help but wonder if there's an autobiographical angle, but that's incidental to the point.
Ticknor can be read in one sitting. I first read it in 2016, and I didn't quite get it then. I don't think I was fully to blame since her work resists a straightforward reading. Heti has a bold vision with her writing, experimenting liberally with form (just look at her latest: Alphabetical Diaries). After finishing my reread of Ticknor today, I immediately flipped to the first page to make sure that I understood what I had just read.
Ticknor is modeled on George Ticknor, a 19th century Bostonian academic, who wrote a biography of his close friend William Prescott, another Bostonian academic. While they're both semi-obscure now, they were prominent in their lifetimes, leaving plenty of historical material for Heti to draw upon. She recently told Adam Moss that writing this book was "painstaking," only completing about 20 pages per year. Ticknor is a biographical portrait of a fawning biographer, and Heti places us in Ticknor's head, who is fully preoccupied with his relationship with Prescott, dancing between admiration and envy.
The plot, to the extent it's there, is Ticknor's walk to Prescott's house for a dinner party. Ticknor fears that not only is he going to be late, but he will embarrass himself in front of Prescott and his company who (in Ticknor's view) have left him behind. Ticknor fully inhabits his doubts, taking on an inverse esprit d'escalier where he imagines all of the ways in which he's going to bungle the evening's conversations.
The opening pages are a bit destabilizing. As Ticknor walks in the rain, pie in hand, the narration slides between the first and second person as he chides himself, second-guesses himself, reassures himself. The first lines show how this works:
There were no books when I was a boy. Books were hardly accessible, yet there were some books. That is why I did not develop literary taste. I read what I found and it was for fun. You read mostly for idle pleasure. I did not read for fun, nor was I cultivating my mind. I cannot imagine cultivating anything as a young boy. It is not my fault if I was not an erudite boy. Other boys had books and other boys had libraries. No, the whole country lacked books then.
To be clear, Ticknor is just talking to himself here. The novel proceeds like this, so nervous and agitated, to the point that I set down Ticknor after about 25 pages to pull up Ticknor's actual biography on Prescott. Was Heti having fun with a bit of pastiche? Turns out, no, not at all. Ticknor's Life of William Hickling Prescott is a dutiful, competently written biography that leans into hagiography, sure, but in a charming way. I'm glad I read it. For one, that book was weirdly engaging for a 19th century biography about a historian. But, more importantly, Chapter 2 of Ticknor's (real) biography describes the incident that altered the course of Prescott's life. While a junior at Harvard, Prescott was leaving a dining hall, when, upon hearing a disturbance behind him, turned around only to be struck in the left eye with a stale bread roll that had been thrown his way. He was blinded in that eye.
Heti saves this scene for the close of the novella, and, if I hadn't read the real biography, I would have assumed that Heti's description of the scene was invented given how absurd it sounds. Blinded by a piece of a bread. Huh? Not only did it (mostly) play out as she describes it, she adapted several lines directly from Ticknor's biography. I was not expecting that. Then, elsewhere, she takes liberties. Moments that feel like they were lifted from the history, given their plausibility, were not.
So, it's a novella that keenly disguises how much of it is historical. The style settles down a little bit about midway through the book, and I enjoyed the book more when the scenes started to rise above Ticknor's agitated mind. The prevailing inquiry of Ticknor is about what it's like to lead an inferior life. Ticknor yearns for Prescott's attention and approval. Ticknor even lewdly admires Prescott's wife. Meanwhile, Ticknor realizes that he doesn't have the work ethic, charm, and self-assured style that gives rise to greatness. His remonstrations collide with his justifications. Ticknor takes a pitying and pitiful approach on a writer's proximity to greatness. A few years after releasing this book, Heti was credited with heralding the arrival of autofiction as the fashionable literary form of the moment. I can't help but wonder if there's an autobiographical angle, but that's incidental to the point.
Ticknor can be read in one sitting. I first read it in 2016, and I didn't quite get it then. I don't think I was fully to blame since her work resists a straightforward reading. Heti has a bold vision with her writing, experimenting liberally with form (just look at her latest: Alphabetical Diaries). After finishing my reread of Ticknor today, I immediately flipped to the first page to make sure that I understood what I had just read.
November 13, 2024
Short, strange novel, but nonetheless captures much of what the mid-19th century literary scene in North America was like.
December 19, 2025
Such an assured voice, really impressive early work from Heti. A very good novel of minor and major social anxieties, usually played for humour (Heti’s stylistic instincts lend themselves well to understated humour), and so I found myself a bit surprised by how genuinely moving I found the final ~20 pages. Great novel to read in one sitting on a short flight
June 23, 2020
It is a very clear reflection of just how profoundly limited the world of literary reviews and awards is when a a writer such as Sheila Heti receives such accolades for her first novel- Ticknor. How is this novel in any way a worthwhile exploration of the profoundly complex emotion of resentment? It is so completely myopic in its treatment of Ticknor that it is laughable and completely inane. Unfortunately it’s not surprising yet still still disillusioning that writers such as Heti are celebrated as insightful when they are merely showboating with language with no real understanding of the substance of the material with which they are supposed to be engaged.
August 5, 2016
Favourite Character: N/A
Least Favourite Character: N/A
Pros:
*There were some real stand out lines in this book. I was moved to re-read a few sections of prose two or three times because of how striking they were.
Cons:
*I really didn't like the creative element of this book; was it a conversation? Sometimes there would be a sentence or two from a different speaker, but it would not be differentiated in any way in the long blocks of text. It was just difficult to get a reading flow going. I kept being pulled out of it.
Least Favourite Character: N/A
Pros:
*There were some real stand out lines in this book. I was moved to re-read a few sections of prose two or three times because of how striking they were.
Cons:
*I really didn't like the creative element of this book; was it a conversation? Sometimes there would be a sentence or two from a different speaker, but it would not be differentiated in any way in the long blocks of text. It was just difficult to get a reading flow going. I kept being pulled out of it.
Read
December 13, 2021It seems rather odd to me - after reading his masterful "History of Spanish Literature" - that Ticknor would be portrayed as a someone plagued by insecurity. This is the guy who introduced the study of modern languages and literatures in America, at a time when the country was opening up to the world and trying to find its own literary voice. Prescott and him were BOTH highly praised scholars.
July 6, 2012
incredibly irritating for such a short book.
November 26, 2022
What a sad guy!
April 14, 2025
Ticknor is a difficult man. He is a complainer and an obsessive. He is inconsistent, small minded, and possibly has a split personality. His life is defined by his jealousy of Prescott, who seems to be everything that Ticknor is not. Ticknor sees all of the flaws in his own life and imagines that Prescott's life is perfect. He envies Prescott for his wealth, his scholarship, his ability to get things done despite personal obstacles and poor health and, of course, for his wife. Even Prescott's death seems enviable. Ticknor gives Prescott every reason to despise him, and yet Prescott still treasures Ticknor as a friend because he is unique and smart, and they have known each other forever. Prescott has another friend, Gardiner, who is kind and helpful. He is always there for Prescott with a helping hand. But still somehow Gardiner comes off as a pale shadow of humanity. There isn't much to him. For my friends, give me a hundred Ticknors, difficult though they may be, and spare me the ass kissing Gardiners.
Ticknor reminded me very much of one of my own friends. I think that he would recognize himself, but I don't have to worry about that because he'd never read this book or my Goodreads review. He's always difficult, always a little nuts, and yet he is like no one else I know, so I hope that he stays my friend for the rest of my life.
One last point of interest is the theme of blindness. Ticknor himself is of course the one most afflicted with lack of vision, though in his case it is metaphorical. But it affects Prescott too - first because he has vision loss from being hit in the eye with a hard roll (probably thrown by Ticknor, perhaps trying to equalize them), but then also he becomes a sponsor of an Asylum for the Blind, believing, perhaps erroneously but perhaps not, that the blind have special sight. This belief may be part of his continuing attraction to Ticknor. And then Prescott finds a nurse in England who he imports back to Boston and installs at the Asylum for the Blind where she displays special curative talents. She then becomes Prescott's guardian in his final days, blocking all of his friends from seeing him. I came away from all of this feeling that blindness in different forms is an essential part of the human condition, mostly as a curse, but sometimes also as a blessing.
Ticknor reminded me very much of one of my own friends. I think that he would recognize himself, but I don't have to worry about that because he'd never read this book or my Goodreads review. He's always difficult, always a little nuts, and yet he is like no one else I know, so I hope that he stays my friend for the rest of my life.
One last point of interest is the theme of blindness. Ticknor himself is of course the one most afflicted with lack of vision, though in his case it is metaphorical. But it affects Prescott too - first because he has vision loss from being hit in the eye with a hard roll (probably thrown by Ticknor, perhaps trying to equalize them), but then also he becomes a sponsor of an Asylum for the Blind, believing, perhaps erroneously but perhaps not, that the blind have special sight. This belief may be part of his continuing attraction to Ticknor. And then Prescott finds a nurse in England who he imports back to Boston and installs at the Asylum for the Blind where she displays special curative talents. She then becomes Prescott's guardian in his final days, blocking all of his friends from seeing him. I came away from all of this feeling that blindness in different forms is an essential part of the human condition, mostly as a curse, but sometimes also as a blessing.
February 16, 2019
I had read Sheila Heti's more recent book which upon looking back at it was some Lena Dunham-esque drivel that made no important or lasting points. But this novella was totally different in tone, style, setting...pretty much everything. Surprising!
Ticknor is a horribly insecure, self-loathing man living in Boston and London who spends a long winter night frittering away obsessing over his ailing friend Prescott. It was so interesting to read about intense social anxiety and deep, bottom-of-a-well-like depression in the 1800s, when men had to uphold so many expectations. I mean can you imagine a man in a top hat and spats who is so worried about what others think of him?? Well that is exactly who Ticknor was. The way he coveted Prescott's life--wife, career, charisma--was frankly pathetic. He is also so territorial and possessive of him, prizing his childhood memories above everyone else's, those who only knew him as an adult. "In all, of all the great sorrows that marked the day of his passing, none was so great as mine, none so carefully tuned to the harmony of his own light, which had shrouded me since we were boys." It's almost feminine the way he heaps praise on this guy--not just praise, but like I AM HIS BEST FRIEND, ME. Again not something you see much in literature, and certainly not of men of that era.
Sheila Heti is actually a beautiful writer here! (See contrasting thoughts on her millennial nonsense, above.) She writes about Prescott's contagious smile, "a smile as natural to him as the feeling of hunger in others." And Ticknor's thoughts about Prescott's feelings towards his adulatory social circle: "his friends who were perhaps like so many social ornaments, more like the jewelry on the hands of one so admired than intimates at all."
I found myself having to concentrate so hard on this little book. It was very modernist (is that the literary style I'm looking for?) so much so as to be almost opaque on the page. Stream-of-consciousness, confusing perspectives, and a lot of Ticknor writing letters to tertiary characters that never have much importance to the story or giving himself these very negative pep talks using the second person. I was pretty impressed by this as a technical piece of writing. I only give it a three because intellectually I really liked it, but content-wise and narrative-wise, not my favorite.
Ticknor is a horribly insecure, self-loathing man living in Boston and London who spends a long winter night frittering away obsessing over his ailing friend Prescott. It was so interesting to read about intense social anxiety and deep, bottom-of-a-well-like depression in the 1800s, when men had to uphold so many expectations. I mean can you imagine a man in a top hat and spats who is so worried about what others think of him?? Well that is exactly who Ticknor was. The way he coveted Prescott's life--wife, career, charisma--was frankly pathetic. He is also so territorial and possessive of him, prizing his childhood memories above everyone else's, those who only knew him as an adult. "In all, of all the great sorrows that marked the day of his passing, none was so great as mine, none so carefully tuned to the harmony of his own light, which had shrouded me since we were boys." It's almost feminine the way he heaps praise on this guy--not just praise, but like I AM HIS BEST FRIEND, ME. Again not something you see much in literature, and certainly not of men of that era.
Sheila Heti is actually a beautiful writer here! (See contrasting thoughts on her millennial nonsense, above.) She writes about Prescott's contagious smile, "a smile as natural to him as the feeling of hunger in others." And Ticknor's thoughts about Prescott's feelings towards his adulatory social circle: "his friends who were perhaps like so many social ornaments, more like the jewelry on the hands of one so admired than intimates at all."
I found myself having to concentrate so hard on this little book. It was very modernist (is that the literary style I'm looking for?) so much so as to be almost opaque on the page. Stream-of-consciousness, confusing perspectives, and a lot of Ticknor writing letters to tertiary characters that never have much importance to the story or giving himself these very negative pep talks using the second person. I was pretty impressed by this as a technical piece of writing. I only give it a three because intellectually I really liked it, but content-wise and narrative-wise, not my favorite.
January 15, 2024
poor old George Ticknor. he must have had a lonely life, a life he had wanted to be different to what it was. the opening pages of the book set him up as the ultimate unreliable narrator, in a kind of spirographic whorl of contradictions woven into a dense mandala of neurodivergent monologue.
the book does open up much more so than other "recursive" novels i have read lately - Lispector, Fosse, Amy Arnold, Cusk to a lesser degree - but that initial flurry serves as the basis for what follows; the toe is dipped into those swirling waters a few more times.
i very good book, very pleasurable to read; it starts by winding the tension like winding a clock, and the rest of the book is the steady unspooling of that tension, not towards any true release, but until time runs down.
the book does open up much more so than other "recursive" novels i have read lately - Lispector, Fosse, Amy Arnold, Cusk to a lesser degree - but that initial flurry serves as the basis for what follows; the toe is dipped into those swirling waters a few more times.
i very good book, very pleasurable to read; it starts by winding the tension like winding a clock, and the rest of the book is the steady unspooling of that tension, not towards any true release, but until time runs down.
April 27, 2019
Most of me wants to rate this book even worse. It’s rare that I read something I enjoy so little. But part of me believes in the promise of challenging and unconventional literary work that, like poetry; requires decoding. Part of me suspects that this book is like difficult convention-bending or just sophisticated music that repays multiple listening and is enhanced by familiarity. Part of me thinks there's value here even if I can’t see it. For better or for worse, this part of me lost with this one.
Sheila Heti plays with and subverts some touchstones of conventional modernist work, like the reliable narrator, linear or continuous narrative, and (for a historical novel) clear relation to actual historical figures, on which the book is at least indirectly based. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the way sincere reviewers and whatever marketing hack wrote the backflap gestures at a narrative arc in this book. Don't read the backflap; it's nonsense. Certainly there is a scene, fragmented and distributed, “about” an envious, self-pitying wretch carrying a pie in the rain. There are sense impressions distributed across the years and a few distinct events.
Heri can write, which is a something. This book reminded me of other psycho-drama monologues including Saul Bellow’s Dangling Man and Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. At least this one was short.
Sheila Heti plays with and subverts some touchstones of conventional modernist work, like the reliable narrator, linear or continuous narrative, and (for a historical novel) clear relation to actual historical figures, on which the book is at least indirectly based. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the way sincere reviewers and whatever marketing hack wrote the backflap gestures at a narrative arc in this book. Don't read the backflap; it's nonsense. Certainly there is a scene, fragmented and distributed, “about” an envious, self-pitying wretch carrying a pie in the rain. There are sense impressions distributed across the years and a few distinct events.
Heri can write, which is a something. This book reminded me of other psycho-drama monologues including Saul Bellow’s Dangling Man and Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. At least this one was short.
February 24, 2020
I don't know. It took me a while to figure out that the long paragraphs, alternating between first and second person singular, with sentences that sometimes agreed and sometimes disagreed, were all the main character thinking to himself. I thought there might be a dialog occuring, or some jumps in time (still think that might be the case), or possibly some letter writing. A neutral narrator's voice would have helped me to be honest.
Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind. Maybe the author overreached. Most likely the former, judging by most of the other reviews.
Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind. Maybe the author overreached. Most likely the former, judging by most of the other reviews.
September 14, 2025
There's resentment in Ticknor's mind built up over a lifetime of observing a friend (?) be who he's aspired to be with little success. He's mean about it, he spirals and creates scenarios in his head about it. On paper, something I'd love to read! But the style is obtuse and unpleasant and it took me 2 weeks to go through these 100 pages.
Positives: The you/I narration device is interesting, and the final pages are surprisingly touching.
Positives: The you/I narration device is interesting, and the final pages are surprisingly touching.
July 25, 2023
Not been impressed by most of Heti's work that I've read. Thought this was great, cool concept. I've been Ticknor for sure! I guess whatever prestige she maintains is really just a hangover from early critical successes. Hesitant to give an out-and-out five stars, but consider this a 4.5 leaning towards a five rather than a four.
December 19, 2025
I thought the concept of this book was interesting. It was a little hard to follow at times - I had to restart if because I wasn't sure at the outset if it was two people talking, or just one. It had a couple of humorous moments, but it wasn't necessarily an easy book, despite its brevity. I did enjoy it, though, and thought it was a very original concept and execution.
January 1, 2020
I definitely like the idea of a slim novel that essentially follows one man doing something menial and doomed while he muses on the pathetic nature of his life, and Heti’s prose is wonderful, but I’m not sure this one will stick with me.
December 5, 2021
Repetitious, inane drivel.
October 14, 2022
He’s just like me fr fr 😭❤️🩹
November 4, 2022
I’ve read it and I still don’t know what it’s about.
November 21, 2023
Proxy for ‘According to Alice’ - New Yorker short story discussed w Ann’s book club. AI collaboration.
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