Weighing In on "How Should a Person Be ?"

Last week I was introduced to Sheila Heti and her latest novel How Should a Person Be? in James Wood's New Yorker review.  While the review piqued my curiosity (I'm generally curious about what women, especially women my age, create), I also felt somewhat dismayed.  Part of me wanted to read the book and part of me thought, Gawd, it sounds obnoxious.   The intrigue lay in the multiple forms the novel takes (email transcriptions, mini-essays, script-like dialogue, etc.) and in Heti's artistic background, especially as the novel includes large doses of autobiography.  But this infusion of "real life," or at least what Heti decided to include of "real life" or how she chose to portray it, was part of my hesitancy ( I want to say revulsion, but it feels too strong a word).  Reading about North American artists living in Toronto making art and pondering life could be interesting, but it could easily veer into privileged whiners talking a bunch of dribble. In his article, Wood includes a line from the book that summed up my fears. At one point the narrator's  friend says, "everybody we hang out with is pretty competent at vaguely intelligent party talk."  Wood then confirms that, to him, this was "a fair summary of the book's presiding atmosphere."

Later, on my Facebook feed I saw a comment about the novel by Cathy Park Hong, a poet whose work I deeply admire.  She wrote something to the effect that it was refreshing to read a novel that deals with women's friendships revolving around art and intellect, not around relationships and babies.  this was enough to tip me over the edge.  How refreshing indeed to read something of this nature.

What Cathy Park Hong describes above is what salvages the book for me; that and, at least substance-wise, the fact that there are moments of clear, and often true, understandings of male-female relationships. Though not a feminist book, it is powerful to read a young female character intone, more than once, about men she casually meets that he was " just another man who was trying to teach  me something." 

Before I go on, let me explain the plot--though traditional narrative trajectory is not a primary focus for Heti here.  The narrator, also named Sheila, is a playwright experiencing writer's block. She hangs out with friends who are also artists, her best friend being Margaux, a painter. (These characters are named and based on real life friends of the author).  Popping up are brief flashbacks of Sheila's childhood, her marriage in her early twenties, and the beginning of her friendship with Margaux.  Though set mostly in Toronto, Sheila also travels to Miami, New York City and Atlantic City. Sheila not only suffers from writer's block, but also from one existential crisis after another, the main crisis captured in the novel's title. There is also her job at a salon, a sado-masochist relationship with a man named Israel, and an ugly painting contest that serves as a metaphor for how Heti constructed her book and for the narrator, which I will get to momentarily.

I read the book in a day. When finished, I felt somewhat furious. As I suspected, the narrator is completely obnoxious.  This is part of Heti's plan, to make Sheila "ugly" as she reveals the character's desire for fame, for writing a play that will "save the world", for a being a leader for the people.  Heti certainly does not intend for Sheila to be a heroine, nor do I expect it, and yet it is an irritating process to read through the intentional failings and shallowness of this character.

In addition to all her other shortcomings, Sheila also struggles with being a good friend.  She demands much from Margaux, from advice, to reassurance, to ideas for her play, to adding depth to who she is based on her proximity to her friend.  

Margaux, on the other hand, is an excellent foil to Sheila (While reading I often wished the book was about Margaux instead).  Margaux also waxes existential. She isn't sure that painting is meaningful, but she is a hard worker and a successful painter nonetheless.  Margaux is certainly more self assured, more clear-minded about how she wants to live, which includes making "the big mistakes" in order to be more free, especially in her art.  What I don't understand about Margaux is why she is friends with Sheila. At one point the two are talking and Margaux delivers the line that irked me so much in Wood's review:   "everybody we hang out with is pretty competent at vaguely intelligent party talk." "But," Margaux goes on to say to Sheila, "you say things that make me think better..."  I think both Sheila and I were stunned by this declaration.     

While the two often talk about art, Sheila leans so hard on Margaux's personality that as a reader I forgot what Sheila herself genuinely thinks about it.

In terms of the book's craft, there were elements I appreciated, such as the multiple narrative forms I mentioned above which, if not new, appear fresh here. A clear, direct prose often materializes as well. However, there are many times when an image is given more weight than it deserves, such as police horses moving outside Sheila's bedroom window.  There are lines where any poetic intention falls flat.  For example, upon writing about her experiences with Margaux in Miami, Sheila feels "pride bloom(ed) in me like spring, like something new was being born."  There is also the messy inclusion of Sheila's dreams.  Early on Sheila consults her Jungian analyst about a dream she has; while this initial dream reveals Sheila's fear of being perpetually stuck and resisting artistic risks,  the analyst never appears again and yet the reader is stuck with more dreams that serve nothing more than tedium.

As for the sado-masichist relationship, I only wish Sheila recognized Israel as being  "just another man who was trying to teach  me something."  

In my brief obsession with this book, I read an interview where Heti says that all she wants is to be funny.  Some of the other reviews of the book describe this book as funny. While I do see how Heti's writing is deliberately hyperbolic, how she is poking fun at how many of us experience a world saturated with fame and ridiculous ambitions, I still fail to see how Heti executes humor.  

I certainly don't believe that Heti is naive, so this is another reason why it is difficult to have a narrator who perpetually appears to be in her early twenties (however much this references the Jungian analyts' mention of puer aeternus, "the eternal child").  Perhaps Heti has astutely portrayed a general atmosphere of North American culture, of artistic sensibilities and personal anxieties of a certain class of young women, but in doing so her novel gets bogged down in gawky writing and self-indulgence.