Reading Sheila Heti’s breakthrough novels, How Should a Person Be? (2012) and Motherhood (2018), I kept thinking that I was the only one who noticed how religious they are—Jewish, mostly, which is how she was raised, but Christian too, with some non- Western source material thrown in. Once I’d Googled the reviews, I realized I was right and wrong. With a few exceptions, she has not been pigeonholed as a Jewish writer or, worse, the author of works on spirituality. Instead, she’s seen by mainstream critics as a feminist, which she is; as avant-garde, which I suppose she is (although I never quite know what that means); and as a writer of autofiction, which she isn’t.
I don’t deny that some of her work has autobiographical content. How Should a Person Be? hews closely to Heti’s coming-of-age as a writer in a small circle of young artists in Toronto, and the narrator of Motherhood is a successful writer and childless divorcée approaching 40, as Heti was when she wrote the book. Her new novel, Pure Colour, has one important element drawn from life, the death of her father. Heti plunders her experiences and emotions and sexuality for material, but what novelist doesn’t, to a greater or lesser extent? In Heti’s hands, her story is a means to an end that most so-called autofiction writers—indeed, most writers of anything perceived as metafictional— would shy away from. She is doing more than blurring the boundary between the real and the made-up. Heti uses the details of her life to do theology.
Denne historien er fra March 2022-utgaven av The Atlantic.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra March 2022-utgaven av The Atlantic.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Boat Fish Don't Count
The wild, obsessive, dangerous pursuit of Montauk's biggest striped bass
The Anti-Rock Star
Leonard Cohen's battle against shameless male egoism
A Brief History of Yuval Noah Harari
How the scholar became Silicon Valley's favorite guru
Rachel Kushner's Surprising Swerve
She and her narrators have always relied on swagger-but not this time.
Men on Trips Eating Food
Why TV is full of late-career Hollywood guys at restaurants
You Think You're So Heterodox
Joe Rogan has turned Austin into a haven for manosphere influencers, just-asking-questions tech bros, and other \"free thinkers\" who happen to all think alike.
What Abortion Bans Do to Doctors
In Idaho and other states, draconian laws are forcing physicians to ignore their training and put patients' lives at risk.
THE LOYALIST KASH PATEL WILL DO EXACTLY WHAT TRUMP WANTS.
A 40-year-old lawyer with little government experience, he joined the administration in 2019 and rose rapidly. Each new title set off new alarms.
THE RADICAL CONVERSION OF MIKE LEE
IN 2016, HE TRIED TO STOP TRUMP FROM BECOMING PRESIDENT. BY 2020, HE WAS TRYING TO HELP TRUMP OVERTURN THE ELECTION. NOW HE COULD BECOME TRUMP'S ATTORNEY GENERAL.
HYPOCRISY, SPINELESSNESS, AND THE TRIUMPH OF DONALD TRUMP
He said Republican politicians would be easy to break. He was right.