Sheila Heti: How a person SHOULD be [sic]

Sheila Heti's first book in the UK, How Should a Person Be? comes highly recommended by voice-of-a-generation du jour, Lena Dunham. The book itself is a wonderfully Woody Allen-esque look at the way art commands life and life is dictacted by our artistic pursuits and temperaments. It encompasses friendships, sex, life, life and all the good things. And a competition to create the ugliest painting. Heti is a warm, funny writer who took time out from a jaunt in Montreal to talk about the book, about how it came together and the greatest Canadian of all time.

What have you been up to today?

I taught a workshop in the morning in Montreal. Two of the students wanted to interview me for their paper then I came back to my hotel. I did an interview with Irish radio and now I'm talking to you. I have to give a talk in three hours and then I'm seeing friends.

Are you at the point where you're sick of talking about the book?

I'm not sick of talking about it but once you've talked about something so much, you become confused in a way. I can't really explain. You feel so clear when you start. This book came out in Canada in the Fall of 2010, so that's a long time to be talking about a book. You always want to say new things about it, so I guess, that's how one becomes confused.

I wouldn't take from anybody how they read a book. It's one of those books where a reader can project their own life on to it, so have you had anyone completely misread it?

I wouldn't take from anybody how they read a book. But a lot of the reviews have be saying, if you don't like the characters you won't like the book, or if you find the characters frivolous, you'll find the book frivolous. It's strange that you have to want to like the characters in order to like a book. I'm not that type of reader myself, so I don't understand that reaction.

Is there one question you end up getting asked a lot about the book?

People want to know how I wrote it, about the difference between me and the main character, about how my friends reacted to the book.

I'm mentally crossing out three questions then. This is your first book in the UK. Are you pumped?

I really am. One of the smartest reviews in the UK came out from Prospect and that was heartening. I mean, this is where English literature started. So it is exciting. On the other hand, you guys have chick-lit culture, which I wouldn't the book to be slotted into. Simply because I don't want the book to be ghettoised in that way. One or two reviewers asked me about my book's relationship to Montaigne and I think that's a great question I haven't been asked from an American reviewer. I'm interested to see how the book fits into that culture.

I wanted the book to configure itself around the reader rather than be an object you contemplate at a distance.I felt like the book had a very ambient texture to it, where it places scenes from Sheila's life in front of you without judgement, and asks the reader to answer the title question, using the scenes as evidence.

I wanted the book to configure itself around the reader rather than be an object you contemplate at a distance. I thought a lot about art - you can go into a gallery and see art, or you can see art in public spaces. I wanted this to feel like art in public spaces, as opposed to art in a gallery. You don't have to go into a separate realm to experience - it goes into your realm, your environment.

Is this a book that you had to live before you wrote it?

I was writing as I was living it. Obviously some of the stuff I invented and didn't live. But a lot of things came from life. I made things happen so I could write about them. Certain scenarios. Obviously the transcriptions were lived and written at the same time. When you get down to editing, it's not as simultaneous with life, but the gathering was in the moment of living.

That's interesting that you had to set up situations to live them in order to write about them.

There weren't that many situations. For instance, the Ugly Painting competition was something that we did that I encouraged to happen. I didn't realise I was writing a book at that time but I knew it would be an interesting experience for all of us and I would record it. There's a way in which I wasn't fully conscious of what I was doing, but I don't think you always are.

I have aesthetic distaste for when things become too exactThere's lots of interweaving into the narrative of emails, texts, websites. How did you achieve that and keep the narrative ticking along?

My last book was set in the 19^th Century so it was definitely something for me to contend with. I was nervous about the book being dated. I wasn't sure how it would work. For example, Paris Hilton - I was worried more about the names than the technology. Would people still know who she was when the book was done? Or what she symbolises have changed? I'd never used pop culture in any of my writing. The meanings of these things change so rapidly. The way that I incorporated emails was to not over-emphasise their email-ness. I didn't include the time sent or who they were from. I tried to strip away that unnecessary stuff. We all know what an email looks like, we don't have to show every detail of an email. I wanted it to seem more like a letter. I have aesthetic distaste for when things become too exact so I hoped with all that removed, there would be some beauty in how it was presented.

Do you think the comparisons with Lena Dunham are fair or do you think it's made mostly because you're both female?

I don't know what to say about that. I love her show and I think she's brilliant and she feels the same about me and my book. I think there's an understanding there. I don't what it means, all these comparisons. On one hand, it does silly and depressing; on the other, it doesn't seem wrong. The reason I say it can be silly and depressing, though people seem to have just woken up to the idea that young women are writing about young women, I don't think that's anything new. There's something nice about it being brought into the spotlight, but on the other hand, why is it such a novelty? That makes me feel a little sad.

Do you find it reductive, though? I find that my being referred to as British Asian author, Nikesh, means I'm instantly ghettoised. So, to be referred to as female writer Sheila Heti, instead of just Sheila Heti…

Yes. Have you seen My Dinner with Andre? I think my book has more to do with that movie than it does with Girls. I think it has more to do with Annie Hall. I think Woody Allen is a comparison that would be fair. The way he writes about his love for this woman, and how episodic it is, and the different forms he uses. I was thinking about that movie a lot. No one has made that comparison yet, but I think, why not?

Every book I write has a different narrative voice. How did you go about nailing the narrative tone so it felt like Sheila, the narrator and not Sheila the writer?

Every book I write has a different narrative voice. The voice came to me very much in an instant, when I was writing the prologue, which I didn't know was going to be the prologue. It was just a piece of writing. There was a voice in it, a tone, it wasn't me. It was a character. I loved it and I was captivated by that character. I tried to keep close to it. Obviously there is a lot of editing and you're trying to make something sound natural and like a voice and not clean it up so much. I didn't want to make it sound like literature. I wanted to make it sound like speech. Some parts I spoke into a tape recorder and transcribed, and other bits I wrote and rewrote.

Who is the greatest Canadian of all time?

Glenn Gould.

Sheila Heti's website