"Should I have a baby?" Interview with Sheila Heti + Book Giveaway

A few months ago, I wrote about resources for people who were on the fence about if they wanted to have kids or not. Perhaps it is something that you are ruminating on? In this weird age of perceived expansion of choice, the question itself seems daunting. We are told that we can do everything, and have it all, but can we?

I reached out to Sheila Heti a while back with zero expectations on if she would write back to me. She is one of those people who when I read her work feels like she is speaking about my personal life experience. About me, about her life, and about humanity all in the same moment. You could say that I am a fan. Or just her work makes me feel uniquely understood.

Heti’s work brushes up against a multitude of fields of study - circling philosophy, art, psychology, religious studies, science, etc. Lots of her writing projects feel in some sense like an experiment in what writing is – human interaction, the importance of context, and how one understands the nature of being. (We, us, you, sentient being reading this). Having witness only to a singular being (one’s self) within a community of beings (everything we interact with).

I think that we both share in the search for truth and are interested in defining what is right all the while knowing that, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

In the interview, we talk about several of her projects - for she seems like a scientist trying to get to the core truth of existence. Heti enjoys fiction because there are fewer rules - one can be free to explore topics that go beyond reality. There is a different sense of accountability. She says she has a bad memory. I try to argue that the weight of her memory might be located in an alternative form of reality. But yes, I concede they are different forms of reality and in this moment, we do need a distinction between them.

It’s perhaps disrespectful to start a review of sorts with the headline that Heti says she doesn’t like that her work has been reduced to - the question, “Should I have a baby?”

Because it is so much more than that. And I agree - but I also want to take a moment to sit with the idea that this question is inherently reductive. I am not sure I know why. And it is too late to ask. I assume it is because the themes in the book can be translated and applied far beyond the concept of “motherhood.” Maybe there is an opposition to the perceived limitations of the term. I feel it, but I don’t know if I have the words for it. Heti’s opposition is important.

I choose to start with it because it is currently a topic that I am sorting through. And because you might be too.

After the interview, I wrote to her because there were lots of questions I “forgot” while I fumbled nervously through my brief time with her. One was, is there a good reason to have a child?

I don't know if there are good reasons to have a child, or good reasons not to. It's not very helpful to say but a person should just do what they want to do. I'm teaching a course called Fate and Chance now and so all these things are in my mind, but essentially I think whatever life we choose for ourselves winds up being the right one. Unless it's a total disaster. But it's usually okay even if it is.

Pure Colour is a book that circles ideas of grief, loss, and comfort. It directly confronts choice and expectations. This book is for you if you have experienced unrequited love. Parental love. Loss of a loved one. This book longs to reclaim the narrative of life and death as beautiful. As one in the same. It does so naturally, and the narrator, Mira, makes a choice to move away from despair and towards a different spectrum of colour.

If you are interested, pick up a copy here. Or comment here and we will pick someone randomly next week :)

OFFICIALLY ABOUT THE BOOK, from other people who know more than I do:

Finalist for the 2022 Governor General’s Literary Awards for Fiction

Pure Colour is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and an absurdly funny guide to the great (and terrible) things about being alive. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.

Here we are, just living in the first draft of Creation, which was made by some great artist, who is now getting ready to tear it apart.

In this first draft of the world, a woman named Mira leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal—to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and his spirit passes into her. Together, they become a leaf on a tree. But photosynthesis gets boring, and being alive is a problem that cannot be solved, even by a leaf. Eventually, Mira must remember the human world she’s left behind, including Annie, and choose whether or not to return.

AWARDS

• 2022 New Yorker Best Books of the Year long-listed