Sheila Heti

JUST THE FACTS
Born: Toronto, Dec. 25, 1976
Currently living in: Toronto
Favourite book growing up: That Scatterbrain Booky by Bernice Thurman Hunter
First book published: The Middle Stories (McSweeney’s Books 2002)
If not a writer she would be: An actor
What inspires her: “The people, artists around me and personalities. I’m interested in what makes a human a human.”
Currently working on: A new book, How Should a Person Be?

JUST THE ANSWERS
FEATHERTALE: How much do you hate having your birthday fall on Christmas?

SHEILA HETI: Well, I’m Jewish, so it’s a bit of a different story. I kind of like it actually because no one forgets. Like May 16, no one’s going to remember that.

FT: That’s true. You’ve been described as a “cultural maverick” and told you “deliver like a motherfucker.” How would you describe yourself as an artist?

SH: I always just say I’m a writer. I guess it doesn’t encompass all the things I like to do but it’s just a useful word. People understand that.

FT: You have a very long relationship with McSweeney’s. They helped launch your career by publishing your first book of short stories, The Middle Stories. What’s the benefit of working with one publisher like that?

SH: I just look for editors I like working with who reply to emails on time and give you your edits rather than just publishing. I like working with people who are professional, and not everybody is. It’s not so much the venue as the editor. I like them to reply within forty-eight hours . . . otherwise I get paranoid. What did I say wrong?

FT: You used to act, right? I heard you were in a Barbie commercial.

SH: Ha! Two.

FT: Two! What was that like?

SH: I loved it. I liked being around adults. I liked doing things in the real world when I was a kid. You know, you make art with your friends when you’re a kid but it’s cool to have it be in relation to the actual world. And I liked going on auditions and seeing all the other girls who were supposedly like me.

FT: What did you have to do?

SH: I had to say (voice rises an octave or two), “Oh, Ken!”

FT: Ha!

SH: It was Rocker Barbie. You had to do things like forty times. It was all repetition and I liked that.

FT: I’ve also heard you dislike journalism. As an editor of a magazine run by three (out of four) journalists, I have to ask, why do you dislike our kind?

SH: Well, I just didn’t think I had the brain for it. Because you have to have a real respect for facts, and I don’t really take them that seriously. I’m more interested in interpretation, or writing about art or theatre. If you get that wrong . . . it’s not like you’re talking about war or something, you know? I don’t want the responsibility of getting something like that wrong.

FT: How do you use humour in your writing?

SH: I don’t know, but I think it’s essential. I don’t think you can have a legitimate point of view about life that doesn’t include humour and absurdity. It’s bound up in everything that happens to one. So work without humour is missing so much of life. For me it’s what makes life bearable and enjoyable. You can always feel like everything is sad, but it’s not, and even if it is always sad, it’s not very interesting to portray it that way in art. I would never try to be funny, I think it’s probably the least funny thing to do. You don’t need to make things funny; things are funny. There’s almost nothing as pleasurable as making someone laugh. Because you can’t really fake a laugh — well, you can, but it’s really obviously fake.

FT: You co-founded the Trampoline Lecture series in Toronto, which puts people in front of an audience and gets them to talk about a subject they aren’t experts in. What gave you the idea?

SH: I wanted to see people be vulnerable, and the way to make someone vulnerable is to have them talk about, I thought, things that were difficult for them to talk about. But it’s not really so much about the topics as about looking at a human in a particular uncomfortable public situation, yet trying to do well. I think there’s a kind of beauty in that.

FT: Did it ever get unbearably awkward?

SH: Oh yeah, all the time. I hated sitting through the shows the first two years — I always wanted to run. I was embarrassed for every single person on stage and myself.

FT: But that’s what you wanted.

SH: I know! I don’t know why, I thought that would be pleasure. I guess I felt like I had put them in that situation and I always only tried to get people who didn’t want to do it, so I felt doubly responsible.

FT: But you never stopped.

SH: Ha! No, I never stopped because it’s good entertainment.

FT: You also started the Metaphysical Poll blog, tracking people’s dreams about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain during the primaries. Why would you do such a thing?

SH: My friend Margaux had a dream about Hillary Clinton, and I immediately thought probably everyone was having these dreams. And it was a good way to spend my time instead of finishing a draft of my book.

FT: What was the most memorable dream?

SH: I just always think in the aggregate that the Hillary Clinton dreams where she’s like a cuckolding, you know, um, what’s the word when you chop off someone’s penis?

FT: Castrate?

SH: Yeah. And that Barack Obama was this kind of messianic figure, was really good at baseball and singing love songs and making out. And I just thought, oh God, Barack Obama’s going to win. People weren’t ready for a female president — it was really obvious.

FT: I hear you and artist Margaux Williamson have a project on the go that you call The Production Front. What’s that all about?

SH:  Whatever project Margaux and I feel like doing together, we do under The Production Front. It’s a way of putting into the world artists we really like. We haven’t done anything with books. We did a theatrical review of some sort at the Edith Wharton House in the Berkshires and the whole audience walked out and —

FT: Wait — why did they walk out?!

SH: Because John McCurley and Amy Lam’s comedy sketch, Life of a Craphead, went on too long and offended the audience. So that, um, ended on a bad note, I guess. But I felt really delighted that everyone walked out. I mean, it’s something that you kind of fear when you put on a show, but then when the worst happens, it’s sort of elating. I mean, what could get worse than this?

FT: What was so upsetting to them?

SH: Hmm, I think it was when Amy did the song “Lick My Crack” . . . I can’t remember the lyrics but it just kind of went on and on. It was kind of relentless.