LBC Podcast #1: Sheila Heti

Nominator:  Mark Sarvas

Nominee:  Ticknor, Sheila Heti

Subjects Discussed: Perspectives, on writing an interior novel, research vs. devising Ticknor's character, passive protagonists, environmental details, ambiguity, anxiety, on digressing from the historical record, masking fears, Ticknor's ass fetish, writing an "epic" short novel and Canadian writers.

Backup Link: (MP3)

(A co-production of the LBC and The Bat Segundo Show.)

Comments

[Nelson LOgan]

I look upon Sheila Heti as a spoiled Canadian brat. It is absurd for the public to aclaim her writings when she has a painted a portrait of Ticknor that bears no resemblance to the man that Ticknor was in real life. The Ticknor Society www.ticknor.org/
bears witness to the contributions of this man and his daughter to founding of the Boston Public Library (the first public library). Heti obviously failed to research the real life of Ticknor and in her bratty manner merely proceeded to use her own imagination to picture Ticknor as a man of envy.
I will confess, however, that the Ticknor novel is written without a lot of the trash words that appear in Heti's other writings -- further proof that she is just a Canadian brat who is the idol of a ground of childish Canadian reviewers who claim Heti is someone that they admire.
Don't take me wrong, I like Canadians, but I feel that Canadian brats need to be known as brats.

[Michael Leone]

Mr. Logan,

The book is a novel. Ms. Heti is free to speculate, ruminate, fabricate all she wants about the real Ticknor. If she wanted to tell the real history of Ticknor, she would have written a biography, not a novel.

Now get over it.