“Do not hide at the top of Mount Carmel or at the bottom of the sea with the tropical fish and a heavy tank of oxygen on your back, for I will find you even there,” declares a divine voice in Sheila Heti's novel. Distinctly Judaic and phallocentric—puns throughout the text accentuate this point—God functions here as a metaphor for the ways we warp our actions according to the desires of others. Thus, jettisoning our concern for this “Godience” is one path toward a kind of authentic being that relates to our narrator's quest “to be the human ideal.” This book, a haphazard meditation upon what an ideal might be—and how such an ideal might relate to artistic production—focuses on authenticity in part because artists are expected to be “authentic” according to some preconceived audience notions of authenticity. In contrast to this notion, Heti offers authentically authentic action as simultaneously solipsistic/“natural”—a reflex, like smashing a spider—and cathartic/ecstatic. To act neither “in the hopes of being admired” nor to please nor “to win someone's regard”—to act in a way that simply does not take other people into account—leads the narrator to the experience of “floating upward to the heavens.” “Nature” offers a nonjudgmental (and personally pleasing, “beautiful”) substitute for God, but it is one devoid of ethical concerns of constraints. Indeed, “righteousness” and “benevolence” are suspect terms, linked here with attempts to please others, a charge one character levels at the Buddha. In an age where social media has rendered “fame” ubiquitous, making “exile” from attention a constant threat, the relevance of Heti's reflections cannot be discarded. This fascinating, troubling text will surely provoke discussion in a range of theology and philosophy courses.
