The New Yorker Radio Hour - Sheila Heti Talks with Parul Sehgal About “Alphabetical Diaries”

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

The writer Sheila Heti is known for unusual approaches, but her latest work is decidedly experimental. Heti “is one of the most interesting novelists working today,” according to The New Yorker critic Parul Sehgal. “She is ruthlessly contemporary. By which I mean, she’s not interested in writing a novel as a nostalgic exercise. She’s constantly trying to figure out  new places fiction can go. New ways that we’re using language, new ways that our minds are evolving.” To write her new book, “Alphabetical Diaries,” Heti combed through a decade’s worth of her own diaries, then alphabetized the sentences; in the first chapter, every sentence in the narrative begins with the letter “A,” and so on. “It’s fun to find writing that shouldn’t be in a novel, and to figure out, can it do the same things that we want writing in novels to do,” she shares, “which is [to] move us, and tell us something new about the world and about ourselves.” In other words, she’s not interested in experimentalism for its own sake. “I always want to write a straight realist novel,” she says. “Something proper, like the books that I love most. . . . It doesn’t happen, because I think I don’t notice the same things that those writers I love notice. I’m impatient with certain things that they were patient with.”  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Sheila Hetty is the kind of novelist that people talk about and have really strong opinions about, too. She's been very influential in the literary world and well beyond. Her book, How Should a Person Be from 2010, helped launch the trend that's called auto-fiction, books that twist and blur the boundaries between the novel. and the memoir. Writing about Hetty's last book,

the New Yorker's critic, Parles Sagle, called out her work's whimsical self-consciousness and its preoccupation with mysticism, questions of faith, and ethics.

To me, Sheila Hetty is one of the most interesting novelists working today. She is ruthlessly contemporary, by which I mean she's not interested in writing a novel as a nostalgic exercise.

She's constantly trying to figure out new places fiction can go, new ways that we're using language, new ways that our minds are evolving. Here's Parles Sago. Her newest book is titled Alphabetical Diaries. She draws from 10 years of her diaries that she kept, and she took sentences, questions, little moments from her diaries, and has woven them into a new text that has all the best characteristics of a diary. it feels very intimate, it feels private, it feels charged with all the kinds of questions you can only bring to your diary, and she makes of it a separate kind of novel populated with characters that emerge from her own life. I think even in Hetty's career, which has been marked by so many kinds of formal innovation,

it has a freshness and surprise all its own. I think this is your 11th book. Yeah. Right? Alphabetical Diaries is your 11th book. And even by your standards, this one to me felt fresh, daring, risky. Can you tell us what you've done? So it's basically, I took 10 years of my diaries, which I wrote on my computer, and put it all into an Excel spreadsheet, and then alphabetized the sentences by, you know, the first

letter of the sentence and so on. And yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that. last 10 years we're just trying to figure out how how should this be read? Like, should it be unbearable, you know, like, or should it be kind of welcoming? Like, how much of it is this sort of scientific experiment of what happens and how much of it should it be like a novel and kind of pleasurable to read and feel sort of narrative despite the lack of chronology? I was wondering if we could have you read from it from a little bit, just to give a sense of, as you say, these entries were often in the purpose of things.

figuring something out. So there are these prickly questions that come lapping at us that you have sort of, you know, arranged. But I have something from the T chapter, but we can read anything that you would like to. Yeah, T chapter is fine. Okay. So this is how the T chapter begins. Terrible day. Texting me pictures and apology. Thank God my youth is ending. That Edie Sedgwick should commit suicide. That face. That feeling I had, that pit of fear that he could not love me, is not a reason to not be with him, but a reason to be with him. That feels right to me, and that's the way I want to be in the world.

That gives me hope for things, for everything turning out okay. That hot summer, with squares of light coming through the leaves and sparkling on the ground. That is because I got up at six this morning. That is being alive. That is how I felt when I was younger anyway. That is how I spent my day. days. That is life's activity. That is the only freedom. That is the secret work no one will ever see. That is what Hungarians do, she said. That is what I am here to do. That is what the

culture demands of female writers to be as low as possible. That is what you can learn from writing this book. I had to keep myself from laughing. It's, it's, um, that last line, can I ask you what you learned from writing this book? One of the things, some of the things you learned? Yeah, it's funny. I wasn't sure that I had learned anything. And then a couple months ago, I was writing something, and I started to feel really depressed. And I thought, you haven't learned anything from editing this book for 15 years. And then I realized I could let myself write without paying so much attention to chronology

and just let my mind sort of skip through time much more nimbly, I guess. And yeah, I think that's what I learned. Like, you don't actually, chronology is not, is not the only thing that keeps a person going from beginning to end. And I think I'd known that before, but I hadn't known it quite this much. And that the way that the mind understands time

is not chronological. So without chronology, what are some of the ways that you found yourself thinking about how to get the reader going from beginning to end? What becomes the engine, the sort of momentum in this book? I think it's more like music. It's more like a rhythm. And I think it's juxtaposition. So, yeah, it's, it was, I was really like, oh, if you cut those six sentences and then sentence number one and sentence number seven are beside each other, that creates a really interesting friction. So I think looking forward to the surprise of those juxtapositions maybe. And I don't know. I think like by the end of all my editing, like it had become a world. And so you're just, you're just a surprise. You're just a surprise. I don't know. I think like, by the end of all my editing, like, it had become a world. And so you're just you're just sort of in that world and there's like a texture and there's a color to it and there's a character.

So all the things that I guess are in a normal novel. But I didn't know. Like sometimes I try different things. So sometimes I put all the years into one document and other times I tried, okay, maybe you do 2005 as one chapter all in alphabetical order, 2006 as one chapter, all in alphabetical order, 2007. You know, like there were so many different attempts at, I don't know, what am I trying to even do. There's like this way that you're, that I was trying to figure out what is even the interesting in this. So I want to understand a little bit more about what it felt like to be moving these things around. And, you know, you described it as musical and you described it as the rhythm. But it's a book that reads very well and it has a narrative starts to coalesce, right?

So tell us a little bit more about how it started to come together and started to move for you. Well, I wanted it to. So, yeah, so I, um, I made it. I mean, I made it move. Yeah, I mean, I tried to like narrow the number of characters, you know, so that you would get familiar with people. There were certain like locations that I left out. So, and so that you would feel like the world was circumscribed, you know, enough. References to things that only come up once, I was less like. And, so that you would feel like, so that you would feel like the world was circumscribed, you know, you know, enough. References to things. References to things that only come up once, I was less like, likely to keep in than references to things that come up six or seven times. And then there were certain times in the diary where there would be like some scene described at length. And I would opt to have that in the book because you remember as you go through the chapters, oh, right, you're in this place, you're in this place. I wanted it to feel like a, because 10 years is a long time, I wanted to feel like a smaller world than what 10 years actually spans in some way. Did you see, I mean, I know we were speaking about this novel, as a novel, which we should,

but I'm feeling nosy a little bit. I'm wondering if going back and spending that much time in your diaries showed you something that you didn't understand, or you understand better about some of the events that were, that you were writing about or thinking about? I don't know, you think every guy that you're with is, like, so different from every other one. And when you see it all, like, taken apart like this, you're just like, oh, I'm just going through the same thing over and over. You know, it's like this category of thinking that actually can very easily be replaced. It's humbling, isn't it? Yeah, it's sort of depressing.

I guess the other thing that was weird is just like, yeah, there's like archetypal people in your life. So there's the, it was very easy to make composite characters because there are certain kinds of people you're drawn to. And if that person falls out of your life, here comes. another person that you draw into your life that has the same traits, you know? So it was, that was sort of interesting to see, which makes the people in your life feel like it wants more essential. Like you need this bossy, whatever, female friend or whatever it is. And also, I don't know, more like people playing up like actors in a role or, you know, you cast them in a role. Maybe they're not actually bossy. You just make them bossy or, you know, feel that they're

bossing you. I don't know. It's strange. Yeah. Lately when I've been talking to writers of all kinds, I've just kind of just been asking them the same question. And I'm wondering how you're thinking about the novel now, about having done this experiment. Are there other possibilities of the novel that it's opened up for you? You mentioned chronology.

But I'm curious about how it has you thinking about the form. I don't know. I mean, I've been working on this new book for the last two or three years that kind of involves these conversations that I've had with this chat bot. And I think working with the diaries, it was what was nice about it all this time was that it didn't really feel like my voice. Because when you're writing for a diary, you're not right, it's not like a literary voice. And so you're working with something that's not intended for a book. And there's something fun and refreshing about that. And I think like, you're It's fun to find writing that shouldn't be in a novel and to figure out, like, can it do the same things that we want writing in novels to do, which is, you know, move us and tell us something new about the world and about ourselves. Yeah, I'm just really tired of my own voice right now. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. Very frequently, your novels are described as formally experimented,

and daring and avant-garde. And I'm curious if this is a conscious strategy, if this is something that you're drawn to when you're putting together a book or if it's something, these sort of technical risks and formal challenges you set yourself, if it's something that emerges from the story as you begin telling it. Yeah, it emerges. I mean, I think that's right. Like, except for this alphabetical diary's book, which did start off, like,

with a formal idea, this very strict formal idea that I was trying to follow. But no, with all the other books, no, I always, honestly, I always want to write like a straight, realist novel. I'm always trying to make something proper, you know, and like the books that I love most, like crime and punishment or whatever, you know, and a crime and a crime. But I, it doesn't happen. because I think I don't notice the same things that those writers that I love notice. I'm impatient with certain things that they were patient with.

And so the books morph according to all these characteristics, you know, of what are you impatient with? What are you actually curious about what actually looks beautiful to you on the page? What sounds good to your ear? Like all that changes what the book becomes. Yeah, but I think in my head I always, when I'm starting a new one, I always think this is going to be, this is going to be something that, yeah, something that I've read and loved. And I just want to sort of make something like that.

You once said, and I think this is, I think this was around the time, how should a person be, came out, that you were interested in experimenting with the contemporary. And when I think of your work, and I think, you know, I mentioned this a little bit earlier about your novels, never. feeling nostalgic. It never really feels like you're trying to do Middle March again. You know, you're always trying to say, what else can I, what else can I do with character and scene and dialogue and this portable form and just being in somebody's hands for a while? Yeah. I mean, I'd love to write Middle March again. Don't get me wrong. This might be a dare. But I'm wondering if if the contemporary in that particular way is still alluring to you, is something that still feels like something you are interested in meeting?

Yeah, I mean, you're right here, and that's really rare. This moment is, you know, gone now. So what is this moment? I think that that's, it's kind of scary and exciting to be right here. and I guess that's why you're here right now to document right now or to look around right now. And it's as interesting as any other time. I just feel like this kinship with this feeling like everyone who's alive today,

we're all here in this moment together, and in a hundred years no one will know what we all know, you know. And so I kind of, yeah, you want to be present for it. it seems special to be alive in a time with other people. That was an amazing answer. Thank you. Oh, thanks for having me. That was so fun. Sheila Hetty's new book is called Alphabetical Diaries, and she spoke to staff writer Parles Segal. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for listening.

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