TICKNOR by Sheila Heti — reviewed by Stella

What to do when you’re read all of one of your favourite author’s books and there is nothing new on the horizon? Go backwards, of course! When you discover a writer you enjoy, it is usually somewhere mid-stream in their writing journey. They have risen to the top of the publicity machine, or cracked the bestseller list. Or you’ve discovered them via a friend’s or bookseller’s recommendation. Maybe they have made it through the distribution chain, been spied by a bookseller, landed on a shelf, and made it to your hand almost unbidden. Possibly you noted a review or were taken by the jacket design. Whatever myriad way in which you discover new authors, it’s bound to be somewhere in the midst of their writing career. (Unless they are a one-hit wonder!) So going backwards, when forwards is not an option, is often a possibility and adds context to what has come after. I thoroughly enjoy Sheila Heti’s writing. While I appreciate her obvious knowledge of literature and her skill with language, it is her curiosity which is most endearing. A curiosity with her own psyche and with writing as an experiment as well as an experience, paired with her sly wit, make her books thought-provoking and enjoyable. Her work starting with How Should a Person Be? (not her first published work — somewhere in the middle) is based on herself or a fictionalised idea of Heti. One can never be too sure about reality with Heti, but many of her books are described as ‘novels’. Her books are equal parts hilarious, earnest, infuriating, heartfelt, and compelling. This range of responses can be raised on a single page sometimes, and maybe this is what makes her work so interesting. So, to going backwards…
Ticknor, initially published in 2005, is a historical novel of sorts. Inspired by the real-life friendship between the American historian William Hickling Prescott and his biographer, George Ticknor, it’s a novella exploring friendship and scholarly society. Don’t let the unfamiliar names put you off. I knew nothing about these fellows, and it didn’t matter. Ticknor is a study in envy. And also an exercise in form. It’s been compared with Thomas Bernhard’s The Loser, and garnered a bit of attention in literary circles when it was published. And here is one literary circle where the bonds of a one-sided friendship has no opening. For Ticknor, this is a closed circle, one which means more to him than he does to his fellow writers. While his childhood friend climbs the ranks of fame and fortune, Ticknor becomes increasingly psychologically distraught and paranoid. A bitterness seeps in much like the rain that wets him through as he stands outside Prescott’s house deliberating his attendance at a dinner party to the point where it is too late to venture inside! Here is Ticknor, hardly likable, and here are his cronies, even less likable and disagreeably pompous. And yet, this is what Ticknor aspires to, inclusion and feted admiration. Should we sympathise? Heti balances our hand and heart with Ticknor’s absurdities and the ludicrous situation of scholarly jealousies. Here humour, her sly wit, come to the fore, and paired with the taut writing, make Ticknor, the novel, a worthy contender, while Ticknor, the man (in this fictional telling) not a contender at all. This novella isn’t the best of Heti’s work, but I enjoyed the stylitsic form and playful pointedness, and the wit keeps you there. Heti’s writing is always pushing at possibilities and exploring new ways to tackle the novel as form, as well as exploring how we live in the world. Her latest book, Alphabetical Diaries, is a case in point. Experimental work that is amusing, and rich with ideas and curiosity.