How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
Published 2012 · 60,000 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Fiction, Autofiction, Experimental Fiction
How hard is How Should a Person Be? to read?
How Should a Person Be? scores 39 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 35 out of 100
- Conversational and direct. Heti avoids literary ornamentation, writing in the register of everyday speech and personal reflection.
- Sentence structure: 30 out of 100
- Short, declarative sentences and transcribed dialogue. The syntax is deliberately casual, mirroring spoken language and email communication.
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- The title question drives constant philosophical reflection on how to live, how to make art, and how to be a good friend. These abstractions are embedded in everyday situations.
- Information density: 35 out of 100
- The conversational mode is spacious rather than dense. Ideas are explored through repetition and variation rather than compression.
- Narrative indirection: 45 out of 100
- The story of writing the play, the friendship with Margaux, and the affair with Israel are braided without clear causal connections. The reader must infer the novel's shape.
- Symbolic density: 25 out of 100
- Heti works through directness rather than symbolism. The unwritten play has symbolic resonance, but the novel generally resists figurative layering.
- Ironic distance: 40 out of 100
- Sheila-the-character is frequently embarrassing in ways that Sheila-the-author clearly recognizes. The gap between aspiration and behavior generates persistent irony.
- Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
- The play may or may not get written. The friendship with Margaux reaches a crisis but not a clear resolution. The question of the title remains open.
- Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
- A hybrid of transcribed conversation, email, narrative, and philosophical digression. The structure is deliberately anti-novelistic.
How How Should a Person Be? is regarded
How Should a Person Be? holds a literary regard score of 62 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.