How should a person be?

There are times when I read something and realize halfway through that I'm not smart enough, or cultured enough, to fully understand what the author is trying to do. It's clear that Heti is trying to write an “ugly” novel, but a lot of that intent seems to have passed me by. Mostly, I found this book to be a lot of words about art and friendship and self-questioning, without really saying much about all of them. The prose is heavy, but that is likely done in purpose; there were some beautiful moments in its leadenness, but overall it didn't quite resonate. It's probably a great book—I'm just not “with it” enough to get it.

I read this during a difficult week, while I was stressed out thinking about my job and the kind of life I want to have, and I'm not sure whether it helped me or increased my disquiet. Both, through the means of the latter, is the answer this book gave me. This kind of suffering and shame, and the forgiveness and understanding that accompany them in an ideal situation, is necessary in order to become a human being.

I marked a lot of pages in this book, but here's one passage that I've been thinking about a lot because it's also the theme of a university course I'm taking and it's something of which I am still trying to understand the implications and next steps:

Yet the three ways the art impulse can manifest itself are: as an object, like a painting; as a gesture; and as a reproduction, such as a book. When we try to turn ourselves into a beautiful object, it is because we mistakenly consider ourselves to be an object, when a human being is really the other two: a gesture, and a reproduction of the human type. One only has to travel on a subway during rush hour and pull into a station and see all the people waiting to get on and off to be struck by how many of us there actually are in the world.