Ottessa Moshfegh Reads Sheila Heti

[MUSIC] This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker magazine. I'm Deborah Treesman, Fiction Editor at the New Yorker. Each month, we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month, we're going to hear "My Life Is A Choke" by Sheila Heddy, which was published in the New Yorker in May of 2015. If there had not been a twinge of anxiety in me that something still needed to be said, I would still be in the ground. The story was chosen by Otesa Moshfeg, who's the author of one short story collection and three novels, including "Ilean," which won the Penn Hemingway Award for Fiction, and "My Year of Rest in Relaxation," which will be published later this month. Hi, Otesa. Hi, Deborah. So Sheila Heddy published her first story collection in Canada, where she's from in 2001, when she was 24, but her breakthrough book in a lot of ways was "How Should a Person Be," which she called a novel from "Life," and that was published here in 2012. Was that what you first read by her? No, this is the first thing I've read by Sheila Heddy. Really? Yes. Have you gone back and read the books? I didn't want to. I didn't want to have a context for this story. It seemed so singular, so weird, right? So much about the creative process of writing short stories in general, but I didn't want to know who Sheila Heddy is. I just wanted to talk. I'm sure I'll go and read her work after I've processed this with you. But it's a funny thing to say about Sheila Heddy because so much of her work is about who she is, and about using her own identity in her fiction. So in a way, if you've read this story, maybe you do know more about her than you think. Maybe. Maybe. But I think it's, I mean, I personally, for my work, I would rather have somebody having a conversation about a story and not about me, right? Sorry, Sheila. I loved your story. I'm sure I'll get to know the rest of your work later. And did you read this when it came out in 2015? No, I found this. I was going through the archive. This one rang a different kind of bell for me. It's like, wow, how does this work? And I wanted to investigate how it worked. I mean, as a writer, how did she do this? Where does the story begin? Where does it reinvent itself? Why am I confused? And why does this make so much sense? And then the more I investigated, the more I was like, no, no, I don't actually want to figure this out. There's something kind of sacred and beautifully perfect about it. And the way that things happen when the story is inspired. Well, I'm going to make you talk about it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um, okay. Well, then I think we should probably dive right in. Let's do it. And we'll talk somewhere after the story. And now here's a Tessa Moshevag. "Reading My Life Is A Joke" by Sheila Heady. "My life is a joke." When I died, there was no one around to see it. I died all alone. It's fine. Some people think it's a great tragedy to die all alone with no one around to see it. My high school boyfriend wanted to marry me because he thought the most important thing to have in life was a witness. To marry your high school girlfriend and have her with you all through life. That is a lot of witnessing. Everything important would be witnessed by one woman. I didn't like his idea of what a wife was for. Someone to just hang around and watch your life unfold. But I understand him better now. It is no small thing to have someone who loves you, see your life, and discuss it with you every night. Instead of marrying him, I married no one. We broke up. I lived alone. I had no children. I was the only witness to my life while he found a woman to marry than had a child using fertility. Her family of origin is large and lives near them, same with his family of origin. I visited them one time and at his birthday dinner there were 30 relatives and close friends, including their only child. We were at the home of his wife's parents in the small coastal town where they were building their lives. He got exactly what he wanted. He has 30 reliable witnesses. Even if half of them die or move away or come to hate him, he still has 15. When he dies, he will be surrounded by a loving family who will remember when he still had hair. Who will remember every night that he came home stinking drunk and yelling? Who will remember his every failure and love him in spite of it all? When all his witnesses die, his life will be over. When his son is dead, and his son's wife is dead, and the children of his son are also dead, the life of my first boyfriend will be through. When I drew my last breath, no one saw me. The car that hit me drove quickly away and a driver stopped to carry me out of the center of the road. I was already dead when he carried me so I can say I died alone. Now, you can probably tell that I'm lying. If I really am okay with the fact that no one I loved witnessed my death, why did I come all the way back here from the dead? Why did I put on the flesh of my body and the clothes I wore my last day on earth? Why did I resume the voice I spoke with when I was living and return to the weight I was at the time of my death? I even washed the dirt out of my eyes and my hair, settled my teeth in the places in my mouth where they were before they got knocked out. Why did I bother doing that? It was a lot of work. I could have stayed in the ground for eternity. I could have stayed there disintegrating if I felt that my life was resolved. Here's the thing, I was a joke and my life was a joke. The last man I loved, not my high school boyfriend, told me this during our final fight. I was 34 at the time. During the fight, as I was trying to explain my version of things, he shouted, "You are a joke and your life is a joke." The night before we loved each other still. We went to bed at the same time and as he read a popular crime novel on his phone, I fell asleep on my pillow, gently touching his arm. A few days later, I died. It has taken me since that time, four years, to understand the full significance of what he said, that I was a joke and my life was a joke. At the moment he said it, I didn't know how to reply. I was so hurt I just began bawling. This only proved to him that he was correct. I stared at him with an open mouth. Of course, I was used to his cruelties by then, but still at hurt. When I received your invitation to come speak here tonight, didn't you know I had died? You did not. When I received your invitation, at first I thought, "No, I cannot come." The truth is I had no reason to. But then a few months later, I wrote you a note, "I'll come if you pay to dig me up. If you'll pay to fly my corpse across North America, from where I am buried, and wheel me to the mic stand, then yes, I'll come." As I flew, I worked so hard to keep in my dead brain what I wanted to say. It was the whole reason I'd said yes. I had something important to declare. What was it? Have I said it already? Thought slipped from a dead brain so quickly. I can't remember if I said it. Lying there under the ground, salt and soil and sweat and worms and seedlings and saplings and the bones of dried birds collecting in my mouth and my blood caked dry and my toes curled up and my brain filled with hair and the feathers of birds and the little white balls of whatever it is that sometimes specks the soil, those little styrofoam balls and the shit of dogs and the piss of skunks and the seedlings and the saplings and the acorns and the raisins. It is so amazing I could think down there in that total wet darkness. You never know lying in the ground what your niggling thought will be. You can take only one thought with you to the grave and invariably it is a thought that bugs you, something that must be thought all the way through to the end before you find peace. The thought I took was of a man I loved saying you are a joke and your life is a joke. It cleaved to my head and my muscles and my bones until I was nothing but those words. When my life collapsed inward, which is what death is, life collapsing deep into itself, that phrase remained outside the collapsing. It became a thing separate from me. And because it was separate from me, I could take it with me. It was the only thing I had. Could I have a glass of water, please? Where is my water? I am parched and I am dead. Tomorrow I will be on an airplane home, down there with all the luggage, peace in my bones, having declared what I came here to declare, what I realized when I was underground. Then I will be dead for the rest of eternity, never having to brush myself off. The man who said I was a joke and my life was a joke. He may not have been there in my final moments, witnessing my final breath, but what I realized was he foretold my death. He could only have foretold it by seeing me to my core, by having been my soul's witness. When he said those awful words, he witnessed me into the future. A future he knew I would meet. During our fight, I tried to convince him that he was wrong. "I'm not a joke," I cried. "You're the joke! You're the joke!" When a person slips on a banana peel and dies, then her life is a joke. Slipping on a banana peel is not how I died. When a person walks into a bar with a rabbi, a priest, and a nun, and that is how she dies, then her life is a joke. That is not how I died. When a person is chicken, who crosses the road to get to the other side, and that is how she dies, then her life is a joke. Well, that is how I died, as a chicken crossing the road to get to the other side. When I crossed the road that day, it was to the other side I was heading. That was how much despair I felt, our fight still in my mind. Why did the chicken cross the road to get to the other side? A suicide. The other side is death. Everyone knows that, right? I scurried out in front of that rusty old car and smashed myself into the metal. My teeth pushed back into my throat by the fender. My chest completely run over. I didn't come here to depress you. I came here to tell you a joke, or rather to show you a joke, me, and to brag that I was witnessed. That first boyfriend of mine, he doesn't live far from here. Perhaps he is in the audience listening, having a beer? I hope he's here. My life and death were witnessed, I tell you. Witnessed and foretold. You did not fare any better than me. It seems both of us won in the end. What a chicken I was. I couldn't bear any aspect of living. Especially that old custom, that you have to live better than everyone else. What is the other side like? You may be wondering. Since I'm here, I might as well tell you. It's a ridiculous place where everyone is always laughing. It's like something I experienced once on a transcontinental flight. This woman beside me laughed at every dumb joke in whatever show she was watching, literally every joke the show made. Then she watched another show, then another one. Her laughter filled our row of seats. She didn't stop laughing from takeoff to landing. How a person's laughter can make you hate her. Don't the laughers of the world know this? Do they think it makes them lovable? Who likes to hear someone laughing to herself? Headphones on while staring at a screen? Probably the same people who like to listen to strangers fuck behind a hotel wall. Over there on the other side, it's like that all the time. The dogs laugh, the trees laugh, everyone laughs, whether there's anything funny or not. I practiced this speech on the other side before an audience of 16 people and it took four hours from beginning to end as I waited after saying each sentence for the laughter to subside. Here on earth it is different of course. The quiet of the living is one of the great reliefs. Is death the same for everyone? Or is this laughing world a death made just for me? How can I know for sure? Does anything I'm saying make any sense? I'm self-conscious about my speaking. Does my voice sound alright? When you are dead it's difficult to carry a thought. My head feels stuffed with cotton batting. My eyes feel stuffed with cotton balls. My ears feel plugged up with cotton. It is hard to think, to string meaning to meaning. I did not come here to tell you I love you. Is that what you think I'm saying? I only loved two men ever. One of them wanted to marry me and the other thought my life was a joke. My first boyfriend found himself a witness and I have come to declare that I found one too. I won, you see? I won. I won the best thing a person can win to be seen. I declare it here today. It's the only reason I crawled into my flesh to stand here before you, a joke on this stage. His words no longer hurt me. They make me feel so proud. Why did the chicken cross the road? That's me. I am the chicken. And I got to the other side. He knew this would happen when he spoke those words. How beautiful to be seen. That was Otessa Mushvig, reading My Life Is A Joke by Sheila Heady. The story appeared in the New Yorker in May of 2015. We are in uncharted territory. Staff writer Evan Osnos on the New Yorker radio hour. I think all of us right now are trying to make sense of an avalanche of news every day. And there aren't very many places where you can go and understand how something looks in the grand scope of history and context. That's what I come to the New Yorker for. I'm David Remnick. And each week my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world and I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker radio hour. Otessa, one of the things that makes this story work is the fact that it feels even when you read it on the page, it feels read aloud. It feels in a way like a stand-up comedy monologue or something. And in fact, it was written originally to be read aloud. It was written for an event at I think Hugo House, a writer center in Seattle, which had a theme laugh after death. Strange theme. Strange theme. And Sheila Heddy did have to fly across the country to go and read this story. So what I was going to say is it's a story that you can't take literally, but maybe in some ways, you can take it literally. Well, one thing I love about the story is I didn't get that we were being talked to in that way. And so a couple pages in where she, she gestures towards why she's there to give the speech. So then I'm like, oh, I've been reading a speech. I mean, that's so strange about the prompt. Was it laugh after death? Yeah, writing is so weird. I mean, to know that now makes this even weirder. I mean, I'm just imagining being Heddy and like, okay, how do I, how do I approach that prompt and start starting off with the thing that comes at the end really, that asking herself if she's created this afterworld of ridiculous laughter. What do you think of that vision of the afterlife, a place where everyone just laughs constantly? And also a place where you're only allowed to take this one sort of unresolved nagging thought with you. Well, I believe that is true. That's what we have to look forward to. I mean, I think that's why people pray and why certain people try really hard to have their first thought in any instance of stress or ecstasy or whatever to be something good because they believe that when you die, you're going to die with that thought. I think that's true. I mean, I don't think that anyone actually dies thinking like, oh shit, I forgot to buy toilet paper. Obviously, I don't know. Nobody knows what it's like to die. But that afterworld of ridiculous laughter, I mean, there was something that I was like, yes. Of course it's going to be like that. Of course it's going to be a world of total absurdity. We're human emotion, our sensitivities, and the drama, and the heartache. Of course that's all disposed of. Everything is ridiculous. Everything is absurd. There's something satisfyingly obscene about imagining that. Satisfyingly awful, I mean. (laughs) Yeah. To go through all of this and then be stuck sitting next to the woman on the plane who won't stop laughing at her sitcom. (laughs) But there's comfort in knowing too that after you're dead, your mind doesn't work the same way. I mean, the narrator makes that very clear. It's really hard to hold a thought into my head. And maybe we had a different reading because I didn't see the laughter as that annoying. Right. I thought that the comparison with the woman laughing on the plane, like yeah, in close quarters on a plane when you're stressed, when you're alive, that sounds annoying. But if you can barely hold on to what you're thinking and people are just laughing at everything, there doesn't sound like they're laughing, like cackling, like satanically. Like they're just laughing, like you would a funny TV show. There was something comforting to me. Maybe I'm weird. (laughs) That didn't sound that bad. I feel so this story is about, one of the things it's about is what happens when you take things too literally. The boyfriend makes this, what we would make is a throw or a remark. You want to insult someone, you say, "Yo, here a joke or your life is a joke." And Chico's ad says, "Well, okay, which joke am I going "to win body and am I going to slip on up an anaple?" No, I'm going to be the chicken crossing the road. Do you think it's sort of a failure of, of figured out the language or a failure of comedy? No. I actually really believe that her boyfriend was fortelling her future. I sort of do believe that everything happens for a reason, that there is a synchronicity in the universe and that he didn't say that by accident. But of course, it seems like, because that was the thing that was stuck in her mind, it's the thing that she's had to resolve. And so she's created this logic. And the logic of the story is really what I think is miraculous, it's strange logic. So she's created this logic to explain why he said that in a way that resolves her anxiety about not having been seen. Like she's turned that insult into something beautiful and validating. That is such a great way to look at life. (laughs) To look at your suicide is the chicken crossing the road to get to the other side. Yeah, the death itself, I love the description of her teeth and her chest. Oh, you know, it's, and then she immediately says, like, I didn't come here to depress you. (laughs) I'm like, don't be so sensitive. (laughs) I just like got hit by a car. It's not a big deal. But I mean, the levity is really important too. And, but that's what the story is about. I mean, death is a place where people are laughing all the time. Yeah, I mean, just this idea that in this woman's life, she had two boyfriends or she had two loves. Each of them said something cruel or implied something cruel. The first one wasn't cruel, but he implied that if she were did not have a witness to her life, it would not have been worth living. The second one says something cruel. And these two things become maybe not the guiding force of her life, but the guiding force of her death in that she tries to reconcile these two ideas. On the other hand, do you think we could read it all completely metaphorically that, you know, this boyfriend says an nasty thing breaks up with her and she dies metaphorically. And it's taken her all of this time to pull herself back together and resolve these thoughts. You could read it that way, for sure. But there, I mean, I think the story is asking for a suspension of decision about the point of view. It keeps kind of not redefining itself, but defining itself further as a story goes along. And I know that it's not true, but I'm attentive in listening, and there are a lot of true things that come out in the story. I mean, there are aphorisms, even, that feel that resonate. And the story is, I mean, it feels, it's a little bit scary. I mean, there's something scary about it. And what you pointed out about the two relationships, there might be one reading, like maybe a feminist reading or something, not that I know about how people read these things, that there's something sort of unfair, that what she would come away with is just what her boyfriends to said, you know? Like, oh, that's kind of lame. Like, what about the rest of your life? But in a story like this, that it's a narrow voice, it's navigating. You can't-- she couldn't have that much baggage, right? She's just dealing with a sentence, my life is a joke, and it has to come from somewhere. She's not around characters. Not totally flat either, but it's a voice. And what it may have to do with the fact that she could only take that one thought with her take. Right. You know, the rest has sort of rotted away into that graphically described soil. Which, you know, if the story is really about an idea and really conceptual, which it is in some ways, why do we get these detailed descriptions of the skunk piss and the acorns and the raisins and the little styrofoam balls and so on? Why are we getting that level of sort of tactile description? Well, I think that the narrator is trying to seduce you a little bit. Be like, just imagine what it's like. I'm going to tell you what it feels like and smells like, and how wet and dark it is and how kind of gross, but also, you know, you know that soil. It's a soil that you-- the styrofoam balls are a really interesting detail because they're so familiar. But we would never really think about them unless we were buried in the ground. Yeah, what are those, really? I think those are-- there are moments in the story that it becomes very literary. I mean, when it moves into those sort of descriptions. And it does feel like a seduction for the listener, slash reader. Do you think that the story is meant to be funny or meant to be cynical or nihilistic? How are we supposed to walk away feeling uplifted or sort of down-lifted? I'm not sure the story is trying to control that. I think the story is a little bit weirder than that. Then have an experience and there's a resulting emotion left over. And I got that when I read the sentence. I was the only one to witness my life while he, the boyfriend, found a woman to marry, then had a child using fertility. The awkwardness of that using fertility-- I knew it wasn't a mistake. I mean, am I right that that's not exactly how you just-- No, there's a lot of lines that are-- Yeah. --feel quite purposefully awkward. So you have the juxtaposition of language, like what she uses to describe the soil, which is, as you said, quite literary. And then things like I resumed my voice. There were quite a few examples of using fertility or his family of origin of these strange locations, which feel awkward, which feel, oh, you-- well, someone who's really a writer wouldn't speak that way. So what do you think he uses that language? I wonder if it was, at first, instinctual, to throw the voice off center so that we know that we're maybe not actually listening to a real human being with a mind like our own. There is something that feels wrong that I don't know. It's mysterious. That space that using fertility, that awkwardness created for me, which is why I fell in love with the story. It's not a canned voice. Like, let me tell you what it's like to die. And this is a strange space that is scary, also very familiar and resonant. So there's some things I can't be explained, maybe. So Heddy's brother is a stand-up comedian. And I read a really interesting conversation that the two of them did together where he said, he said, I think, for me, the comedic impulse comes from the same place as the philosophical one. They're both in response to something more fundamental, which is a sense of the absurd or disquietude, or a feeling that something is off or is not as it should be, or as you want it to be. And you can draw on those things to make a philosophical argument or to make comedy. But do you think that's what she's doing here? Certainly. I mean, I think that's one of the things that she's doing. I mean, I think I like about what her brother said that to me, it sort of underlies or it underlines the truth of how all that happens in a way, which is that we can never be right. Everything is a performance. I mean, that is why it's so absurd. Every line of thinking that we have even privately, how do we know what we actually believe or what is actually true? We're just experiencing what we think in the moment that we're alive in. And I think in literature, especially this kind of voice-driven narrative, short story, that's also a big part of it, the absurdity of just being in one moment and making a declaration. Everything is true, but I'm going to say it anyway because I need to declare something so that I can get through this moment. She also goes out of her way to make us feel at discomfort. She makes us imagine a corpse being shipped across the country and propped up in a wheelchair and pushed out on stage in front of us. Why do you think she wants us to visualize these things? Well, I think she's trying to horrify us a little bit. The body responds when it imagines a dead body. I can feel a feeling in my body that's kind of. And it reminds me of things that I've experienced. The reality of that, that I'm just going to be rotting one day. This is uncomfortable. And yet, it doesn't feel aggressive to me. She doesn't actually describe being rolled out on stage in a wheelchair, but you inferred that that was what was going on. And I hadn't thought of it that way. I had thought of her voice as more disembodied until she describes having to get on the plane. But then she says that she goes back with all the luggage. Because now, at that point, her body is useless. It's done its job. I mean, I think she is sort of trying to make us afraid. A little afraid, a little horror, a little comedy. What are we supposed to be afraid of? Oh, God. Impermanence, like we're all going to die. That is, it is a joke. Life is a joke. Death seems to be a joke too. How seriously can we take it? But obviously, very seriously. I mean, it is very serious what she's saying in its essence that she has come here to declare that she has won. Because she has now seen that she was witnessed. I mean, she, in a way, figured it out. And she wants to be witnessed witnessing her own witnessing. So witnessing is also, you know, she plays on that word a lot. And it's also sometimes, you know, used as a biblical term. You bear witness to God. Do you think that's an undercurrent here, some form of theology? I don't ever go there. Yeah. But the idea of witnessing, witnessing and being witnessed seems more and more important in our everyday life, especially with technology right now. Everybody wants to get liked or like whatever. It wants to be heard and seen, even if they have almost nothing to say, people don't seem to be thinking things through before they post them. But then you have to stick to them in order to not have been a hypocrite. There's a lot of witnessing and I don't know how, if it's actually the kind of beautiful witnessing that is important, like that's being described in this story. But the kind of witnessing that's being described in this story is something that I think everybody can relate to very deeply. Anybody who's ever felt unseen by somebody you love or you know, dismissed or overlooked any middle children out there. Everybody feels like we do die all alone. Something that's also one of the great existential fears is, if you've ever spent too much time alone, maybe part of you starts to wonder if this is all made up if any of this is actually real. Someone was explaining to me the conception of the universe, started with a particle and the particle wanted to experience itself. It was split into two particles so that I could have an objective experience of being. It's really, other people are really important. We need them. Or some people do. At the same time, how is other people? Life is hell. I mean, hell is an experience. And for this character, hell is laughing people. Do you think she's in hell? Or maybe it's limbo, right? Because she's still unresolved. Maybe now she can go back to another form of afterlife. Maybe it was once she resolved that last nagging thought she could move on. I imagined her being at peace now. Yeah. Because she took something, she took an insult and turned it into that shared experience and that witnessing. All right, she's won. Good for her. You said at the beginning that the story, you felt there was something about how one writes a story inside it. What did you mean by that? The story seems to be propelled by its own voice. It starts off. When I died, there's no one around to see it. I died all alone. It's fine. That sentiment. And then it becomes so much more than just that voice starting off. And there's something about the creative act, which depends on itself on that first stroke of the pencil or whatever, the paintbrush. Everything has to refer back to that. I mean, if you can talk about art as having DNA, it's like the DNA is all in that first line. And then it unfolds. I mean, we start off, it's a personal telling that seems, you know, there's something sort of been all about it. I had this boyfriend. I didn't marry. I mean, married someone else. Now he's got everything he wants. And I'm dead, you know. But then now you can probably tell that I'm lying. Then now we get into like the second dimension of the story. I've done all this work to come back here to talk to you. Like, how can you say, like, of course, I'm not really okay with the fact that no one I loved witnessed my death. And then, you know, you see the narrator working it out logically, out loud. I was a joke. You know, this is true. And then the story of how that line got stuck in her mind, this fight that she had with her other boyfriend. And then we get that really tactile reality of being dead and buried with consciousness, which is really disturbing, which I think is the fear of death. I mean, I think my fear of death is that, oh God, like, what if I am, what if my mind is still alive? And I have to experience all of eternity with this mind. I'm still in my skull. Yeah. I mean, it's such a purposeless fear too. I mean, it's like, well, what's the worst that could happen? I die. You know, that is hell. That is hell. The idea that we would live for all of eternity with the consciousness is the same consciousness feels like hell. The consciousness that was is aware that it is dead. So yeah, then I mean, now we're thinking really deeply about life and death in the story. It isn't just, oh, I had this boyfriend. It's not a stand up routine. And then there's this strange move. Like, what kind of corpse needs a glass of water? I mean, then it's like, okay, don't, like, let's not forget this is a performance. The performance within a performance in some ways. I mean, the story kind of goes, turns back in on itself at that point. And we get a kind of retelling of the whole, you're a joke, your life is a joke. And then this other approach to that statement, which is, you know, when you slip on a banana peel and die, you're a joke. And then, you know, I was the chicken crossing the road. And then, and then an analysis of that joke is crossing the road to the other side, like the other side. You know, she's right. How did that, how did that never occur to me before? I mean, maybe because it was a childhood joke, kind of the chicken cross the road. Um, to get to the wide chicken crust road to get to the other side. God, what a weird joke. I don't think I've ever really thought about it before. Um, not a very funny one. It is? It was never funny. Yeah. And then that play of words, to get to the other side, a suicide. It's corny. Yeah. I don't get it. Why'd you do that? But then it's like, the other side is death. I mean, there's something like the way that she's, she's using that cornyness or this canned darkness, this tough look at life and death with this also imperfect sense of comedy is what's, what's interesting. I mean, I, I love that the narrator is losing. I can feel when, when she's, her mind is moving correctly and she's like, okay, I can do it. I can do it. I'm dead and these thoughts are hard to hold on to, but I'm there and I'm speaking and I'm making my declaration. And then these other moments where the paragraphs kind of get shorter, the thoughts are more, and then this, you know, I feel dead. I mean, there's, there's something about that, or, you know, it reminds me of having a fever something. You know, I can't quite capture my own thoughts. And yet the voice is really strong. I mean, I mean, so many things are true about this story. There isn't, the reason I love it is that there, there wasn't just one way to look at it. And it's not telling me exactly how to read it either. I, I love this that she said, I couldn't bear any aspect of living, especially that old custom that you have to live a better life than everyone else. I'm sort of annoyed that she could put it so simply, you know? And I don't know, do you feel like that? I think she did it very well. Yeah. But, but that you have to live a better life than everyone else. That is exactly how I feel and it is so idiotic. It's a, it's the pressure. It is, it's a vein. It is vanity. And it is exactly what makes me miserable. That I, that I think that my life should be better than it is. Right. That I can't just have it this way and go with it. I mean, there are moments that I feel that way. And it's easier to feel that way when my life is going really well. But the pressure to have to live a better life than everyone else is so heartbreaking in its wastefulness. And, and, you know, like moments like that in the story, maybe to someone else, it's a throw away. You know, but to me, it really, really hit home. Your life is a joke is a throw away to those people. Right. Right. And then we get this description of hell or the after life or whatever you want to call it is this maybe unbearable place of laughter to me. It didn't sound that bad. At least she's not alone. What I love about it is that she practiced the speech. And it took four hours. It took four hours because it was that funny. Well, because they'll laugh at anything. Right. I can't figure out whether, you know, when I was reading it out loud, I was like, is she bragging that it took that long? Is she complaining? There's that, there's sort of two things being held simultaneously. I don't quite know. And then she asks like, is that the same for everyone? Or is this laughing world of death made just for me? You can't ever know. No, no. We may all have our own personal after lives. I mean, and I think that's true for like the experience of life too. I mean, we have language and we can correctly miscommunicate sometimes about what we experience. And I think that's a lot of what writers do is try to do that. Let me try to express through language this really strange experience I'm having within myself. I'm not even sure that you're real, you know, but maybe if I talk to you and you're my witness, it will feel real. That's the story reminded me of the singular consciousness making the attempt to be witnessed. And that is what the story is in itself. I mean, whether you say it's the attempt of the narrator or the attempt of the author, but I love that. That's so honest. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Sheila Heady is a Canadian writer whose works of fiction include The Collection, The Middle Stories, and The Novels, How Should a Person Be, and Motherhood, which was published earlier this year. A test of Mushfag story collection, homesick for another world, was a New York Times notable book in 2017. And her third novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, comes out this month. You can download more than 130 previous episodes of The New York Refiction Podcast or subscribe to the podcast for free in the Apple Podcast section of the iTunes store. On the writer's voice podcast, you can hear short stories from the magazine read by their authors. You can find The writer's voice and other New Yorker podcasts on your podcast app. Tell us what you thought of this program on our Facebook page or rate and review us in Apple Podcasts on iTunes. The New York Refiction Podcast is produced by Jill Duboff of New Yorker.com. I'm Deborah Treespin. Thanks for listening.