Sheila Heti

Pure Colour is a moving and astonishing novel, as unique as each of Sheila Heti's books have been, but also transcendent in a new way: a work that illuminates a full spectrum of thought and feeling. It's about "the world beyond this world"; about God and critics and school and death and love and fathers and orphans and lamps. Mira left home. Then she got a job at a lamp store. The lamp store sold Tiffany lamps, and other lamps made of coloured glass. Each lamp was extremely expensive. The least expensive one cost four hundred dollars. This was a month's salary for her. Every day, before they closed up for the night, Mira had to turn off every single lamp. This took about eleven minutes. Mostly she turned off lamps by pulling on little beaded cords. She had to be careful not to let the cord snap back and hit the bulb or the lamp. She had to pull the cords with a gentle sort of care. It was tedious work. Mira didn't have the morning shift. That person had to turn on the lamps. Their job was no better than hers.

A Novel

Pure Colour

Stephen Schenkenberg

It's true that the world was failing at its one task—of remaining a world. Pieces were breaking off. Seasons had become postmodern. We no longer knew where in the calendar we were by the weather. We once believed that two thousand years ago was long in the past, but then we realized it was actually quite recent—just thirty generations before us. We were still at the stage of perfecting our tools: the bronze age, the iron age, the industrial age, the computer age. But spiritually, there had only ever been one age. Heartbreak was no less heartbreaking. Lust was no less lustful. We remained as proud and hungry and fearful as we had ever been. We could medicate our feelings, a least for a little while, and psychotherapy had taught us to pretend that we were better than we were. Pretending can get you part of the way, but it never gets you far enough. 

The ice cubes were melting. The species were dying. The last of the fossil fuels were being burned up. A person collapsing in the street might be collapsing from any one of a hundred things. New things to die of were being added each day.

Mira had no clear memory of her father's death, and only remembered what happened after he died, which was snow falling. This meant that her father's death was insignificant to her.

michelle

The day or second day after he died..she saw falling from the sky the sprinklings of snow.

how faithful a book was, and how strong, a place you could be safe, apart from the world, held inside a world that would never grow weak, and which could pass through wars, massacres and floods—could pass through all of human history, and the integrity of its soul would stay strong.

You will have so many more years of living, and the years will draw you far from this time when you feel so bad, and time will crust over everything, and so much more will happen to you, and though the present is all you have right now, it will all be far in the past one day, something from another time

It was a reminder of what a human self was, and what a human life was: not a beautiful glass lamp just this side of being broken, or a lovely gold ring with a single dent in it. But a battered old seashell, formed over millions of years, made to endure.

Jessie Kronke

She had given herself no time to determine if the spirit of her father is still inside her, but-Oh there! She can feel it! Rising in her chest! It was not gone, but sleeping, dormant, waiting to be called! It does not know its way around her yet. It does not know where in her body it wants to be. She will have to help it-to stop smoking and look into her chest, where this new spirit grows, rising. When it senses that she is looking for it, it expresses a surge of joy just to be seen-the same way her father expressed joy when she went to see him or called. He was always so happy just to see her. In the exact same way, his spirit is happy to be near. Perhaps her father wanted her so close simply because the spirit inside of him did, for inside of her lived his spirit's kin-but in his life they were held apart in two separate bodies. Then they were, at last, reconciled.

rain/anagha

People should care for other people because they are familiar—because they’re also humans—not because they’re family.

You know the gods consider you dangerous if you are tired all the time.

Pure Colour quotes

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