How Should a Person Be? is a bold interrogation into the possibility of a beautiful life. A novel of many identities, it is an autobiography of the mind, a postmodern self-help book, and a (mostly) fictionalized portrait of the artist as a young woman -- of two such artists, in fact. 

After leaving her marriage, and unable to finish writing a feminist play, Sheila finds herself in a quandary of self-doubt. Astonished by her friend Margaux’s seemingly untortured ability to live and to paint, Sheila begins to treat Margaux and their circle of friends as specimens in an ugly experiment that she hopes will reveal an answer to the question of how to live and create. 

Along the way, Sheila confronts a cast of painters who are equally blocked in an age in which "the blow job is the ultimate artform." Sheila begins questioning her desire to be Important, her quest to be both a leader and a pupil, and her unwillingness to sacrifice herself. 

Searching, uncompromising and yet mordantly funny, How Should a Person Be? is a brilliant portrait of art-making and friendship from the psychic underground of one of North America's most fiercely original writers.