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God's first draft

Art and the anthropocene in Sheila Heti's novel
by
April 2022, no. 441

Pure Colour by Sheila Heti

Harvill Secker, $32.99 pb, 224 pp

God's first draft

Art and the anthropocene in Sheila Heti's novel
by
April 2022, no. 441

Sheila Heti’s fifth novel Pure Colour imagines God as an artist who has just stepped back from His first draft of the universe. The ensuing story takes place in the expansive moment in which He decides whether or not to scrap it all and start again. The stakes of the narrative could not be higher – if it were not for the marked absence of any sense of human agency.

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