Irony often plays on the gap between expectation and reality. The gap between is a commonplace in much schlemiel fiction. Playing on the main motif of How Should a Person Be? Sheila Heti, the main character and author of the novel, casts the other as her teacher. She looks for ethical and artistic models of […]
One of the major tasks of the modern Enlightenment project is to “demythologize.” As a part of this project all types of myths are challenged. They need not be changed by science, the humanities, and psychology, however. The greatest battling ground for challenging mythology may be in the medium that is used to convey myth; […]
Success and failure – winning and losing – define our lives and how we think of ourselves. But sometimes one blurs into the other. One of Bob Dylan’s most quoted lyrics – from his song “Love Minus Zero” – addresses the paradox of success and failure: “She knows there’s no success like failure and that […]
I can remember the first time I ever heard a story about the Jewish fool otherwise known as a schlemiel. What struck me about the story, when I first heard it (when I was six or seven years old), was that the schlemiel wasn’t an independent agent. He lived amidst other schlemiels – in a […]
When I first started reading Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? I was struck by the title, the first words of the novel, and their speaker, the main character, who is an amalgamation of fiction and non-fiction: her name is Sheila Heti. Her book, published in 2012, has received great reviews by The New […]
Sheila Heti – the author, narrator, and main character of the comic novel How Should a Person Be? – has fears that if she trusts someone, she may hurt someone and hurt herself. But, as we learn from the prologue, she has to if she is to learn how a person should be. She doesn’t […]
Schlemielintheory.com had the opportunity to recently interview the stand-up comedian David Heti. Samples of his work – which include videos, podcasts, and blog entries – can be found on his website/blog: http://davidheti.com/ I ran into David recently when he did a show with a group of comedians in Toronto. We talked after the show and […]
As we move more and more into the fluid world of social networking, we see more people inside of academia make claims that are daring and attention-grabbing. One such claim is made at the end of Adam Kotsko’s Awkwardness. After discussing different kinds of awkwardness that we see in popular culture in the first few […]
Since being published last week, Lena Dunham’s recent “Jewish boyfriend or dog” joke for The New Yorker has received enormous attention and most of it has been negative. The first major hit was an article that came out three days ago by Kveller – a site that is written by Jewish women and is acutely […]
Today is Schlemiel-in-Theory’s Birthday!!! It turns two years old today. The blog has, in the time of a year, gone from one thousand to nearly four thousand followers! And, as with any birthday, I would like to make a resolution that this year I will redouble my efforts to find and write on new and […]
Schlemiel Theory 