Interview: Andre Aciman, author, Call Me by Your Name – ‘The personal doesn’t have to be autobiographical’

While reading about you, I noticed that some people describe you as Egyptian American, others call you Italian American, and some introduce you as Jewish American. What resonates most with you?

Yes, it’s a bit funny, isn’t it? First of all, I was born in Egypt but I was never Egyptian. I became Italian when I was probably 10 or 11 years old, and I didn’t even know Italian at the time that we became Italian. And then I lived in Italy but eventually my Italian citizenship lapsed entirely. I can no longer retrieve it since I have become an American. But in essence, all these are names of identities that don’t capture anything essential about me.

Is there anything that does capture something essential about you?

To be very honest, if I knew the answer to that question, I wouldn’t be writing. I would be doing something else. I write in order to find out. Who am I? What do I like? What do I want? What am I tied to? I have no idea. It’s all free floating.

Wow! Your description of why you write sounds almost like a spiritual quest.

That’s true! In many respects, it is exactly what you call it. As long as I cannot identify what it is that I’m about, I can write. When I know the answer to the question “Who am I?” there would be no point in writing. Writing is an exploration. It is a trying out of several identities, and trying to fashion something. Once you are done with publishing a book, you think that the matter seems to have been resolved. Suddenly, a few days later, you realise, no, it’s not resolved. Thanks to the insoluble character that I am, the question crops up again and again. It demands a sort of resolution – one that never comes, or maybe hasn’t yet.

One of the identities you’ve discovered is Homo Irrealis, also the title of your new book. It sounds like the name of a species that you’ve concocted to explain the relationship between the real and imagined – the tensions and overlaps. Is that right?

That is completely correct. The irrealist dimension is where I am. Who might I be? Who might I have been? Who might I still become? Do I want to become that person? Do I really know where he’s going, who he is? Ultimately, I have no idea about the answers to any of these questions. And I love this. I’ve been playing with the idea of homo irrealis for quite a few years now. It allows me to enter the work of people whom I respect a great deal, and engage in acts of reading and misreading that are eventually about reading my own self.

Would you say that such a relationship between the real and the imagined is a common experience for people who have experienced displacement and exile?

There are, of course, material and emotional aspects to being uprooted. Looking at the irrealist dimension, my contention is that people who blame displacement for changing their identity were already displaced in themselves before the physical displacement took place. In my view, people who mourn the loss of a certain kind of certainty about themselves and attribute it to exile were already uncertain about who they were before the exile. Let me give you an analogy. This is somewhat like blaming the COVID-19 pandemic for all the wrong things that have happened to you in the past two years when, in fact, those wrong things were already in place anyway. You just want to avoid taking responsibility for them.

Perhaps it is easy to blame a virus because it cannot talk back?

That’s a very good point. Well said! The virus is so small; it is insignificant almost, except it kills you. But in effect, people have begun to use it as an excuse. They say things like: “I can’t come over for dinner because of the virus.” “We got divorced because of the virus.” “I got fired because of the virus.” People are blaming everything on the virus. I think the same happens in the case of exile and displacement. The external event is observable but the insoluble identity that one had was already in place. Even when I was in Egypt, which was my home, I never felt at home in Egypt. So why should I feel at home in Italy? Why would I feel at home in the United States? What does it even mean to feel at home?

There are people who don’t feel at home in their body, leave alone country.

Absolutely! That is very true. In essence, they don’t know who they are. We never know who we are. When we fill out a form, we give our name, our profession, our date of birth, and so on. But if you take away all these things, we have no idea who we are.

Having left Alexandria with your family when you were 14, do you feel New York is one of the safer places for Jewish people? Is anti-Semitism on the rise again?

Well, it’s not rising again. It has always been in place. Anti-Semitism is just part of life. I think it’s a given. However, living in New York, for example, is far easier. In fact, the only time in my life when I started saying to people that I was Jewish was in New York. In Italy, in France, especially in Egypt, you never said you were Jewish. When people asked you, you didn’t answer directly. That’s how it was. Even today, when you go to France, people rarely tell you that they are Jewish. They will tell you something about their grandparents, and it is up to you to sort of infer that they are Jewish. In comparison, I have found it easy to be Jewish in New York. It doesn’t mean that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist.

In Homo Irrealis, you introduce readers to some of your favourite writers including Sigmund Freud, Constantine Cavafy, WG Sebald, and Marcel Proust. Do you also include their work in the classes you teach at the City University of New York?

Well, I don’t teach the homo irrealis dimension in my classes. It is more of a private thing. I teach only graduate students who are writing their dissertations. I try to avoid projecting my own work in my classes but I know for a fact that almost all my students have read many of my books. If not more, certainly one of them!

Let me guess. That’s your novel Call Me By Your Name, isn’t it?

Yes, exactly. I never talk about my books in class, and I try not to impose my thinking on my students. But it would be hypocritical of me to teach anything without giving a personal dimension. The personal, however, doesn’t have to be autobiographical.

How was Call Me by Your Name received by gay readers in Egypt and Israel?

It has been well-received in Israel. It is one of those countries where people can be openly gay. I have no idea about Egypt because my book has not been translated there. It is still very difficult to be gay in Egypt. If people are reading it, they must have obtained it in a manner that is not legal. They might be reading it clandestinely. It’s difficult, and I empathize with them. I know that there are people in Iran who have read it. As an author, I have to deal with the fact that there are parts of the world where people cannot talk about it openly.

This sounds similar to how things used to be in India not so long ago.

Yes, that’s quite true but I must confess that I was surprised to see all my talks in India crammed with people – whether it was Jaipur or Mumbai or Calcutta. A lot of boys and girls would come and speak to me about struggling with their sexual identity. In fact, parents would come with their kids to have me sign their books. I was extremely gratified to see how open-minded people were in those places. They were in favour of acceptance and respect.

How do you feel knowing that generations of people will discover the novel after watching Luca Guadagnino’s film adaptation? Have you made peace with that?

Yes, very much so! I’ve seen the film millions of times. Actually, I recommend that people see the film first and then read the book. The film gives them a sense of the story in a very tangible and concrete way. When they read the book after that, they find that there is a whole spiritual dimension, an internal dimension that they never expected. The film cannot show that. It gives them the plot. The book takes them into the internal struggles of the characters. If they read the book first, they will feel that the film has left out a lot of stuff. That is understandable. It is another medium. There are things that cinema can do, which books cannot. We have to understand that each medium has certain strengths and limitations.

In places where homosexuality is criminalised, it might be safer to watch a film on an electronic device than sit with a physical copy of a book. What do you think?

I think so, because you can download it easily. I’m sure people pirate my books and the film all the time, which is fine. If they want it so badly and they cannot obtain it, then let them get it this way. Lots of people in many countries who cannot afford to buy a book write to me and ask me to send them the book, which sometimes I do. I just hate to go to the post office. That’s the only problem. But I understand that in many places it’s difficult to find such a book. When one of my sons was in Vietnam, he took a picture of a huge pile of copies of Call Me by Your Name. He said those were pirated editions. I said, “Well, what can you do?”

Piracy might be an indication that people are hungry for your book.

Yes, I think they are, which is an extremely gratifying thing for me as a writer. There are generations of older people who have read the book long ago but there are always newer readers looking for it. There’s a great demand for the book and the film, especially from younger people who are coming of age and discovering themselves. It makes me happy.

How do you feel about travelling with the book and the film to the JLF Soneva Fushi festival in the Maldives, a country where homosexuality is criminalised?

I don’t think that the festival is itself worried about it; otherwise, I wouldn’t have been invited. I am proud of this book and all the books that I have written. They address a host of subjects, and homosexuality is one of them. I hope the audience is open-minded.

As an author with a huge fan base of LGBTQ readers and as someone who is considered an ally, will you speak publicly against homophobia in the Maldives?

I don’t know. That’s a good question. I never anticipated that. In many respects, what I do as a writer is just write a story. I do not have a mission when I begin. After Call Me by Your Name was published, readers started telling me that they came out to their parents because of the book. They said, “Of course, you intended that.” I said, “No, I didn’t.” It would be wrong to take credit for something that was not my intention. But, in retrospect, I can see what the book has done for so many young people and their parents. It has helped them open up to each other. I am grateful that the book has contributed to their journeys.

As a professor, is dialogue central to your pedagogic practice?

I do not like passive people who basically listen and do not give me an opinion. I try to stir up conversation. I tell my students that, in the humanities, you have to doubt and question everything, even your most fundamental beliefs. You don’t have to throw them away but you must examine them and justify them as opposed to simply saying, “I believe in this.” As an intellectual, you cannot be close-minded. I like students who question.

What do you think of calls to boycott Russian artists, writers, filmmakers because of the Russian invasion in Ukraine? Dostoevsky and Gogol are Russian authors that you’ve engaged with in Homo Irrealis. You’ve also written about St Petersburg. Do you support the idea of boycotting creative practitioners from Russia or any country?

No, I do not. But there’s a little distinction that people make, and I think it is an important distinction. I applaud Gogol and Dostoevsky, and I love St Petersburg as a city. That’s one thing, and I will never change my mind about this. On the other hand, there are a lot of artists who are alive who support Vladimir Putin and the policy of committing what is now called the genocide. How can I support that? If an artist is a supporter of Putin, I cannot do business with them. I don’t even want to talk to them. They have their hands dirty. But I cannot hate St Petersburg as a city, even though it was built in the most vicious and brutal manner possible. The fact is that it exists today, and one cannot forget that.

Similarly, there have been calls for the cultural and academic boycott of Israel. What are your thoughts on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement?

I have a complicated response to this. BDS is, in many cases, a cry for justice, which seems to be very hard to come by, especially for the Palestinians who are treated deplorably. On the other hand, I don’t like the idea of singling out Israel as an arch villain because almost every country in the world – barring a few – is equally culpable. Are we prepared to implement the same measures towards every country that has vicious rules in place? Then there is the issue of how some groups in the BDS movement engage in anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. But, on the other hand, there is a large number of Jews supporting BDS. It is an intricate, multilayered situation. I’m not really political. I try not to get involved with all this.

Tell us about your next book.

I am writing about a period of my adolescence when I was living in Italy. It was a difficult time because I had just been expelled from Egypt and I had arrived in Italy. I didn’t like Italy. All the torment of adolescence was playing out in my life at that very moment.

When do we see you in India next?

That depends on who invites me. I would love to be back in Bombay. I stayed at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel by the Gateway of India. It was absolutely wonderful. I remember this time when I was just walking near my hotel, and I came across a beautiful building that turned out to be a blue synagogue. I was stunned to see it being restored. In fact, I want to explore Bombay especially after seeing a documentary in New York that made me aware of Indian Jews who have worked in Bombay’s film industry. I had no idea. It was fascinating.

Chintan Girish Modi is an independent writer, journalist and book reviewer

While reading about you, I noticed that some people describe you as Egyptian American, others call you Italian American, and some introduce you as Jewish American. What resonates most with you?

Yes, it’s a bit funny, isn’t it? First of all, I was born in Egypt but I was never Egyptian. I became Italian when I was probably 10 or 11 years old, and I didn’t even know Italian at the time that we became Italian. And then I lived in Italy but eventually my Italian citizenship lapsed entirely. I can no longer retrieve it since I have become an American. But in essence, all these are names of identities that don’t capture anything essential about me.

Is there anything that does capture something essential about you?

To be very honest, if I knew the answer to that question, I wouldn’t be writing. I would be doing something else. I write in order to find out. Who am I? What do I like? What do I want? What am I tied to? I have no idea. It’s all free floating.

Wow! Your description of why you write sounds almost like a spiritual quest.

That’s true! In many respects, it is exactly what you call it. As long as I cannot identify what it is that I’m about, I can write. When I know the answer to the question “Who am I?” there would be no point in writing. Writing is an exploration. It is a trying out of several identities, and trying to fashion something. Once you are done with publishing a book, you think that the matter seems to have been resolved. Suddenly, a few days later, you realise, no, it’s not resolved. Thanks to the insoluble character that I am, the question crops up again and again. It demands a sort of resolution – one that never comes, or maybe hasn’t yet.

One of the identities you’ve discovered is Homo Irrealis, also the title of your new book. It sounds like the name of a species that you’ve concocted to explain the relationship between the real and imagined – the tensions and overlaps. Is that right?

That is completely correct. The irrealist dimension is where I am. Who might I be? Who might I have been? Who might I still become? Do I want to become that person? Do I really know where he’s going, who he is? Ultimately, I have no idea about the answers to any of these questions. And I love this. I’ve been playing with the idea of homo irrealis for quite a few years now. It allows me to enter the work of people whom I respect a great deal, and engage in acts of reading and misreading that are eventually about reading my own self.

Would you say that such a relationship between the real and the imagined is a common experience for people who have experienced displacement and exile?

There are, of course, material and emotional aspects to being uprooted. Looking at the irrealist dimension, my contention is that people who blame displacement for changing their identity were already displaced in themselves before the physical displacement took place. In my view, people who mourn the loss of a certain kind of certainty about themselves and attribute it to exile were already uncertain about who they were before the exile. Let me give you an analogy. This is somewhat like blaming the COVID-19 pandemic for all the wrong things that have happened to you in the past two years when, in fact, those wrong things were already in place anyway. You just want to avoid taking responsibility for them.

Perhaps it is easy to blame a virus because it cannot talk back?

That’s a very good point. Well said! The virus is so small; it is insignificant almost, except it kills you. But in effect, people have begun to use it as an excuse. They say things like: “I can’t come over for dinner because of the virus.” “We got divorced because of the virus.” “I got fired because of the virus.” People are blaming everything on the virus. I think the same happens in the case of exile and displacement. The external event is observable but the insoluble identity that one had was already in place. Even when I was in Egypt, which was my home, I never felt at home in Egypt. So why should I feel at home in Italy? Why would I feel at home in the United States? What does it even mean to feel at home?

There are people who don’t feel at home in their body, leave alone country.

Absolutely! That is very true. In essence, they don’t know who they are. We never know who we are. When we fill out a form, we give our name, our profession, our date of birth, and so on. But if you take away all these things, we have no idea who we are.

Having left Alexandria with your family when you were 14, do you feel New York is one of the safer places for Jewish people? Is anti-Semitism on the rise again?

Well, it’s not rising again. It has always been in place. Anti-Semitism is just part of life. I think it’s a given. However, living in New York, for example, is far easier. In fact, the only time in my life when I started saying to people that I was Jewish was in New York. In Italy, in France, especially in Egypt, you never said you were Jewish. When people asked you, you didn’t answer directly. That’s how it was. Even today, when you go to France, people rarely tell you that they are Jewish. They will tell you something about their grandparents, and it is up to you to sort of infer that they are Jewish. In comparison, I have found it easy to be Jewish in New York. It doesn’t mean that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist.

In Homo Irrealis, you introduce readers to some of your favourite writers including Sigmund Freud, Constantine Cavafy, WG Sebald, and Marcel Proust. Do you also include their work in the classes you teach at the City University of New York?

Well, I don’t teach the homo irrealis dimension in my classes. It is more of a private thing. I teach only graduate students who are writing their dissertations. I try to avoid projecting my own work in my classes but I know for a fact that almost all my students have read many of my books. If not more, certainly one of them!

Let me guess. That’s your novel Call Me By Your Name, isn’t it?

Yes, exactly. I never talk about my books in class, and I try not to impose my thinking on my students. But it would be hypocritical of me to teach anything without giving a personal dimension. The personal, however, doesn’t have to be autobiographical.

How was Call Me by Your Name received by gay readers in Egypt and Israel?

It has been well-received in Israel. It is one of those countries where people can be openly gay. I have no idea about Egypt because my book has not been translated there. It is still very difficult to be gay in Egypt. If people are reading it, they must have obtained it in a manner that is not legal. They might be reading it clandestinely. It’s difficult, and I empathize with them. I know that there are people in Iran who have read it. As an author, I have to deal with the fact that there are parts of the world where people cannot talk about it openly.

This sounds similar to how things used to be in India not so long ago.

Yes, that’s quite true but I must confess that I was surprised to see all my talks in India crammed with people – whether it was Jaipur or Mumbai or Calcutta. A lot of boys and girls would come and speak to me about struggling with their sexual identity. In fact, parents would come with their kids to have me sign their books. I was extremely gratified to see how open-minded people were in those places. They were in favour of acceptance and respect.

How do you feel knowing that generations of people will discover the novel after watching Luca Guadagnino’s film adaptation? Have you made peace with that?

Yes, very much so! I’ve seen the film millions of times. Actually, I recommend that people see the film first and then read the book. The film gives them a sense of the story in a very tangible and concrete way. When they read the book after that, they find that there is a whole spiritual dimension, an internal dimension that they never expected. The film cannot show that. It gives them the plot. The book takes them into the internal struggles of the characters. If they read the book first, they will feel that the film has left out a lot of stuff. That is understandable. It is another medium. There are things that cinema can do, which books cannot. We have to understand that each medium has certain strengths and limitations.

In places where homosexuality is criminalised, it might be safer to watch a film on an electronic device than sit with a physical copy of a book. What do you think?

I think so, because you can download it easily. I’m sure people pirate my books and the film all the time, which is fine. If they want it so badly and they cannot obtain it, then let them get it this way. Lots of people in many countries who cannot afford to buy a book write to me and ask me to send them the book, which sometimes I do. I just hate to go to the post office. That’s the only problem. But I understand that in many places it’s difficult to find such a book. When one of my sons was in Vietnam, he took a picture of a huge pile of copies of Call Me by Your Name. He said those were pirated editions. I said, “Well, what can you do?”

Piracy might be an indication that people are hungry for your book.

Yes, I think they are, which is an extremely gratifying thing for me as a writer. There are generations of older people who have read the book long ago but there are always newer readers looking for it. There’s a great demand for the book and the film, especially from younger people who are coming of age and discovering themselves. It makes me happy.

How do you feel about travelling with the book and the film to the JLF Soneva Fushi festival in the Maldives, a country where homosexuality is criminalised?

I don’t think that the festival is itself worried about it; otherwise, I wouldn’t have been invited. I am proud of this book and all the books that I have written. They address a host of subjects, and homosexuality is one of them. I hope the audience is open-minded.

As an author with a huge fan base of LGBTQ readers and as someone who is considered an ally, will you speak publicly against homophobia in the Maldives?

I don’t know. That’s a good question. I never anticipated that. In many respects, what I do as a writer is just write a story. I do not have a mission when I begin. After Call Me by Your Name was published, readers started telling me that they came out to their parents because of the book. They said, “Of course, you intended that.” I said, “No, I didn’t.” It would be wrong to take credit for something that was not my intention. But, in retrospect, I can see what the book has done for so many young people and their parents. It has helped them open up to each other. I am grateful that the book has contributed to their journeys.

As a professor, is dialogue central to your pedagogic practice?

I do not like passive people who basically listen and do not give me an opinion. I try to stir up conversation. I tell my students that, in the humanities, you have to doubt and question everything, even your most fundamental beliefs. You don’t have to throw them away but you must examine them and justify them as opposed to simply saying, “I believe in this.” As an intellectual, you cannot be close-minded. I like students who question.

What do you think of calls to boycott Russian artists, writers, filmmakers because of the Russian invasion in Ukraine? Dostoevsky and Gogol are Russian authors that you’ve engaged with in Homo Irrealis. You’ve also written about St Petersburg. Do you support the idea of boycotting creative practitioners from Russia or any country?

No, I do not. But there’s a little distinction that people make, and I think it is an important distinction. I applaud Gogol and Dostoevsky, and I love St Petersburg as a city. That’s one thing, and I will never change my mind about this. On the other hand, there are a lot of artists who are alive who support Vladimir Putin and the policy of committing what is now called the genocide. How can I support that? If an artist is a supporter of Putin, I cannot do business with them. I don’t even want to talk to them. They have their hands dirty. But I cannot hate St Petersburg as a city, even though it was built in the most vicious and brutal manner possible. The fact is that it exists today, and one cannot forget that.

Similarly, there have been calls for the cultural and academic boycott of Israel. What are your thoughts on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement?

I have a complicated response to this. BDS is, in many cases, a cry for justice, which seems to be very hard to come by, especially for the Palestinians who are treated deplorably. On the other hand, I don’t like the idea of singling out Israel as an arch villain because almost every country in the world – barring a few – is equally culpable. Are we prepared to implement the same measures towards every country that has vicious rules in place? Then there is the issue of how some groups in the BDS movement engage in anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. But, on the other hand, there is a large number of Jews supporting BDS. It is an intricate, multilayered situation. I’m not really political. I try not to get involved with all this.

Tell us about your next book.

I am writing about a period of my adolescence when I was living in Italy. It was a difficult time because I had just been expelled from Egypt and I had arrived in Italy. I didn’t like Italy. All the torment of adolescence was playing out in my life at that very moment.

When do we see you in India next?

That depends on who invites me. I would love to be back in Bombay. I stayed at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel by the Gateway of India. It was absolutely wonderful. I remember this time when I was just walking near my hotel, and I came across a beautiful building that turned out to be a blue synagogue. I was stunned to see it being restored. In fact, I want to explore Bombay especially after seeing a documentary in New York that made me aware of Indian Jews who have worked in Bombay’s film industry. I had no idea. It was fascinating.

Chintan Girish Modi is an independent writer, journalist and book reviewer