When André Aciman settled into one of Club Downunder’s (CDU) red armchairs on the evening of March 26 at FSU with a brown sweater draped over his shoulders, I could easily picture him writing with a fountain pen on the subway. It’s a habit he says he practices because any writing done there “doesn’t count.” He just looked like an author.
There was something quietly charming in Aciman’s demeanor; his voice was softened by an accent I couldn’t quite place. He had the presence of that specific professor you could almost picture as your grandfather.
Sitting across from him was Michelle Chadwell, the editor-in-chief of The Kudzu Review, FSU’s only undergraduate literary magazine. Chadwell kicked things off with a weird greeting:
“Hello, Michelle.”
Aciman hesitated. A few chuckles escaped from the audience. After a small nudge from Chadwell, he finally played along:
“Oh yes, hello, André.”
Laughter filled the room — almost everyone caught the reference to Call Me by Your Name, Aciman’s most famous novel. Just like that, Chadwell set the tone for the evening.
What followed was a conversation that moved effortlessly between lighthearted, fun, and poignant reflections on identity, love, and life. I left the lecture entirely in awe of Aciman’s intelligence and warmth.
- The Journey of a Writer
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Aciman is an internationally bestselling author, most famous for works such as Call Me by Your Name, Out of Egypt: A Memoir, Eight White Nights: A Novel, and his newest memoir, My Roman Year. His work traverses diverse territory, from queer desire to the themes of belonging, exile, and memory drawn from his own life.
Chadwell began the lecture by asking Aciman how he grew into a writer and if his creative path stemmed from his self-proclaimed identity as the “dramatic sibling” in his youth. Aciman said that he started in poetry when he was nine years old and still living in Egypt.
“I liked being thought of as a poet,” he stated. “Of course, I was a negligible poet. But it was a way of basically being treated as if I was something special.”
Aciman reflects on how his brother made fun of him for his early-onset writer’s condition and for being “romantic” and “spiritual.” But he went on to find a love for prose after abandoning his “awful” poetry.
He emphasized his love of nonfiction and fiction alike and their equal capacity to explore the themes of his lived experiences. He even describes nonfiction as “embroidered,” which is why he doesn’t strictly separate his prose in fiction from nonfiction. This sense of ambiguity reverberated through all of Aciman’s insights — this was a man who saw the world not through binaries but through little windows of nuance and indefinity.
- Themes of Home and Belonging
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If you read up on Aciman, you’ll quickly discover he’s led a nomad’s existence. He’s moved from Egypt to Italy, to America. He speaks French, Italian, and English. With this, his books take place in countries all over the world.
When Aciman was young, his family was exiled from a wealthy life in Alexandria, Egypt, for their Jewish identity, and he told his audience at CDU that he’s been searching for a “home” ever since.
“I don’t have a home anywhere, although I live in various places. I don’t belong anywhere, and that’s a condition of being an exile, especially when you’re forcibly expelled from someplace; you’re roaming the world.”
That feeling of longing and uncertainty carries through Aciman’s life story, and it’s also palpable in his works of fiction.
- Call Me by Your Name
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Throughout the evening, Aciman often reflected on his popular novel, Call Me by Your Name. Set in the 1980s against the enchanting backdrop of Northern Italy, this coming-of-age story is a raw exploration of desire, sexuality, and identity. Protagonists Elio and Oliver’s story has captivated the minds of so many readers since its 2007 release, and Luca Guadagnino’s film adaptation has only made the book more popular.
During the lecture, Aciman discussed the thrill of writing Elio and Oliver’s characters. “Oliver is, for me, a character I don’t understand at all,” he said. “But Elio, I certainly understand perfectly because he’s very much a projection of who I am.”
As a writer, Aciman found the “forbiddenness,” the distance that had to be crossed between the two characters, very appealing. When asked how he deals with the responsibility to portray queer desire authentically, he said, “When I write about gay desire, I have to experience it myself. I may not have experienced it, but I must put myself in those shoes.”
He also reminded the audience at CDU that “[Call Me by Your Name] isn’t just a story of love. It’s about gay love.”
The 80 minutes Aciman spent on CDU’s stage didn’t feel like a lecture. His meditations on writing, belonging, and love felt like gifts to his audience. After the evening, I felt like I should be on a subway, contemplating my rootless existence and writing in a black leather notebook with a fountain pen or reading Aciman’s new memoir!
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