COMMENTARY: Call Me By Your Name (2017)
The following are thoughts and reactions I had while reading Call Me By Your Name (2017) by André Aciman. They do not reflect my overall post-reading opinion of the work. For self-study purposes, there may also be extensive summaries of the plot in these notes. In short…
⚠️ MAJOR SPOILER ALERTS AHEAD ⚠️
258 pages in four parts: part 1, 63 pages, part 2, 98 pages, part 3, 38 pages, part 4, 37 pages
- P1/pg. 12 - that longing to want someone to like you. To read into and overanalyze their reactions. To be so obsessed with a new person you’re attracted to. It’s a feeling that I think maybe most of us forget about after young adulthood and it’s captured so well here.
- P1/pg. 23 - JFC. No. Nobody is picking up on your super subtle signs. You’re imagining it all in your head.
- P1/pg. 34 - oh kay. It’s the tropey introspective introvert who’s obsessed with the A. Manic depressive pixie girl or B. The quirky extrovert that drags PROT along, or in this case, C. The brash foreigner who’s so outspoken and casual and cool… but written in pretty prose. Cool.
- P1/pg. 42 - ok. It’s been 42 pages. Can something actually happen now?
- P1/pg. 44 - finally. Story development.
- P1/pg. 63 - end of P1. A crush portrayed very well. Barely any plot. let’s go part two.
- P2/pg. 71 - ooooh spooky. Foreshadowing. Totally gone. Like dead or completely losing contact?
- P2/pg. 72 - ooooh finally. Things are picking up. That dialogue was also very well done. Nobody saying anything explicit and both of them knowing exactly what they’re saying.
- P2/pg. 74 - ok. So this takes place around the mid-nineties? Eighty years since WWI?
- P2/pg. 75 - some of the words Aciman uses… it’s not even so much as showing off as… did you really need to? Vitrified, exiguous, aqueous, canicular, arthroscopic precision,
- P2/pg. 86 - uh…. Pretty sure neurosurgeons don’t split neutrons. In fact, I don’t think physicists can either. Unless they have and I haven’t heard about it.
- P2/pg. 105 - mid-eighties? That don’t make sense.
- P2/pg. 107 - I’m starting to suspect they never sleep together and that would be very disappointing. Or Aciman is very very good at dragging this out until the end of part 2 which is another 60 pages still.
- P2/pg. 117 - is he going to sleep with her and think about him? Juicy.
- P2/pg. 117 - that’s nasty. Just a bunch of used condoms floating on the beach. Gross.
- P2/pg. 136 - oh interesting. He feels self-loathing.
- P2/pg. 137 - or that self-loathing is temporary because all that crushing is now fulfilled and out of his system. So maybe self loathing in the sense that you finally got the thing you wanted for so long, and you’re annoyed you had that desire in the first place, and now that you got it, and that desire is gone, you’re wondering why you had such a hunger for it in the first place and you’re not sure the cost is worth it. That’s… interesting on a whole other level.
- P2/pg. 145 - so…. It’s the power dynamics that turns him on now yeah?
- P2/pg. 150 - that fun and games have a way of skidding off course. Yes. Yes it does.
- P2/pg. 163 - five more pages until Oliver leaves Elio forever. Or most likely they’ll meet again after a time jump and this will be depressing and sad because they’ve led different lives different paths and they can both still look back at this moment but can never recreate it. So… what’s the time jump going to be? Five? Ten? Twenty years?
- P2/ end of P2. No. Dammit. Three days in Rome. No time jump yet. Fine. Let’s get some high drama then.
- P3/pg. 172 - was our intimacy paid for in the wrong currency? so good.
- P3/pg. 175 - foooooreeshaaaafowingggg
- P3/pg. 189 - yeah ok. The poet is exoticizing Thai people like how Elio exoticized Oliver. We’re banging one of the themes loudly now with an echo slash mirror.
- P3/pg. 207 - the story of Thailand went a little more inscrutable and beguiling than I thought it would. There’s more to excavate. Might want to read it again or at least think through it properly. It’s obviously a mirror of the first two parts between Elio and Oliver, but what is it saying? It’s late, I’m tired from a long Saturday. I’ll need to revisit.
- P4/pg. 209 - oh. No time jump. Boo.
- P4/pg. 216 - ok, so there’s no time jump, no explosive conflict in Rome, no sad breakups… what is going on here? Is there going to be any high tension drama or revelations? Or is this purely a boy grows up deal?
- P4/pg. 217 - oh ok. The moment I complain you give me the emotional gut punch I wanted. Thanks.
- P4/pg. 224-225 - well fuck you André. I am crying in the office kitchen now.
- P4/pg. 230 - oh so I’m going to get a million time jumps now. Let’s just spin that editing jog wheel like a roulette wheel and see what you get.
- End. I think reading this at my current age of 44, being all yeah yeah yeah it’s a beautifully written teenage crush for the first 150 pages, and not feeling the same yearning and longing that Elio felt… nor the fire and passion of the love affair for the next fifty… seeing it all from a distance and admiring the prose but not feeling it… only to be blindsided by his father’s monologue and breaking down says a lot about me, and perhaps most people in their forties. We’ve numbed ourselves to these feelings. Or we’re too distracted with mortgages, raising children, our work, surviving, dealing with chronic pain and illnesses, dealing with elderly parents, dealing with just the muck and grind and quotidian nature of life… that we’ve forgotten. That we’ve forgotten what it was like to have that something special, that kind of connection with another person if only for a brief few weeks or months. That first love. That first crush. That freedom without obligation of work, family, finances, etc. And then the last twenty thirty pages where Aciman just speeds up time, and they’re older, and they remember and cherish it, and they flirt with trying to recreate it but they don’t succumb to the temptation of it… it’s just so beautifully done.