André Aciman on Reading—and Misreading—Emotions
Each of the novellas that make up André Aciman’s new book, “Room on the Sea,” picks apart the intricacies of how people comprehend the feelings of others—or fail to. In this, they share something with many of the “Call Me by Your Name” author’s favorite novels. “The fundamental trait of the novels that I like is that people are always wrong,” Aciman said recently. “My own life has been one of always reading people and mistaking one thing for another, so it has been very useful for me to find that the great novelists I love also seem to have been in a state of perpetual error.” Aciman joined us a few weeks ago to discuss some of his favorite “psychological” novels, which track the perceptions—sometimes accurate, sometimes not—of their characters closely. His remarks have been edited and condensed.
La Princesse de Clèves
by Madame de La Fayette
“La Princesse” is a book that I’ve always had with me—I think I first read it when I was fifteen or sixteen. It was published in 1678 and depicts the world as it was a century earlier, following characters at a royal court in the mid-fifteen-hundreds. Essentially, it’s the story of how a married princess and a man who is a bit of a cad fall in love simply because they’ve danced with each other, and someone says to the woman, Oh, my God, you look like lovers.
In the whole novel, nothing is ever stated directly. And I love that, because it is analytical to the nth degree. The two lovers never really speak to each other. They do a couple of times, but it’s usually in public, and always hastily. Instead, they are always sending each other signs.
Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton
The heart of this book is a love triangle. A very domineering woman is married to a man who is a bit of a softie. When they take in the woman’s cousin, Mattie, the wife begins to suspect that her husband is falling in love with Mattie. And, indeed, there is a sense throughout the story that the two—the husband and the cousin—are falling in love, but, at the same time, they are avoiding each other. One night, for example, when the wife has to go away, the two are left alone in the house, but they don’t do anything. In today’s world, they probably would, but I don’t know. I don’t understand how today’s world works. People say, “That’s so unrealistic, they should have sex.” But they don’t. The only contact that the two lovers have—and I think they are very much in love—is that one of them touches a piece of cloth that the other one is holding. The moment is brief and limited, and yet it says everything.
Emma
by Jane Austen
I think everyone should read “Emma” at least once. It is such a wonderful novel. The story follows a young woman, Emma Woodhouse, who believes that she is a great plotter of marriages. She’s very vain, but she’s also very smart and highly sympathetic—the reader might be aware of her faults, but they also adore her. At the beginning, Emma meets a young man, Frank Churchill, and it seems obvious that the two are meant for each other. But then you learn that he is already promised to another woman, Jane Fairfax. Emma is left feeling cheated and decides, O.K., well, I’ll get over this. Let’s move on. It’s a kind of artificial strength of character that she has, and it works. Eventually, though, she does end up with her knight in shining armor.
Austen is constantly observing and analyzing characters. She’s analyzing Jane, who is seemingly very timid, but actually is not. She analyzes Frank, who is a pompous fool. Her portrait of Emma is, I think, superb. It shows a woman of twentysomething with a newfound sense of authority about her, who is constantly drawing the wrong conclusion from things. And this constant error is what I love about analytical fiction, because the errors are misreadings of situations that are suddenly corrected, only to be undercut yet again.
