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Powell's Q&A, Q&A | December 10, 2009

Powell's Q&A: Sam Stephenson

1 comment By Sam Stephenson

Describe your latest book/project/work. I've been studying the life and work of photographer W. Eugene Smith for 13 years. My first book (Dream... Continue »

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1. 
   $28.00 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

   The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965

   Sam Stephenson and W. Eugene Smith

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Mikeonalpha, February 17, 2007

"I look back on those days and regret none of it, not the risks, not the shame, not the total lack of foresight..." says the central protagonist of Andre Aciman's stunning novel of sexual obsession and love. Call Me by Your Name is really an astounding piece of writing, substantial and quite beautiful, the voluminous pages filled with constant references to literature, history and mythology.

Seventeen-year-old Elio lives on the Italian Riviera with his wealthy and academically minded parents. He indeed seems to live a charmed life, his days filled with swimming, reading, seaside walks, and playing tennis. Companionable, but with an almost constant need for attention, Elio has an obvious artistic bent and is well and truly grounded in music, literature and art.

Every summer for the past fifteen years, his parents have been playing host to a college student, their youthful guest being their way of helping young academics revise their budding manuscripts before publication. Throughout these months, they usually become part of the family and are given full run the house to do whatever they pleased.

This summer in particular is marked by the arrival of the twenty-five year-old Olivier, a suavely attractive and masculine American who oozes self-confidence and who immediately enchants Elio's parents by his one word send off, always brisk, bold and blunted: "later." Elio is not quite sure when the attraction starts, maybe it begins soon after Olivier's arrival during one of those "grinding lunches" when he sits next to Elio, or perhaps it starts on the beach, or even at the tennis court.

One thing is for sure, one event eventually leads to another, and Elio finds himself falling in lust with Olivier. Within two weeks, Elio begins to obsess, his teenage hormones and imagination running rampant as he fantasizes about every night, for Olivier just to leave his room, "not via the front door, but through the French windows on the balcony, and "to work his way into my body, gently and softly."

Although one realizes from the outset, that the longing will be eventually consummated, the inevitable coupling between Olivier and Elio is still seen as raw and indeed shocking, and is filled with a kind of brutal and wicked sensuality. The obsession continues and Elio starts to run the gamut of emotions from fear, to hunger, to ecstasy and then on to remorse, the "twisted into sudden pangs of guilt... shame trailed instant intimacy."

Spinning through Elio's lustful world, both he and Oliver dance an intricate ballet of courtship. At first, Olivier is standoffish, whilst Elio sees the older man as powerfully sexual, but also thoroughly alert and cold and a fully sagacious judge of character and situations - nothing he does or says is unpremeditated, "he sees through everybody."

Filtered though Elio's point of view and also deeply reflective, much of the action is driven by the titular boy's own inner dialog. He becomes convinced that no one in the world wants Olivier as physically as he does. He yearns for Olivier during the morning ritual after breakfast, whilst they are lying on the grass, or by the pool, or then swimming or jogging, " the afternoon hours, splendid and lush with abundant sun and silence..."

In this deeply evocative story, the author writes of the sexual side of human nature, where lust oozes from every corner, giving no quarter, indeed even Elio is somewhat shocked at his attraction to another man, and also about this "twisted skein of desire," where having someone's body to touch and being that someone longing to touch are one and the same.

Can intimacy endure once indecency is spent and our bodies run out of tricks? Aciman certainly thinks so as he charts Elio and Olivier's passionate relationship, as it eventually becomes a veil of love, culminating in a romantic kiss in Rome, where after a wondrous dinner and a poetry reading, Olivier presses Elio hard against the wall on via Santa Maria dell' Anima.

Although time and the years do eventually separate them, and all that remains is dream making and a strange type of remembrance, their love is forever preserved, eternally cemented by the extraordinary hand of fate. Mike Leonard February 07.

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