{"id":48775,"date":"2025-08-06T21:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T21:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/48775\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T21:26:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T21:26:09","slug":"andre-aciman-on-reading-and-misreading-emotions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/48775\/","title":{"rendered":"Andr\u00e9 Aciman on Reading\u2014and Misreading\u2014Emotions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each of the novellas that make up Andr\u00e9 Aciman\u2019s new book, \u201cRoom on the Sea<\/a>,\u201d picks apart the intricacies of how people comprehend the feelings of others\u2014or fail to. In this, they share something with many of the \u201cCall Me by Your Name<\/a>\u201d author\u2019s favorite novels. \u201cThe fundamental trait of the novels that I like is that people are always wrong,\u201d Aciman said recently. \u201cMy 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.\u201d Aciman joined us a few weeks ago to discuss some of his favorite \u201cpsychological\u201d novels, which track the perceptions\u2014sometimes accurate, sometimes not\u2014of their characters closely. His remarks have been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n

La Princesse de Cl\u00e8ves<\/p>\n

by Madame de La Fayette<\/p>\n

\u201cLa Princesse\u201d is a book that I\u2019ve always had with me\u2014I 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\u2019s the story of how a married princess and a man who is a bit of a cad fall in love simply because they\u2019ve danced with each other, and someone says to the woman, Oh, my God, you look like lovers.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s usually in public, and always hastily. Instead, they are always sending each other signs.<\/p>\n

Ethan Frome<\/p>\n

by Edith Wharton<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2014the husband and the cousin\u2014are 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\u2019t do anything. In today\u2019s world, they probably would, but I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t understand how today\u2019s world works. People say, \u201cThat\u2019s so unrealistic, they should have sex.\u201d But they don\u2019t. The only contact that the two lovers have\u2014and I think they are very much in love\u2014is 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.<\/p>\n

Emma<\/p>\n

by Jane Austen<\/p>\n

I think everyone should read \u201cEmma\u201d 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\u2019s very vain, but she\u2019s also very smart and highly sympathetic\u2014the 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\u2019ll get over this. Let\u2019s move on. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Austen is constantly observing and analyzing characters. She\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Each of the novellas that make up Andr\u00e9 Aciman\u2019s new book, \u201cRoom on the Sea,\u201d picks apart the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,18686,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-48775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-disable-inline-signup-unit","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}