GOING BACK FOR SECONDS
To cope with the body, its pain and demands, Bill Bryson’s new book can well prove to be the perfect prescription
With Find Me, André Aciman, author of the widely-acclaimed Call Me By Your Name, returns to some of the key characters from that evocative love story. The sequel—which isn’t quite a sequel—released in October, and is told through the viewpoints of different characters. Aciman spoke to us from the US. Excerpts:
Q. How long had the sequel been on your mind?
The story has been on my mind forever. After Call Me, I went back to another novel and once that was done, I tried to go back to [it]. I kept finding myself doing the same thing as Call Me. After several attempts, I gave up. Until I decided to write about the father, and then everything fell into place.
Q. Was there ever a pressure considering the success of the first book and then the movie?
Not at all. I didn’t want to be influenced by anything. I was writing the book I wanted to write. I didn’t know if anyone was going to want to publish it. The film was wonderful, it made me feel people liked what I did, but I had no sense of how they would deal with a sequel that wasn’t really a sequel.
Q. When you returned to these characters, did you see Elio and Oliver as the actors, Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer, who played them?
I could not possibly imagine Chalamet being 32 years, it wasn’t possible. I couldn’t imagine Armie as a 44-year-old. The other thing is I don’t see my characters, that’s why I never describe what they look like.
Q. So many of your stories deal with the first flush of love.
The most beautiful part of any love affair is the beginning, where you have no sense of whether anything is going to happen, and, if it does happen, how long it will last. The moment when you suddenly realise you have a degree of intimacy comes as a miracle. Afterwards, it becomes routine. It becomes a relationship, and I don’t know how to write about relationships, as then you have to deal with domestic issues.
Q. Your characters don’t think of themselves in terms of being queer or bisexual. Do you consciously write them that way?
I don’t think that way. I just put them in a situation and I don’t think of the broader social, political issues.
Q. Looking back on your books, do you think of what you could have done differently?
I’m constantly editing and regretting what I did and could have done better.
Q. Anything you would have changed in Call Me?
Possibly I would have made it longer.
Q. Will Find Me become a film? I would love it to, but no one has mentioned it to me yet.
Q. Are you done with these characters now?
I think so. But I never want to say done with, you never know what may suddenly spur me to do something.
—with Bhavya Dore
JJust now, I crave ignorance. For months, I’ve lusted for nepenthe, the mythic draught that dispels the agony of pain, and it arrived this morning, in a fat brown paper package, for a modest Rs 999. Let me explain. On the job, I’m usually on the cushy side of the table. But it’s been a rough month, with a growing catalogue of miseries, and I am now, inescapably, a patient.
I would escape this surreal landscape if I could, but I live here, dammit, and I’m not ready to quit. I need to get cosy, to be told that illness is a mere trompe-l’oeil. I want to hear the reassuring purr of my efficient machine, that old reliable which will whiz me past all roadblocks, disasters and restore me to the surgeon’s side of the table. Hence, my brown package, containing Bill Bryson’s latest. It is unimaginatively called The Body. The magic lies in the subtitle: A Guide for Occupants. The cavorting athlete on the cover displays a reassuringly elastic spine.
I plunge in for immediate relief—why, my aching back is nothing more than evolution. I read eagerly for almost a minute, breathless with belief. In Bryson’s voice, a slipped disc is just another human vagary, mildly curious, but in no way threatening. The uninformed reader remains uninformed of its potential to torture, to cripple, to paralyse. Well, I asked for a painkiller, didn’t I?
Earlier this month, a whiff of ‘bhoot jolokia’ nearly killed me. ‘Bhoot jolokia’ is the hottest chilli on the planet, with a measure of more than 1 million Scoville Heat Units (SHUs). What is the Scoville scale? Bryson tells us it is the measure of capsaicin in a chilli, determined by the Scoville Organoleptic Test. What does that mean?
Soon after the bhoot jolokia incident, I choked on a segment of orange. The Heimlich Manoeuvre saved me. This is a quick compression of the upper abdomen that dislodges the obstruction by a forced expulsion of air. I’ve always been in awe of the guy who invented such a simple life-saving procedure— anyone can do it, that’s the magic of it. But Bryson thinks otherwise. Heimlich’s peccadilloes erase all the good he’s ever done.
The Body, with its chatty raconteur who knows all the best stories, is a nice place. But it is a Potemkin village. Bryson won’t tell you, readers, and be warned. The body can get messy oftentimes.