André Aciman Q&A: “No one really knows who they are”

The author and director on Marcel Proust and his fascination with the stock market.

André Aciman was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1951. He is a professor of comparative literature and a best-selling author, known for his novel Call Me by Your Name.

Who are your heroes?

Tintin was loyal, forthright, honest and just. But even as a child I thought he lacked a sense of humour. My adult hero is Marcus Aurelius: a great emperor and a philosopher. He excelled in ruling and in leaving us a book everyone must read.

What’s your earliest memory?

My four grandparents lived across the street from each other. When I was two my grandfather died. No one said he was dead but I kept asking why we couldn’t go visit him. Not a word from anyone until my mother had enough with everyone’s insidious tales and simply told me the truth. I can still recall the street and the cast of the late morning light as I struggled to grasp what dying meant.

What book last changed your thinking?

Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, where an author I discovered very late in life proves that what guides our understanding of everything is paradox, that one can coexist with both sides of an equation and not feel the call to resolve the contradiction.

What would be your “Mastermind” specialist subject?

Marcel Proust. I teach a graduate seminar on Proust every two years, and he is the author who has influenced me most: his way of thinking about people and their sinuous turns, about great events and far, far lesser ones, about beauty, and ultimately about writing and style. One might as well say of Proust what others have said of Aristotle: You run into Proust coming back from where you’re still headed.

In which time and place, other than your own, would you like to live?

Possibly Bordighera in its heyday at the very start of the 20th century. Bordighera faces the Mediterranean and is a beautiful old town. It’s where you realise that not lacking anything and not even being able to think of wanting anything more is the ultimate definition of pleasure.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

“Be yourself!” No one really knows who they are, it’s something we’re constantly trying to figure out, and can spend our whole lives exploring. The act of being oneself is, at best, an approximation. A performance of who we think we might be. I would have rather been told to be honest with myself. That’s advice we should all follow.

What’s currently bugging you?

I’m a restless person with a constant itch to try something new. But I never quite know what that new thing is, or what will scratch that itch. A new city, a new book, a new language? The endless searching is what bugs me. That and the leaf blowing that my building does every Monday and Friday right outside my window.

What single thing would make your life better?

Security.

When were you happiest?

When I had all my three very, very young children glued to the TV watching Tosca and Pagliacci. I feared this might not last but I relished those moments.

In another life, what job might you have chosen?

If I had the capacity, I would have liked to work in finance. I’ve always been fascinated by people who understand the stock market and the economy so inherently. But I lack these skills. I can only write. And to be honest, I am not always skilful as a writer.

Are we all doomed?

Humanity as a whole? I don’t think it is doomed. Each of us individually? Maybe.

André Aciman’s “My Roman Year” is published by Faber & Faber. “An Evening with André Aciman” will take place on 14 October at Foyles bookshop in central London