Call Me By Your Name.
This isn’t a book review because I am honestly too lazy to write one– just know if I did it would be very long and full of love. I just wanted to share a little bit of how this book changed me and how I’m personalizing my copy of it.
My book is covered in highlighter. The writing is so immaculate– the details, the way with words.. Even if a sentence didn’t feel particularly sentimental or meaningful, I still highlighted it because of how beautifully the words flowed. The words are so touching! I swear every time I start reading this book again I feel so motivated to write. I also want to appreciate the bond Elio and Oliver had. It’s a bond like no other. I’m honestly kind of scared I might never form a bond as strong and unique as that.
Although part of me wants to say Oliver didn’t deserve Elio because he literally left and married a woman; but also connecting to what Mr. Perlman said during his monologue, “we rip so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new,” and, “most of us can’t help but live as though we’ve got two lives to live, one is the mock-up, the other the finished version.” It’s obvious that Oliver is several years older than Elio. Elio is young– pure. Oliver is older and more experience, and almost more “worn out.” I don’t know– that’s just what I think.
Also I’ve been working on making my personal copy of cmbyn special! At the beginning of each chapter (there are four in total) I drew a little scene from the movie!
Aside from highlighter and chapter doodles I’ve been putting the titles of songs in the margins during scenes that match. (Speaking of music, the cmbyn soundtrack is absolutely breathtaking. I’d like to believe that if I die and appear at the gateway of heaven, Visions of Gideon is what will be playing in the background.) The book and the movie both have only fueled my already ongoing dream of living in France, Italy, or England in a small cottage where I can walk and smell the trees and walk barefoot in the grass and just appreciate everything about life and nature. I don’t want to talk about it too much because if I did I would ramble for far too long but to summarize my thoughts– if my life doesn’t fit a scene from cmbyn then I’m clearly not living it right. Call Me By Your Name and The Perks of Being a Wallflower are my standards for life and I refuse to settle for anything less.
Some of my favorite quotes: (I’ve managed to cut it down from an entire essay to a semi-long list)
“To think that I had almost fallen for the skin of his hands, his chest, his feet that had never touched a rough surface in their existence– and his eyes, which, when their other, kinder gaze fell on you, came like the miracle of the Resurrection. You could never stare long enough but needed to keep staring to find out why you couldn’t.”
“I knew exactly what phrase in the piece must have stirred him the first time, and each time I played it, I was sending it to him as a little gift, because it was really dedicated to him, as a token of something very beautiful in me that would take no genius to figure out and that urged me to throw in an extended cadenza. Just for him.”
“Two words from him, and I’d seen my pouting apathy change into I’ll play anything for you till you ask me to stop, till it’s time for lunch, till the skin on my fingers wears off layer after layer, because I like doing things for you, will do anything for you, just say the word. . .”
“If only you knew how little I know about the things that matter.”
“If he knew, if he only knew that I was giving him every chance to put two and two together and come up wit a number bigger than infinity.”
“In thirty, forty years, I’ll come back here and think back on a conversation I knew I’d never forget, much as I might want to someday. I’d come here with my wife, my children, show them the sights, point to the bay, the local caffes, Le Danzing, the Grand Hotel. Then I’d stand here and ask the statue and the straw-backed chairs and shaky wooden tables to remind me of someone called Oliver.”
“This is where I dreamed of you before you came into my life.”
“I wish everyone were as sick as you.”
“Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second. But then perhaps this is what lovers are.”
“Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spots.”
“But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything– what a waste!” (Honestly the whole monologue deserves to be here but it’s too long)
“Our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. . . before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. I don’t envy the pain. But I envy you the pain.”
“‘Elio,’ I repeated, to say it was I speaking but also to spark our old game and show I’d forgotten nothing. ‘It’s Oliver,’ he said. He had forgotten.” (THIS BROKE MY DAMN HEART)
“Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer.”
“And we’ll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts.”
“We had found the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.”
