Reminiscing about Proust’s Sodom And Gomorrah during the interview, Aciman recalled a particular five-page-long paragraph about parallels between closet Jews and closet gays, and how each senses the other or throws signals to the other to intimate “I’m like you.” […]
Whereas Elio and his family, as Elio’s mother points out, are “Jews of discretion,” Oliver is open about his identity. He wears a Magen-David, and when Elio comes to mimic him in doing so, in a way, he also intimates that he is ready to wear, in the open, his previously discreet desire for Oliver. As Aciman put it in our interview, “There’s … a coupling of identities and I wanted it to be there, and it means something to me. … Something is connecting them blood-wise.”
