André Aciman’s Homo Irrealis leaves a strange feeling lingering long after I put down the book. The irrealis aspect of his essays comes across as an aggressive and rather depressing form of nostalgia, where the temporal context is heavily skewed towards the past. André describes it as follows: imagine a heartfelt moment with your lover, perhaps on a special occasion. Instead of savouring the moment, you imagine yourself well into the future, looking back at this moment with nostalgic feelings. That alone took a while for me to understand: you’re creating future moments of nostalgia with every significant moment, yes, but why would you be deliberately thinking about a future where you’re looking back at his moment instead of just being in the now? Exaggerating this further, a constant yearning for the past to the point that you attempt to retread your (or someone’s) exact steps will always result in disappointment. Aciman often tried to visit the New York he experienced when watching a seventies movie. But that version of the city was an imaginary one where imperfect parts of the place have been expertly brushed up to deliver a great picture. When Aciman tries to locate an apartment where a scene from a movie took place, he realises that the building has been torn down a long time ago—heck, even the entire neighbourhood is gone and replaced by a more modern version of tall concrete. It gets worse: some buildings never even existed in that city. For the purposes of a movie, streets and facades can be rebuild and completely altered—in Hollywood, not in New York city. Miles away from the city you live in and you think evokes pure nostalgia because of those magical moments in the theatre. That yearning is dangerous, and yet, thousands of tourists travel all over the world to retread the steps of their favourite author/actor/whatever: visiting their grave, their birthplace, the studio they worked in, the school they spent time in. Homo Irrealis is full of these brain twisters where Aciman identifies with an actor in a movie that in itself is already filled with irrealis moods, where the things that are being discussed have not happened and might never happen—yet they’re discussing it as if it already happened and looking back on it. My brain hurts. To my big surprise, I often catch myself in an irrealis mood. If I’m unsure to take up that job offer, I imagine myself doing it and try to reflect “back” to evoke a feeling: will I like this? Do I see myself doing this for a long(er) time? Suppose I take this, will this make thing a and b less painful? If I say yes to this offer to give a talk, how would I look back to having given the talk? I gave a sourdough bread baking workshop last weekend and always regret saying yes at first because an event like this in the weekend causes logistical problems for parents with young kids. Yet I’ve been doing this for more than ten years and I just know the participants will be enthusiastic and I just know I’ll bike home with a big smile on my face. Thinking about that makes the initial reluctance disappear. Technically speaking, that’s an irrealis mood, since I’m reflecting on the workshop being done before it took place and how I feel having given it. But since I’ve gone through these many times before, I guess it’s less problematic? What I take away from André Aciman is that indeed, irrealis moods can be problematic as we can get stuck in the future of the past (huh?) without just enjoying the ride. I guess the main perpetrator here is again restorative nostalgia. I stumbled upon Aciman’s book by sheer luck: it was set on display in a second hand book store and somehow attracted my attention. Hoping to extract some philosophical guideline on how to contain and constrain nostalgic feelings, I walk away confused. Not here nor there, what should you make of this? That the human mind is an extraordinary thing that can look into a future that hasn’t happened yet and there reflect back on this moment now as if it happened a long time ago. But to what purpose? All of us seek a life that exists elsewhere in time, or elsewhere on-screen, and that, not being able to find it, we have all learned to make do with what life throws our way. I don’t know about you, but I don’t seek a life that exists elsewhere in time. Making do with what life throws my way sounds great: making amends with making do might be my most important mission ever. So perhaps I misunderstand the entire concept. Yet an irrealis mood might help putting a currently challenging time in perspective. My kids might be giving me trouble, but I can see myself in the future looking back at this moment and thinking ah, weren’t those the days?. That might possibly even involve a bit of yearning because in that future trouble will still find us—that’s simply what life throws our way. It’ll be a different kind of trouble. But it will be trouble. Looking back at the things I have experienced, done, or not done, does not immediately invoke yearning. I’m glad many of those aspects are gone: I was happy to finally live by myself; learn how to stand on my own two feet. I was happy to let go of commuting to Brussels every day and slowly killing myself, even though working with that team was such a privilege. All things considered, I am happy to have kids now. Every part of life comes with its own upsides and downsides. Suppose that wasn’t the case, then living turns into a boring drag. Nothing to look back at in order to pat yourself on the back and say hey, I survived this. Is that part of being a Homo Irrealis? Perhaps not. Less irrealis, more realis. Related topics: / nostalgia / By Wouter Groeneveld on 6 October 2026.  Reply via email.