The movie wasn't so hot/it didn't have much of a plot...: Novelists spinning their wheels

Andre Aciman's Harvard Square is really a two-person novel - narrator and his coffee-shop friend and alter-ego, Kalaj - and is that enough to sustain a novel? I guess it can be - but as noted in yesterday's post there has to e change, growth, and dynamic between the two. I'm about half-way through the novel at this point, and my fear is that it's really just a one-person novel, a character study. the narrator is a lens through which we see Kalaj, but the narrator does not do much to, with, or because of Kalaj, at least not up to this point. The writing is fine and we learn more about K's life story over the course of the many conversations - I'm now at a point where Aciman come up with a pretty clever device for telling us more about K., as the narrator rehearses him for an interview before immigration, asking him a # of questions that he will have to answer truthfully. There's potential for some plot to develop here - perhaps K.'s interview will go poorly and the narrator will have to do something to help him retain his residency, perhaps even something criminal or underhanded (like impersonating K during the interview?) - so the novel still holds promise but it also is disconcerting that little has happened halfway through. I'm getting a little sick of highly talented writers who start off with a concept, turn on the engine, and then just spin their wheels.