The real and the "ersatz": who's the phony in Harvard Square?

A few last remarks on Andre Aciman's up-and-down novel Harvard Square - as we near the end we learn that Kalaj has some kind of homo-erotic attraction to the narrator (sorta reciprocated) - this not really such a surprise, as you have to suspect all along that his priapic obsession linked with his inability to sustain any sort of relationship with a woman (narrator has same issue) is a screen or cover for other feelings he's trying to suppress - or maybe his just pure id, pansexual, will take any form of physical-sexual comfort that's available. Second, far more shocking and disturbing, Kalaj is a brute and a woman-beater - he pretty seriously knocks around a woman he's been involved with when he catches her with another guy (he beats the guy, too) - so tough guy so ready to criticize everything American as "ersatz" is a phony himself, not a lover of women but a cruel bully. The woman debates whether to go to the police, seeks narrator's advice, hesitates because it could mean Kalaj's deportation - to which I say the hell with him. By this point, sad to say, I'm not particularly interested in K's fate - the narrator's maybe a little more so, but because of the framing of the story I do know that he came out OK. I don't know, it's an OK novel but not nearly as beautifully written and evocative as Aciman's memoir Out of Egypt, on which his reputation was built and justly rests. It may be that he just doesn't have a sharp enough sense of the arc of a novel or of the creation of character - he's stronger letting his memory, and his experience, speak directly to us, unmediated. It also may be that he's vamping for cover here - I don't know if in fact he did go to Harvard; he certainly knows some of the landmarks of H. Square and has a sense of the college life in that era, but for a novel narrated by a one-time Harvard English grad student there is very little about literature - the narrator's studies are always in the background, an interruption it seems to his amorous pursuits and his coffee-drinking. He prepares for his exams (orals?) concerned that the doesn't really have any thoughts about Chaucer, and then does v. well in the exams - wouldn't it be good to share those thoughts with us, and use these observations to help build character and plot? I was knocked around a bit re Exiles because like who would want to read a novel in which one of the key plot points is a Strindberg drama? - but I was kind of proud of that, veering away from the obvious and predictable and using a (relatively) obscure drama to illustrate points in contemporary life. Your novel can't be arcane or it won't work - no one should have to read another book to understand yours - but I think Aciman, a professor of writing, could have enlightened us more about literature - along with his observations about Persian cooking, the construction of Checker cabs, and world heavyweight champions.