My experience reading Andrew Sean Greer’s Less was twofold. First, I felt the depraving insufficiency that twenty-somethings who think they ‘know literature’ are prone to feeling when they come across an author they’ve never heard of before—an author most people, including the Pulitzer prize jury, can agree is talented. Second, I felt the need to deconstruct the elements of the story in order to understand what made it so endearing. Like the diligent cultural critic or the envious MFA student, I found myself flipping through the pages over and over and over to decipher some elusive truth Greer had so deftly woven into his prose.
I admit I’ve not found that truth. But I did come across some smaller truths that deserve a mention.
The story of Arthur Less is tragic, at least his telling of it. He is a failed novelist, single, and about to turn fifty. His one serious lover is old and frail and at the doorstep of death, and the other young and energetic and about to get married (yes, to someone else). His career fairs no better. As the mysterious narrator informs us, poor Arthur Less finds himself in the middle—too old to start afresh, too young to be rediscovered. So, when the younger lover’s wedding invitation arrives in the mail, he does what any sane person in his disposition would do. He accepts invitations to half-baked literary events across the world, and before anybody can stop him, he’s gone.
The reader traces Less’s journey from Mexico to Italy, from Germany to France, to India, and finally back home. Over six months Less meets people who hold his interest, and a lover who holds his heart. He is told he is a ‘bad gay’, but later that he is a good lover. He speaks not-so-intelligible German and doesn’t know it, and carries with him the seed of an idea that will turn his latest unsatisfactory novel into something he is proud of—though for the longest time, he doesn’t know that either.
What makes Arthur Less such a delightful character is his unerring defiance to despair. He takes the day in stride, the poor suffering author, and tries to make sense of it. It has been fifty years, yes, but that is fifty less than what he needs to make sense of it all. He has shared a home for a decade with what newspapers and literary circles call ‘genius’. He has felt fame, though not too much. He has also felt heartbreak (definitely too much of that). And through it all, he fights. Through his soulful wit and his tired but determined defense of life and the opportunities it offers, Less gains in the reader not an admirer, but rather, an aide, a comrade, against the silent suffering that the middle-classes are subject to. Despite themselves, the reader will find themself looking for lost bits and pieces of their lives—the love, the languor—that the pink-faced, blue-suited, white-souled author holds on to so dearly, so daringly.
Greer’s fascinating tale is further accentuated through the manner in which he narrates it—the metaphors and the alliterations abound. Add to that the little observations Less makes of the people and the places he visits, and Greer has the ability to instruct without sounding preachy, humour without sounding callous. The tale is gripping not least because it manages to take the trials and travails of a middle aged white man (admittedly, he is gay, but his lot is better than that of most people in the world) and give it tone and depth without turning it into that all-too-familiar self-pitying narrative.
The story of Arthur Less is one that is very familiar. The single greatest merit of the story, then, is his ability to tell it without falling into numerous tropes and clichés, his ability to make us feel something in a way that touches our human selves, and not merely our socially engineered personalities that swoon and sob on command. Less can do what most tales of love and longing cannot—after the song and dance, after the long periods of pathos, even after the big reunion, it will not let you fall into despair (or worse, a false sense of contentment). The strength of the story lies in its ability to tell a human tale, warts and all, such that the reader will find themselves in touch with nothing less than meaning. And if the journey is laden with suffering, so be it.
Ultimately (yes, this is where the twenty-something gives his parting remarks on a prize-winning novel), Arthur Less is not someone to be pitied or forgotten. Nor is he someone to be stored away in a bookshelf or a cupboard. Less should only be read more times; twice, thrice even. And with each read one will realize increasingly that loving Less is easy, but understanding him is hard. And let me assure such a reader who undertakes this utterly delightful task, that the more you understand him, the more you will come to love him.
Rohan Parikh is a contributing writer at ALMA MAG. He has been published in various journals and news dailies like The Indian Express, NDTV, and Scroll.in.
