Book Review: 'Less' by Andrew Sean Greer

Greer won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for this novel.

It’s a fictional, third-person memoir about a midlist author, Arthur Less, who is on the cusp of his fiftieth birthday, and dreading it. His young lover, Freddy Pelu, who is half his age, has left him to marry Tom, who is not characterized further in the story. Less hopes to ease the pain of separation by embarking on a world tour, having accepted several invitations for author appearances at literary events. Realizing at this point in his life that his works are less than stellar, Less has minimal ambition. His purpose in setting off on the tour is mainly to avoid attending Freddy’s wedding. The fact that his birthday will occur while he’s on the road is also comforting because he won’t have to spend it in the company of those same wedding guests.

The persistent theme throughout the story is loneliness and longing. But Less is so directionless he can’t identify anything that might give him satisfaction. He has been working on a novel that was rejected by his publisher, and the one tangible goal he sets is to find some time during this trip to rewrite it.

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The persistent theme of ‘Less’ is longing and loneliness.

Recently I heard Greer speak on a panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Like Less, he is tall and lanky, with carrot-colored hair and a sardonic wit. He remarked that he admired Don Quixote, saying, “It’s a hoot.” And like Cervantes, Greer unfolds his plot as a picaresque adventure, a series of only loosely connected episodes. (Picaresque implies a roguish main character, but Less is a rogue only in that his attitude is antisocial.) Arthur stumbles from one involvement to another. Years ago, when he was Freddy’s age, he fell into a love affair with a writer who is now considered a major poet, Robert Brownburn. The affair extricated the famous man from a marriage to the dutiful Marian, whose permissiveness not only lets him go with her blessing but also makes her stick by him until his death.

Now as Less accepts celebrity bookings, he fears he’s being welcomed not as the artist he aspires to be but as a lesser talent who will go down in the history books as Brownburn’s longstanding lover. The older man left Less after years of faithfulness when presumably his ardor cooled, and he apparently blessed the new relationship with Freddy, which mirrored their May-September age difference.

In his travels, Less goes to Mexico City, then Paris, Berlin, Marrakech, a nameless village in India, and Kyoto before returning home to San Francisco, where Brownburn is dying (and perhaps Freddy is waiting). In each location, he falls in with a local group of gay men but oddly also encounters other friends from his past, despite his intentions to avoid them. Besides Marian, there is only one notable female character—Zohra, whom he meets on a camel trip in the Sahara. She is also staring down her fiftieth birthday, her female lover having left her recently for a more passionate relationship with another woman. Another mirror image.

It won’t be much of a spoiler to share that Arthur Less’s life seems pointless, which is very much Greer’s point. Life happens, then you die. The theme is existentialist, not unfamiliar in confessional memoirs.

What should you expect from life? Less.

Whatever meaning you find may be all there is. It’s not valueless. Does Arthur Less ever understand this? Perhaps not.

Middle-aged Harry Gardner travels to East Africa expecting a sex vacation. He stays for more serious reasons.

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