Less (Arthur Less, #1)

by Andrew Sean Greer

A movie screen begins to unroll noisily from the ceiling like a mad relative wandering downstairs and has to be sent back into hiding.

For he has known genius. He has been awakened by genius in the middle of the night, by the sound of genius pacing the halls; he has made genius his coffee, and his breakfast, and his ham sandwich and his tea; he has

been naked with genius, coaxed genius from panic, brought genius’s pants from the tailor and ironed his shirts for a reading. He has felt every inch of genius’s skin; he has known genius’s smell and felt genius’s touch.

His head lowers, and Less can now see his eyes above the glasses. “What luck to run into you here! Arthur, I want to say something. May I say something?” Less braces himself as one does against a rogue wave. “Did you ever wonder why you haven’t won awards?” Finley asks. “Time and chance?” “Why the gay press doesn’t review your books?” “They don’t?” “They don’t, Arthur. Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed. You’re not in the cannon.” Less is about to say he feels very much in the cannon, picturing the human cannonball’s wave to the audience before he drops out of view, the minor novelist about to turn fifty—then realizes the man has said “canon.” He is not in the canon.

“What canon?” is all he manages to sputter. “The gay canon. The canon taught at universities. Arthur”—Finley is clearly exasperated—“Wilde and Stein and, well, frankly, me.” “What’s it like in the canon?” Less is still thinking cannon. He decides to head Finley off at the pass: “Maybe I’m a bad writer.” Finley waves this idea away, or perhaps it is the salmon croquettes a waiter is offering. “No. You’re a very good writer. Kalipso was a chef d’oeuvre. So beautiful, Arthur. I admired it a lot.” Now Less is stumped. He probes his weaknesses. Too magniloquent? Too spoony? “Too old?” he ventures. “We’re all over fifty, Arthur. It’s not that you’re—” “Wait, I’m still—” “—a bad writer.” Finley pauses for effect. “It’s that you’re a bad gay.” Less can think of nothing to say; this attack comes on an undefended flank. “It is our duty to show something beautiful from our world. The gay world. But in your books, you make the characters suffer without reward. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were Republican. Kalipso was beautiful. So full of sorrow. But so incredibly self-hating. A man washes ashore on an island and has a gay affair for years. But then he leaves to go find his wife! You have to do better. For us. Inspire us, Arthur. Aim higher. I’m so sorry to talk this way, but it had to be said.” At last Less manages to speak: “A bad gay?”

Finley fingers a book on the bookcase. “I’m not the only one who feels this way. It’s been a topic of discussion.” “But…but…but it’s Odysseus,” Less says. “Returning to Penelope. That’s just how the story goes.” “Don’t forget where you come from, Arthur.” “Camden, Delaware.” Finley touches Less’s arm, and it feels like an electric shock. “You write what you are compelled to. As we all do.” “Am I being gay boycotted?” “I saw you stand there, and I had to take this opportunity to let you know, because no one else has been kind enough.” He smiles and repeats: “Kind enough to say something to you, as I have now.” And Less feels it swelling up within him, the phrase he does not want to say and yet, somehow, by the cruel checkmate logic of conversation, is compelled to say: “Thank you.” Finley removes the book from the bookshelf and exits into the crowd as he opens it to the dedication page. Perhaps it is dedicated to him. A ceramic chandelier of blue cherubs hangs above them all and casts more shadows than light. Less stands below it, experiencing that Wonderland sensation of havi...

a bad son. Apparently the condition is worse; he is bad at being himself. At least, he thinks, looking across the room to where Finley ...

“Strange to be almost fifty, no? I feel like I just understood how to be young.” “Yes! It’s like the last day in a foreign country. You finally figure out where to get coffee, and drinks, and a good steak. And then you have to leave. And you won’t ever be back.”

“The brain is so wrong, all the time,” she says, turning to the dark landscape again. “Wrong about what time it is, and who people are, and where home is: wrong wrong wrong. The lying brain.”

“Am I too old to meet someone, Robert?” Robert sits up slightly, his mood shifting back to merrymaking. “Are you too old? Listen to you. I was watching a television show about science the other day. That’s the kind of nice-old-man thing I do now. I’m very harmless these days. It was about time travel. And they had a scientist on saying that if it were possible, you’d have to build one time machine now. And build another one years later. Then you could go back and forth. A sort of time tunnel. But here’s the thing, Arthur. You could never go any further back than the invention of that first machine. Which I think is really a blow to the imagination. I took it pretty hard.” Arthur says, “We can never kill Hitler.” “But you know it’s like that already. When you meet people. You meet them, say, when they’re thirty, and you can never really imagine them any younger than that. You’ve seen pictures of me, Arthur, you’ve seen me at twenty.” “You were a handsome guy.” “But really, really, you can’t imagine me any younger than my forties, can you?” “Sure, I can.” “You can picture it. But you can’t quite imagine it. You can’t go back any further. It’s against the laws of physics.” “You’re getting too excited.” “Arthur, I look at you, and I still see that boy on the beach with the red toenails. Not at first, but my eyes adjust. I see that twenty-one-year-old boy in Mexico. I see that young man in a hotel room in Rome. I see the young writer holding his first book. I look at you, and y...