Less (Arthur Less, #1)

by Andrew Sean Greer

the lenses of his tortoiseshell glasses swirled with his thoughts like the iridescent membranes of soap bubbles.

Less’s latest novel has been living with his publisher for over a month, as any modern couple lives together before a marriage, but surely his publisher will pop the question any day now.

quaaludes (is there any more perfect spelling than with that lazy superfluous vowel?),

Mescal turns out to be a drink that tastes as if someone has put their cigarette out in it.

chooses the Tuscan chicken (whose ravishing name reveals itself, like an internet lover, to be mere chicken and mashed potatoes),

already inside the plane, nodding to the beaky blond steward who greets him, as they always do, in the language not of the passenger, steward, or airport but of the plane itself (“Buonasera,” for it is Italian),

we each got to make one rule about the road trip. Mine was that we could only sleep in places with a neon sign. His was that wherever we went, we had to eat the special. If they didn’t have a special, we had to find another place.

Less is technically Christian. There is really no other word for someone who celebrates Christmas and Easter, even if only as craft projects.

You’ll always be that way for me. But not for anyone else. Arthur, people who meet you now will never be able to imagine you young. They can never go any further back than fifty. It isn’t all bad. It means now people will think you were always a grown-up. They’ll take you seriously.