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Fiction.
Literature.
LGBTQIA+ (Fiction.)
HTML:A struggling novelist travels the world to avoid an awkward wedding in this hilarious Pulitzer Prize-winning novel full of "arresting lyricism and beauty" (TheNew York Times Book Review). WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE />National Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2017 A Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2017 A San Francisco Chronicle Top Ten Book of 2017 Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Lambda Award, and the California Book Award
Who says you can't run away from your problems? You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yesâ??it would be too awkwardâ??and you can't say noâ??it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town? ANSWER: You accept them all. What would possibly go wrong? Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last. Because, despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings and mistakes, Less is, above all, a love story. A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author The New York Times has hailed as "inspired, lyrical," "elegiac," "ingenious," as well as "too sappy by half," Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy. "I could not love LESS more."â??Ron Charles, TheWashington Post "Andrew Sean Greer's Less is excellent company. It's no less than bedazzling, bewitching and be-wonderful."--Christopher Buckley, The New York Times Book Review… (more)
In Andrew Sean Greer's Pulitzer Prize-winning Less, the titular Arthur Less, a writer, decides to take a trip around the world in the face of two upsetting events: his fiftieth birthday, and the marriage of his sort-of-boyfriend of nearly a decade, Freddy Pelu, to another man. Nothing seems to be going quite right for him: after an auspicious debut, his subsequent novels have declined in both sales and critical acclaim, and he worries that the closest he will come to genius were his years dating Robert Brownburn, an acclaimed poet, and being in Robert's circle of writer and artist friends. When an invite to Freddy's wedding arrives, Less can't bring himself to either accept and be the subject of pitying looks or decline and know he'll set the gossip wheels turning with speculation that he's bitter. So he decides to be absent, creating a trip around the world for himself by accepting invitations for various and sundry events that he'd shoved in a drawer and never intended to actually respond to.
Less begins by leaving San Francisco for New York, where his new novel is gently declined by his publisher. And then it's off to Mexico, then France, then Italy for a prize ceremony for a translation of his book, then Germany to teach a summer course, then a trip to Morocco with friends, then a retreat in India to work on his book, then Japan to write an article about food for a travel magazine, and finally back, having neatly avoided both his birthday and the wedding. Along the way he runs into an ex he doesn't recognize, has a fling with academic, gets a custom-made suit, steps on a needle, and has to destroy his way out of a room. We get perspective on the life he's led through both his own reminisces and the voice of a narrator, whose identity is finally revealed to us as Arthur Less gets home.
I'll admit I was a little skeptical when this was chosen as a selection for my book club. "Funny" books can land wildly differently depending on the reader, and "prize-winning funny" does not tend to be a type of humor I find especially enjoyable. But what a delight this book was! I've talked before about how much my experience of a book can be impacted by what else I've read in the same time frame, and after the self-serious, sometimes ponderous Shantaram, the breezy lightness of Less just hit the spot. But it's not just a fluffy book at all. It's filled with sharp observations and resonant character notes, and the propulsive forward motion of the journey keeps the plot moving at a nice clip. It never gets bogged down anywhere. And while managing all that, it also excels at blending the moments of humor with sweetly poignant emotional work.
Writing a funny-yet-grounded book is hard, y'all. So many things to be balanced, and the Pulitzer has to be at least in part a recognition of how very well Greer crafted his work. Why, after all this gushing, is this not an even-more-highly-rated book for me? Two things: it didn't linger in my mind (books that I rate 9 or 10 stars stick with me long after reading), and the narrator reveal. While I thought it was an emotionally satisfying way to end the book, it didn't make logical sense, which spoiled it ever so slightly. That being said, it's a wonderful book that I heartily enjoyed, with meditations on aging, love, dignity, and identity that run beneath the parts that make you laugh to make you think. I'd recommend it to everyone! ( )
To read Andrew Sean Greer who is funny and witty and has the most wonderful metaphors restores my love of fiction. I put pages of quotes in my commonplace book. In telling the story of a self-effacing, lovable, heartbroken mid-list novelist named Arthur Less and his journey around the world, I fell in love with the protagonist and the story and even the hardest heart softens with the affection and smiles in this story. Insightful, funny, endearing, the perfect antidote to the times we live in. ( )
Quirky, somewhat of a love story and world travel novel of a bumbling but likeable turning 50 gay man who is having a bit of a mid-life crisis. Good as an audio book, as the reader does great voices and accents for the various characters. Sometimes the past/present flip flops got a bit confusing, but longer reading chunks eliminated this pitfall. Not sure of the Pulitzer status, but it does make a marginalized genre fit in wonderfully with the mainstream. ( )
Less didn't capture my interest at first, but once the wacky hero's journey got off the ground, I was hooked. Through a series of picaresque episodes, the novel delivers an empathetic satire of the titular character, a minor writer on the cusp of middle age who is equal parts goodhearted and self-pitying. As he bumbles across the world on a journey of self-discovery, we slowly unearth his past.
Arthur's history has a half-submerged mythological quality (as does Arthur himself) and I spent a lot of time flipping between passages, trying to connect the dots. It was fun! Also entertaining is the curious narrative structure. It's an ambitious book and Greer just barely pulls off the ending, but on the whole I liked it. It doesn't hurt that I agree with everything it has to say about the transitory joy of love and the stages of life. ( )
A beautifully structured and written story that will appeal especially to fans of romance but is worthwhile even to a cynic like me. Recommended for all libraries. ( )
Information from the French Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
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Dedication
Information from the French Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
pour Daniel Handler
First words
From where I sit, the story of Arthur Less is not so bad. Look at him: seated primly on the hotel lobby's plush round sofa, blue suit and white shirt, legs knee-crossed so that one polished loafer hangs free of its heel. The pose of a young man. His slim shadow is, in fact, still that of his younger self, but at nearly fifty he is like those bronze statues in public parks that, despite one lucky knee rubbed raw by schoolchildren, discolor beautifully until they match the trees.
Quotations
By his forties, all he has managed to grow is a gentle sense of himself, akin to the transparent carapace of a soft-shelled crab.
Freddy put on his red glasses, and in each aquarium a little blue fish swam.
From the open window came the song of roofers hammering and the smell of molten tar.
Arthur Less, encircling the globe! It feels cosmonautical in nature.
It is a bad musical, but, like a bad lay, a bad musical can do its job perfectly well. By the end, Arthur Less is in tears, sobbing in his seat, and he thinks he has been sobbing quietly until the lights come up and the woman seated beside him turns and says, "Honey, I don't know what happened in your life, but I am so so sorry," and gives him a lilac-scented embrace. Nothing happened to me, he wants to say to her. Nothing happened to me. I'm just a homosexual at a Broadway show.
Less stands and studies him: the lines on his face like origami that has been unfolded and smoothed down with your hand, the little freckles on the forehead, the white fuzz from his ears to his crown, the coppery eyes flashing with anything but rancor.
As he crosses the restaurant, Peter telepathically shakes hands with friends on all sides of the room, then locks his gaze with the smitten Less.
"Who the hell is Arthur Less?" Less stands in the doorway, space helmet under his arm, a smile imprinted on his face. How many times has he been asked this question? Certainly enough for it not to sting; he has been asked it when he was very young, back in the Carlos days, when he could overhear someone explaining how Arthur Less was that kid from Delaware in the green Speedo, the thin one by the pool, or later, when it was explained he was the lover of Robert Brownburn, the shy one by the bar, or even later, when it was noted he was his ex-lover and maybe shouldn't be invited over anymore, or when he was introduced as the author of a first novel, and then a second novel, and then as that fellow someone knew from somewhere long ago. And at last: as the man Freddy Pelu had been sleeping with for nine whole years, until Freddy married Tom Dennis. He has been all those things, to all those people who did not know who he was.
It takes an hour and a half in traffic to get to the hotel; the rivers of red taillights conjure lava flows that destroyed ancient villages.
Was this how men felt? Straight men? Alone so often, but if they falteredâif they lost a wedding ring!âthen the whole band of brothers would descend to fix the problem? Life was not hard; you shouldered it bravely, knowing all the time that if you sent the signal, help would arrive. How wonderful to be part of such a club. Half a dozen men gathered around, engaged in the task. To save his marriage and his pride. So they did have hearts, after all. They were not cold, cruel dominators; they were not high school bullies to be avoided in the halls. They were good; they were kind; they came to the rescue. And today Less was one of them.
"I think the saddest thing in the world is a twenty-five-year-old talking about the stock market. Or taxes. Or real estate, goddamn it! That's all you'll be talking about when you're forty. Real estate! any twenty-five-year-old who says the word refinance should be taken out and shot. Talk about love and music and poetry. Things everyone forgets they ever thought were important. Waste every day, that's what I say."
The sky takes on a shimmer as blue as her eye shadow, and as the men approach the waves they seem to redouble in violence like a fire that has been fed a bundle of kindling. Together they stand in the sun before those terrible waves, in the fall of that terrible year.
Less opens his eyes to a countryside of autumn vineyards, endless rows of the crucified plants, a pink rosebush always planted at the end.
He ends his workout lacquered in sweat, feeling he has beat back another day from time's assault.
Less promises himself a better workout in two days. In return for this promise: a dollhouse whiskey from the room's dollhouse bar.
cherry and plum blossoms made the slightest wind into a ticker-tape parade
Nothing has happened in right field all season, which is why he was put there: a kind of athletic Canada.
And his mother, a softball champ in her day, has had to pretend none of this matters to her at all and drives Less to games with a speech about sportsmanship that is more a dismantling of her own beliefs than a relief to the boy.
The two switch gears to Italian, and so begins what sounds like a squabble but could really be anything at all.
The windows are open and blowing the cheap white curtains around; the sky is foxed and gray above the linden trees.
It seems an impossibility that he is here, in Berlin, at this moment, waiting in the darkness as the sweat begins to darken his chest like a bullet wound.
Less stands below it, experiencing that Wonderland sensation of having been shrunk, by Finley Dwyer, into a tiny version of himself
Less himself staring at the ceiling fan and wondering if the room was in motion below a stationary fan, or the opposite, much like a medieval man wondering if the sky moved or the earth.
Less let himself be embraced by its branches, the scent of its pink Seussian flowers.
"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 sky out the window is lowering the last of its gauzy veils, revealing bright naked Venus.
"Me, I was at dinner, and an old man was beside me. So boring! Talking about real estate. I thought, Please, God, do not let me be this man when I am old. Later I find out he was a year younger than I."
Now, in the new space between him and the Spaniard, one can make out the Erector-set miracle of the Eiffel Tower.
There is piano music inside; the son has been put to work, and whatever hangover he has does not show in the bright garlands of notes that come out the window, onto the balcony.
A flight of starlings goes off behind him, headed to church.
The chimneys all looked like flowerpots.
Alex was bald as a malted milk ball.
The Moroccan officers, in the green and red of cocktail olives, stay calm
"We know there's no love of your life. Love isn't terrifying like that. It's walking the fucking dog so the other one can sleep in, it's doing taxes, it's cleaning the bathroom without hard feelings. It's having an ally in life. It's not fire, it's not lightning."
This insanity, the insanity of her lover, has her bewildered and hurt and incandescent.
That the mind cannot be trusted is a certainty. "What is love, Arthur? What is it?"
"Arthur, happiness is bullshit. That is the wisdom I give you from my twenty-two hours of being fifty."
The driver works the horn like an outlaw at a gunfight.
Stray dogs and goats leap from the road wearing guilty expressions, and people leap aside wearing innocent ones.
He finds himself awakening at dawn, when the sea is brightening but the sun still struggles in its bedclothes, and sits down to lash his protagonist a few more times with his authorial whip.
Then the doctor, an elderly woman in black glasses, leans into view. Thin, bony, creased with lines as if crumbled in a pocket for a long time, with a wattle under her chin.
And Robert says nothing; he knows the absurdity of asking someone to explain love or sorrow.
Robert has never been kind to his body; he's worn it like an old leather coat tossed in oceans and left crumpled in corners, and Less saw its marks and scars and aches not as failures of age but the opposite: the evidence, as Raymond Chandler once wrote, of "a gaudy life."
Last words
After choosing the path people wanted, the man who would do, the easy way out of things - your eyes wide in surprise as you see me - after holding it all in my hands and refusing it, what do I want from life? And I say: "Less!"
Fiction.
Literature.
LGBTQIA+ (Fiction.)
HTML:A struggling novelist travels the world to avoid an awkward wedding in this hilarious Pulitzer Prize-winning novel full of "arresting lyricism and beauty" (TheNew York Times Book Review). WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE National Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2017 A Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2017 A San Francisco Chronicle Top Ten Book of 2017 Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Lambda Award, and the California Book Award
Who says you can't run away from your problems? You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yesâ??it would be too awkwardâ??and you can't say noâ??it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town? ANSWER: You accept them all. What would possibly go wrong? Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last. Because, despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings and mistakes, Less is, above all, a love story. A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author The New York Times has hailed as "inspired, lyrical," "elegiac," "ingenious," as well as "too sappy by half," Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy. "I could not love LESS more."â??Ron Charles, TheWashington Post "Andrew Sean Greer's Less is excellent company. It's no less than bedazzling, bewitching and be-wonderful."--Christopher Buckley, The New York Times Book Review
▾Library descriptions
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▾LibraryThing members' description
Book description
Less is a satirical comedy novel by American author Andrew Sean Greer first published in 2017. It follows gay writer Arthur Less while he travels the world on a literary tour, as his fiftieth birthday looms.
The book covers themes such as romantic love, same-sex relationships, aging, and travel. Greer began writing Less as a "very serious novel" but found that "the only way to write about [being gay and aging] is to make it a funny story. And I found that by making fun of myself, I could actually get closer to real emotion â closer to what I wanted in my more serious books."[3]
Less won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[4] In reporting the award, the Associated Press accidentally wrote the novel's title as "Fearless."[3] The book also was a New York Times best seller, won the Northern California Book Award, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction.[5]
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Wikipedia in English
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Less begins by leaving San Francisco for New York, where his new novel is gently declined by his publisher. And then it's off to Mexico, then France, then Italy for a prize ceremony for a translation of his book, then Germany to teach a summer course, then a trip to Morocco with friends, then a retreat in India to work on his book, then Japan to write an article about food for a travel magazine, and finally back, having neatly avoided both his birthday and the wedding. Along the way he runs into an ex he doesn't recognize, has a fling with academic, gets a custom-made suit, steps on a needle, and has to destroy his way out of a room. We get perspective on the life he's led through both his own reminisces and the voice of a narrator, whose identity is finally revealed to us as Arthur Less gets home.
I'll admit I was a little skeptical when this was chosen as a selection for my book club. "Funny" books can land wildly differently depending on the reader, and "prize-winning funny" does not tend to be a type of humor I find especially enjoyable. But what a delight this book was! I've talked before about how much my experience of a book can be impacted by what else I've read in the same time frame, and after the self-serious, sometimes ponderous Shantaram, the breezy lightness of Less just hit the spot. But it's not just a fluffy book at all. It's filled with sharp observations and resonant character notes, and the propulsive forward motion of the journey keeps the plot moving at a nice clip. It never gets bogged down anywhere. And while managing all that, it also excels at blending the moments of humor with sweetly poignant emotional work.
Writing a funny-yet-grounded book is hard, y'all. So many things to be balanced, and the Pulitzer has to be at least in part a recognition of how very well Greer crafted his work. Why, after all this gushing, is this not an even-more-highly-rated book for me? Two things: it didn't linger in my mind (books that I rate 9 or 10 stars stick with me long after reading), and the narrator reveal. While I thought it was an emotionally satisfying way to end the book, it didn't make logical sense, which spoiled it ever so slightly. That being said, it's a wonderful book that I heartily enjoyed, with meditations on aging, love, dignity, and identity that run beneath the parts that make you laugh to make you think. I'd recommend it to everyone! (