Less Human

Book Review

Title: Less

Author: Andrew Sean Greer

Publisher: Hachette

Pages: 261

Price in India: Rs 499

Failure is as multi-faceted as success. You can fail in more ways than you may succeed. “Full many a flower” of Thomas Gray blushed unseen in the desert air, thanks to this universal tendency of failure. A lot of excellent writers end up as bloggers while more mediocre ones become best sellers, also thanks to this same principle. The same can be said of any profession.

Andrew Sean Greer’s novel, Less, which won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize is about a failed writer called Arthur Less. The blurb asks the question “Who says you can’t run away from your problems?” implying that Less failed because he did not face his problems. He did not, true. Can not-being-able-to-face your problems be one of the many facets of failure?

Take a look at the successes around you. Are they all geniuses? How many mediocre people have risen high, too high, and shone brilliantly there too uttering sheer nonsense that had charming colours, colours of nationalism or something like that?

Arthur Less is not a genius anyway. He is plain mediocre. He is gay too. At least, he should be a good gay in order to succeed as a writer. Or to succeed as anything. Who determines your success? A group of people, right? So, obviously, you should be in the good books of a group. A political party, a religious community, a scholar’s agglomeration, or a local club at least. These are what can declare you a success. Who else?

Arthur Less is not even a good gay. The novel begins with Less’s nine year-lover, Freddy, inviting Less to his wedding with another man. In order to avoid attending the wedding, Less begins to accept all other invitations which he had discarded earlier: to teach in a university as a visiting lecturer, to attend an award ceremony, and so on, all of which turn out to be farces organised by people with motives as ulterior as getting Viagra cheaper. During that journey which takes Less to many countries including India (land of rats and rat snakes and mongooses and parsons and dogs and elephants and all sorts of animals). He is there in each country for all wrong reasons.

Arthur Less is not even a good gay. He could not only retain his handsome gay lover Freddy but also not please any gay lover. Even his novels failed to do justice to the gays. “It is our duty to show something beautiful from our world,” Less is told by a gay reader who admires him. “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.” Less’s protagonist Kalipso “washes ashore on an island and has a gay affair for years. But then he leaves to go find his wife!” That doesn’t inspire the gays. “Inspire us, Arthur,” he is told. “Aim higher.”

Aim higher. Means, appease some group or the other. This last conversation which happens in Paris leaves Less feeling that he is not only a bad writer but also a bad lover, a bad friend, a bad son, and “bad at being himself”.

Less did his best to get himself listed in the best sellers under 30, then under 40, and now he is just turning 50 only to realise there is no hope for him to reach that list anymore because 50 is the age when you are too old to be fresh and too young to be rediscovered.

Time has run out for Less. Life is not going to be kind to you once you run out of your time. Life is tragi-comedy. Less seems to be the kind of a person for whom the first half of life was comedy and the second half tragedy, according to one of the characters. Having made that assessment, the character thinks again. “Not just the first part,” he says. He thinks that Less’s whole life is comedy. “The whole thing. You are the most absurd person I’ve ever met. You’ve bumbled through every moment and been a fool; you’ve misunderstood and misspoken and tripped over absolutely everything and everyone in your path, and you’ve won. And you don’t even realize it.”

Well, did Less win? That’s one question. The other is: Has his life been comic or tragic? It depends on from where you look at him. The novel persuades you to look at him from both sides. And it persuades powerfully too. Humorously too. Poignantly too. Green is a good writer.

Green is not an easy writer. You need patience to grasp the depth of this novel precisely because it appears shallow all through when it actually has depths lying concealed all over.