I was so excited to read and discuss Less for The Stacks Book Club this week. I got to dive into this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner in Fiction with the smart and thoughtful Zeke Smith. You can listen to our full conversation here, however, be warned there are spoilers on this episode.
Here is a little more about Less
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 yes–it would be too awkward–and you can’t say no–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.
This is a perfectly lovely book. There is nothing hurtful or offensive or troubling or even deeply thought provoking. The writing is simple and fluid, the characters are human, the plot moves forward, it is for all intents and purposes a perfectly lovely book.
Less did not excite me, it did not challenge me, it did not make me think. I found it to be an easy read and once I got to the end, I thought “why did I read this book?” There was no really passion in the book, and I didn’t connect with the humor.
My biggest challenge with reading this book was the feeling that I did not care about the main character, Arthur Less. I found him whiny and average (and not in a good way), he didn’t charm me, he didn’t evoke pity from me. He just was. Another book about another White man who I am supposed to empathize with, and I didn’t relate. I didn’t even want to relate.
I have to admit, before I read this book I was shocked that it won the Pulitzer Prize. A book written by a White man in 2018, about another White male writer. What is the point? Then I read the book, and while I would not have awarded Less with the Pulitzer, I understood the book a little better, and the love other people have for Greer’s work. Mostly, I think this book is a nice distraction from the craziness that has overtaken The United States. This book is not focused on racism, sexism, abuse, trauma, or anything that many people are struggling through (and in many cases very publicly). This book is easy. It has very nice things to say about life, and humanity, and love. It is a distraction from pain, and that can be a good thing. It is not the thing I would chose to award, especially in times like these.
One thing that deserves praise in this book is the centering of a gay character that is neither the stereotypically flamboyant nor the deeply suffering . There is no AIDS epidemic there is no glitter speedo. There is real life that happens to a gay man, and that is not something we are presented with as often as we should be. Gay people deserve the diversity in their stories that heterosexual people are given. LGBTQ stories deserve the space to be just as average and mediocre as White cis-gender heterosexual males.
I did not love this book, I liked it just fine. It didn’t speak to me in any meaningful way, and some books just aren’t for me. There were a few moments throughout that were cute or smart, but nothing sustained me. I appreciated the ending. I wouldn’t rave over this book, but I wouldn’t tell you not to read it either. It is a well written book about a man that I didn’t care about, and it is a perfectly lovely book.
Don’t forget to listen the The Stacks with Zeke Smith discussing Less.
- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (May 22, 2018)
- 3/5 stars
- Buy on Less Amazon
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