Comedy isn’t granted the identical measure of literary recognition or respect as works which are tragic, epic or historic, so Andrew Sean Greer’s 2018 Pulitzer Prize for his comedian novel, Less, was a welcome shock. It didn’t damage that the up to date satire unapologetically skewered the literary group because it chronicled the midlife breakdown of “minor American writer” Arthur Less. Greer tapped his singular talent for mixing a number of tropes to amusing impact: the life-in-crisis travelogue, the quirky homosexual love story, a mysterious Bronte-esque narrator whose id is saved below wraps till the tip of the e book. (The snazzy purple go well with Greer wore to the Pulitzer Prize ceremony received him much more followers.)
As the title suggests, Greer’s new novel, Less Is Lost, is a sequel, selecting up the misadventures (and misdirected travels) of the hapless Arthur Less. Arthur is dealing with each emotional and literal upheaval: His former lover and mentor, Robert Brownburn, has died, leaving a gap in his coronary heart and revealing the startling proven fact that Arthur owes 10 years in again lease for the house the place he believed he was residing rent-free. Arthur has lately acquired an affectionate pug and a transformed camper van from a much-lionized novelist with three initials in his title—so to stave off homelessness, he embarks within the camper van on a weird itinerary of marginally literary occasions that take him to, amongst different locations, a scorching springs retreat within the Arizona desert (which he proceeds to flood), the Navajo reservation, an antebellum plantation in Georgia and an island off the coast of Savannah the place his long-estranged father is dying.
Enroute throughout the nation, Arthur fields abrupt, stress-inducing telephone calls from his fast-talking literary agent. As he discovers the America that lies between the coasts, he additionally type of—although not too definitively—discovers issues about himself, most of them having to do with our want for love and human connection. As with Less (however now not a secret), the narrator is Arthur’s beloved companion, Freddy Pelu, who has a magical capability for seeing into Arthur’s coronary heart and soul in methods Arthur himself can not. And Freddy, it seems, proves a third-person narrator within the method of Nick Carraway, discovering issues about himself as he ostensibly serves as Arthur’s Alice B. Toklas.
Greer writes with an offbeat, mild humor, and his narrative, within the voice of the considerably enigmatic Freddy, is peppered all through with well-observed irony and occasional profundity. Arthur Less himself, little doubt, can be stymied on the prospect of following up the success of a Pulitzer, however Greer clearly is made of sterner stuff than his fictional creation. And if Less Is Lost lacks some of the snap of the prizewinner, it admirably transports keen readers into the world of Arthur and Freddy with tenderness and wit.
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