Less (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): A Novel

What was the Pulitzer group thinking?!? Based on the Pulitzer designation and based on some of the endorsements from favorite writers (Ann Patchett), my book club chose "Less". All six of us (college educated women ages 35 to 71) disliked it. The criticisms were that the main character was uninteresting, unsympathetic and unrelatable; that the paltry humor was only mildly amusing (not "hysterical" as one endorsement said), the ending was predictable and anticlimactic; and that we finished reading it out of duty to the club, not because the book was compelling. In other words, we couldn't care less about "Less". The only redeeming aspect was the interesting way the author would weave past and present together in the narrative. I cannot recommend this book and the Pulitzer people need to reexamine their standards.

If you're looking for a book about a neurotic gay man to whom nothing really interesting happens, and who spends an inordinate amount of time lamenting the loss of a former partner, then you'll like LESS. But if you're looking for a book with interesting characters and an actual plot, look elsewhere.

After I started reading Less I immediately thought “So, why did this win the Pulitzer?” Then, about half way through, I began to understand. By the time we get to Morocco with Arthur Less, I was mentally comparing Less to Lolita, though the characters are nothing alike. While you hate the protagonist Humbert in Lolita, there is no denying the power of the novel. And where you will love the protagonist Arthur Less, it is the writing that shines here, not the sweep of the story or the depth of the characters. Is there a literary genre called Profound Humorous Romps? That’s where this book belongs. This is not a “gay” book, but Arthur is gay. This is not a story about middle age, but Arthur is confronting his own aging. This is a story about how humans are constantly swimming upstream against life. This is a story about how humans are old or young or bald or sad or beautiful or boring and sometimes we are more, but sometimes we are…(wait for it)…Less. I just hope Arthur turns sixty really soon, and Andrew Greer brings us a new book so we can ride shotgun again with Less.

I'm encouraged to see that I'm not the only one who thought this book wasn't so hot. After reading all the pages of raving blurbs, I thought I'd really be in for a treat. But I couldn't believe in it (and this is from another aging--okay, old--gay man). I spent so much energy slogging through the writer's attempts to be clever in every single sentence that I couldn't get involved with the character or story. I will admit that I laughed out loud a few times, and that's a lot more than I get out of the majority of books I read, but overall it was tedious, difficult reading. I was left wondering if "winner of the Pulitzer prize" was just part of the title--a bit of irony based on Less's older lover's having won the prize.

I am so glad there are so many other 1 star reviews, as I was beginning to think I lacked a certain literary suaveness since I basically hated this book and it won the Pulitzer.What’s the issue? Nothing....happened! During all his trevails all over the world, I kept expecting actual life-changing events and learnings. All that happened was continual pity parties for Less and the ongoing obsession with his ex.I will no longer accept that I need to read a book, or that it is actually GOOD, based on what the Pulitzer Board thinks. They’ve lost major credibility to me. I could not wait for this book to be over. I gave up in the second to last chapter and literally threw the book in the trash.

“Strange to be almost fifty, no? I feel like I just understood how to be young.”Andrew Greer is a gifted writer and a skilled storyteller. I started reading this book with a good deal of cynical lip-curling over the precious fumbling of its title character, Arthur Less. My radar was attuned to every little bit of self-conscious “literariness,” that affectation of language through which an author separates him or herself from the herd of other writers. By the last page of the book, however, I was in tears. Somehow, Andrew Sean Greer’s feckless, nearly-fifty, aging-twink author protagonist began, against the odds, to resonate with me.I am fifteen years older than Andrew Greer, and a decade older than the fictional Arthur Less. Why does this matter? Because age is not just a number: age is your place in history, your worldview, your experience. As a sixty-something gay man, with a husband of forty-two years, the experience of my life gives me a point of view, for good or for ill. I have opinions, especially about other gay men, and particularly about gay men in the public spotlight.And there, you see, is part of the point. “Less” is a gay book by a gay author that won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2018. This, in the same year that a gay journalist, Ronan Farrow (age 30), won a Pulitzer for his work. This is news. This matters, especially to a gay man of my generation for whom this all feels a bit miraculous, especially given the bizarro-world of our national political scene at the moment.Arthur Less is a writer, a novelist. He is approaching his fiftieth birthday, and has behind him two decade-long romances that both ended badly. Did they end badly because Less was an idiot? Possibly. When faced with the impending marriage of his second ex-boyfriend, Less does the only thing he can imagine to save himself: he flees. Accepting a half-dozen heretofore ignored invitations from various global destinations, he sets off, still fumbling and irritating, on a trip around the world that will help him avoid the wedding and his fiftieth birthday.Along the way we get most of Arthur’s life. We meet the “young Arthur Less,” pretty and feckless, talent untapped, as he bumbles into his first relationship. We follow him into early middle age, when one relationship is exchanged for another. At first, it’s not clear how important these two relationships are; but with time, it becomes clear that not only were they important, they were everything.It’s a little bit as if Arthur has been going through life not quite paying attention. He is often startled, often confused, often hurt. He is not hugely promiscuous, but he is not not promiscuous either. Arthur doesn’t seem to consider the potential significance of fidelity or monogamy. On the other hand, he’s not thinking about heteronormativity either. He doesn’t seem to give much thought to his romantic life, but just sort of takes it as it comes. It’s as if he can’t quite focus—on his writing career, on his emotional life, on the world around him.At one point, in yet another vaguely surreal moment on his world tour, Arthur is accused of being a “bad gay” by another gay author. He is told by that author (who is presented as supercilious and pretentious), that “It is our duty to show something beautiful from our world. The gay world. But in your books, you make the characters suffer without reward.”That moment struck me, because this very book, the book that won Greer his Pulitzer, is the first book by this gay author that includes the experience of a gay man; that includes any gay character, as far as I can tell. Greer is an author who, while his being gay is not a secret, never makes being gay a part of his public persona—at least in what I found. He is out, he has a husband, but I had to dig to find it. His other books, which include at least two best sellers, are devoid of any gay content. This book has, for the first time, made him a gay author. And even here, one of the reasons for this book’s success is that it is “A gay guy novel that even a non-gay guy can appreciate.” (Tony’s Book World)For a gay man of my generation and from my vantage point, this rankles. As a voracious reader, who gathered a big library of contemporary gay literature in the 1970s and 80s, I am leery of gay men who, in this day and age, don’t put gay content in their books. I know this is grossly unfair, because the prejudice in the publishing world (as in Hollywood and in virtually all the arts) is still very much present, no matter what anyone tells you. The world is better than when I was born, but it is not entirely good, not by a long shot, in the way it approaches gay content and treats gay artists.So, Greer’s first gay book, a book which surely has resonance with the artist’s own life (made doubly so by Arthur Less’s revision of his own latest unwanted novel in the course of this novel) wins him the brass ring, the Oscar of novelists. Is this ironic? Is this a message?“Boredom is the only real tragedy for a writer; everything else is material.”In the end, this book got five stars from me because it honored both the author’s experience as a gay man, and my experience as a survivor of gay life in a straight world. I expect no less from gay authors. None of the gay authors I read routinely will ever win a Pulitzer prize, and I’m fine with that. I’m glad that I ended up loving “Less,” because it is an important moment in the history of gay fiction. I hope the author cares about this as much as I do.

There are some beautiful turns of phrase in here, and some good characters and an interesting story. I read it and enjoyed it, but a Pulitzer??! No. I think not. It just didn't have enough- of anything! Characters weren't deep enough or real enough, writing wasn't amazing enough, story wasn't interesting enough. It needed more. Shame on you, Pulitzer committee.

Jesus. How did this book get a Pulitzer (as the best book of fiction of 2017!). How did that happen? It does not compare to "Goldfinch" or "Gone With the Wind" or "A Visit from the Goon Squad". Less (as a hero and as a book) does not compare.Boring, boring, boring, uninspiring, repetitive, boring, thank God quite short.Oh yes it is about love - but written in such an uninspiring language!I have never heard of Andrew Sean Greer and I hope to never hear of him again.

This is a beautifully crafted tale about romantic relationships, especially where there is a significant age gap between the partners, loss, rejection and fears of aging and loneliness, all of it overlaid with some good humour, resulting from the maladroitness of the protagonist, Arthur Less.Less is coming up to his 50th birthday when his younger partner of many years walks out on him and goes off to marry a new partner closer in age; Less is invited to the wedding and, fearing that he will look pitiful and pathetic if he turns up at it or pitiful and resentful if he does not turn up at it, decides to avoid the situation by going abroad, on a series of adventures (and misadventures).Less is gay and the whole tale is set in a homosexual context, however I think this is incidental and that the story and issues it deals with would work just as well in a heterosexual context; it works perfectly for me and I am a lifelong, committed heterosexual.I wonder if sales of the book to straight readers are hindered by Amazon's classification system, with it being identified as "Gay & Lesbian", "Gay" and "Gay Romance" but maybe this does not matter, as I recently noticed that "The Darling Buds Of May" from H E Bates is identified in "Home & Garden" as "Cottage Gardens", "Gardens In Britain" and "Trees & Shrubs".A really great read.

Disappointed in this book. So surprised it’s won the Pulitzer. It’s a series of dull chapters staged in different countries. I never managed to connect with the protagonist Less. Was simply bored by his ‘adventures’ and the peripheral characters.

This is not only the most tedious book I have read for some years, but also totally lacking in weight or substance. When I think of really fine American writers like Cormac MacCarthy and Donna Tartt - so very different but both marvellous - , I feel dumbfounded that accolades have been showered on this book. We are presented with a leaden, dull, central character in a world of meaningless froth. Sadly, I cannot find a single virtue to point up.

It's a book apparently being written by someone about whom we know very little, about a Californian gay writer approaching 50, who is travelling the world, partly to avoid a wedding, and partly to re-work his novel about a middle-aged gay author. The book never loses itself down this rabbit-hole, but it never forgets it either, and manages to be internally consistent it a very deft way. The humour comes not from slapstick situations, but almost entirely from the beautiful writing - the irony, the restraint, the eye for absurd detail. It's not a world I know at all, but it is consistently believable and yet very strange.