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Fiction.
Literature.
Humor (Fiction.)
LGBTQIA+ (Fiction.)
HTML:In the follow-up to the ??bedazzling, bewitching, and be-wonderful? (New York Times) best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning Less: A Novel, the awkward and lovable Arthur Less returns in an unforgettable road trip across America. ??Go get lost somewhere, it always does you good.? For Arthur Less, life is going surprisingly well: he is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But nothing lasts: the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US. Less roves across the ??Mild Mild West,? through the South and to his mid-Atlantic birthplace, with an ever-changing posse of writerly characters and his trusty duo ?? a human-like black pug, Dolly, and a rusty camper van nicknamed Rosina. He grows a handlebar mustache, ditches his signature gray suit, and disguises himself in the bolero-and-cowboy-hat costume of a true ??Unitedstatesian?... with varying levels of success, as he continues to be mistaken for either a Dutchman, the wrong writer, or, worst of all, a ??bad gay.? ??We cannot, however, escape ourselves??even across deserts, bayous, and coastlines. From his estranged father and strained relationship with Freddy, to the reckoning he experiences in confronting his privilege, Arthur Less must eventually face his personal demons. With all of the irrepressible wit and musicality that made Less a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning, must-read breakout book, Less Is Lost is a profound and joyous novel about the enigma of life in America, the riddle of love,… (altro)
Greer's storytelling style is unique and his characters are likeable, but I never felt like I could fully connect with it all, but maybe that is on purpose. ( )
The cleverness of Andrew Sean Greer's Less is Lost wears thin about 1/2 way through the novel. Yes, he is a master of language and metaphors but what starts out as comedic becomes irritating. ( )
This is the sequel to Greer's Pulitzer Prize-winning Less. In the first book, Less is dumped by his famous partner, Robert, and heads to Europe to console himself. The concept of an ineffectual man roaming around Europe reminded me of Waugh and Amis, and appealed to me quite a bit.
In the sequel, Less now has a younger partner, Freddie, but is discombobulated when Robert dies. Things are made much worse when it turns out that Less and Freddie have to leave their home because they owe Robert's estate a massive amount of back rent. Less is forced to accept a string of bizarre speaking arrangements to scrounge up the necessary money.
Less encounters a series of characters and incidents that are somewhat amusing in themselves, but the book lacks the depth of the first novel. The repeated device of having Freddie pop in and out of the narration is a bit more clunky this time, and I found the ending a bit too pat and sentimental. ( )
Nowhere near as good as Less, but that's hardly a crime. The narrator intrudes a bit too much, and the book lacks the satisfying payoff of the first book, but it's enjoyable enough for a fan. ( )
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And the man that has anything bountiful laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Dedica
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For William Greer, my wonderful father
Incipit
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Less should have known, at the clinic a few weeks before, that his relationship was in some trouble.
Citazioni
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My curls have patinaed like scallops on old silver; my red glasses magnify my myopia; I am winded after chasing my dog one time around the park.
"Arthur, let me get right to it." He delivers news, good or bad, in a jolting way, like the electric shock used to prod cattle.
"Neither of us is strong. We can't put up a shelf or fix the sink and neither of us can catch a mouse." You put your hand on my arm. "But somebody has to catch the mouse. So here's my proposal. You be the strong one on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And I'll be the strong one Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays." I paused, suspicious. "What about Sundays?" You patted me on the arm with reassurance. "On Sundays, Freddy, nobody's the strong one."
"Was it worth it for you?" Without knowing it, the young man has asked the toughest question of all. Less sees Marian across the room, moving slowly in her marionette walk toward an ornate sofa. Those years living on the Vulcan Steps in which he gave each hour to protecting the creativity of Robert, tiptoeing around the house, making lunch as quietly as possible and knocking gently on the door, only to see Robert lying on the daybed looking angrily at the ceiling; the years when he was twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three—are they to be savored or spent? "Waste your youth," Marion had told him on that beach thirty years ago, and at the time he said he was. But had he? He had invested it, perhaps, but certainly not in himself; one could not withdraw the days of one's youth in retirement and throw them on the fire to warm old bones.
You are seeing suffering, Robert used to say when confronted with a horrible person. You are seeing someone in pain.
Less and the van had taken a while to get to know each other; he is certainly used to old cars, but not to something that feels so human. Every time he moves, it moves with him, like a drunken dance partner. And the reverse is true; it vibrates dramatically, and he is clenched to its controls, he finds himself vibrating right along. Like driving a martini shaker. After almost two hours of being shaken, driving along back roads as dark as a haunted house, the headlights peering around each terrifying turn like the flashlight of a ghost hunter, they head southward to an inland sea.
He stared at me as at a lover proposing a peculiar sexual act.
The stars are being extinguished one by one, as if by a lamplighter, as the horizon begins to whiten in expectation.
Until last year, Rebecca was blond. Now she is completely gray. Less has never asked her if it was previously dyed or went all at once, like a maple in autumn.
The pause is of someone searching for the right knife in a drawer, the right word to do a hard job quickly.
"You don't know if you can go through Robert's death without Robert's help?" Less grimaces. "Well, when you say it, it sounds crazy."
Less used to call his sister after every dating disaster. "I just want to be young together and in love," he would tell her. She would listen and sigh. All he wanted was to be young together and in love. Too much to ask? "Nobody gets that," she would say. "Nobody. Your problem is you're convinced you have a type." He would say of course he had a type, and she would say: "Give that up. Find someone who treats you decently."
"It's kindness and human spirit that drives us. We have one another. That's all we have. We must love, but if you love someone...if you love someone, you have to love them every day. You have to choose them every day."
I am ashamed to say that Arthur Less is not comfortable with Southern hail-fellow-well-met friendliness. Perhaps because he grew up on the Eastern Seaboard, where affection was kept in the cupboard with the hurricane lamps, or perhaps it was merely because his parents, including a loving mother who, like a famous actor omitting from a script lines she cannot pronounce, simply could not say "I love you." Less used to tease her about this; he knew she loved him, knew this beyond any doubt, but he would end each phone call with, "I love you, Mom," which was like trying to get a Buckingham Palace guard to smile because she was temperamentally incapable of answering anything but "Goodbye, son."
Realizing we are no longer in love is not the heartbreaking sensation we imagine when we are in love—because it is no sensation at all. It is a realization made by a bystander.
Wind shakes rain loose from the Spanish moss and it falls on the road like a briefcase of diamonds.
Every morning, I awakened with the dawn and the harbor bells. When was the morning ever my friend? In my youth, it used to be so hard to take—the unmade bed, the unmade day—but here on Valonica, it felt like something had been repaired at night, as if by elves. Something was changing—I was changing.
"He told me he forgives me. He forgives me!" He trembles at the final effrontery: "In German!" Rebecca tosses the onions into a pan. "That's what dying people say, Archie. They say they love you and they forgive you. I think it's a script the hospital hands out."
America, how's your marriage? Your two-hundred-fifty-year-old promise to stay together in sickness and in health? First thirteen states, then more and more, until fifty of you had taken the vow. Like so many marriages, I know, it was not for love; I know it was for tax reasons, but soon you all found yourselves financially entwined, with shared debts and land purchases and grandiose visions of the future, yet somehow, from the beginning, essentially at odds. Ancient grudges. That split you had—that still stings, doesn't it? Who betrayed whom, in the end? I hear you tried getting sober. That didn't last, did it? So how's it going, America? Do you ever dream of each being on your own again? Never having to be part of someone else's family squabble? Never having to share a penny? Never having to bear with someone else's gun hobby, or car obsession, or nutrition craze? Tell me honestly, because I have contemplated marriage and wonder: If it can't work for you, can it work for any of us?
Because to love someone ridiculous is to understand something deep and true about the world. That up close it makes no sense. Those of you who choose sensible people may feel secure, but I think you water your wine; the wonder of life is in its small absurdities, so easily overlooked. And if you have not shared somebody's tilted view of the horizon (which is the actual world), tell me: what have you really seen?
Ultime parole
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi.Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
Fiction.
Literature.
Humor (Fiction.)
LGBTQIA+ (Fiction.)
HTML:In the follow-up to the ??bedazzling, bewitching, and be-wonderful? (New York Times) best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning Less: A Novel, the awkward and lovable Arthur Less returns in an unforgettable road trip across America. ??Go get lost somewhere, it always does you good.? For Arthur Less, life is going surprisingly well: he is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But nothing lasts: the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US. Less roves across the ??Mild Mild West,? through the South and to his mid-Atlantic birthplace, with an ever-changing posse of writerly characters and his trusty duo ?? a human-like black pug, Dolly, and a rusty camper van nicknamed Rosina. He grows a handlebar mustache, ditches his signature gray suit, and disguises himself in the bolero-and-cowboy-hat costume of a true ??Unitedstatesian?... with varying levels of success, as he continues to be mistaken for either a Dutchman, the wrong writer, or, worst of all, a ??bad gay.? ??We cannot, however, escape ourselves??even across deserts, bayous, and coastlines. From his estranged father and strained relationship with Freddy, to the reckoning he experiences in confronting his privilege, Arthur Less must eventually face his personal demons. With all of the irrepressible wit and musicality that made Less a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning, must-read breakout book, Less Is Lost is a profound and joyous novel about the enigma of life in America, the riddle of love,
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