Sign in with Facebook
Ensiform's Reviews > Less
Less (Arthur Less, #1)
by
by
[Random read. 14, Pulitzer Prize winner.]
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this coming-of-middle-age novel concerns Arthur Less, once a popular novelist but now largely unrecognized ("too old to be fresh and too young to be rediscovered"). When his publisher declines his latest book idea (another reworking of "gay Ulysses"), and his ex-lover Freddy announces his marriage to another, Less decides to flee rather than face fifty under these circumstances. He does this by traveling around the world accepting speaking arrangements and literary events in Mexico, Italy, Germany, France, Morocco, India, and Japan. What follows is an often hilarious, Quixotic bumbling road trip from one baffling location to another. Less meets old friends, gets injured, loses his beloved blue suit, reads to French miners, is judged by Italian teenagers, teaches writing and has a fling in Berlin, endures the humiliation of having to host an event for a much more successful writer, takes part in a round-table discussion extolling the virtues of a former lover, is told he is not gay enough for the gay literary press, and more. The prose is exquisite, with wonderfully original turns of phrase and description. The trials Less faces are humbling and poignant, yet this is an affirmatively optimistic book, hilarious and humane, a joy to read.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this coming-of-middle-age novel concerns Arthur Less, once a popular novelist but now largely unrecognized ("too old to be fresh and too young to be rediscovered"). When his publisher declines his latest book idea (another reworking of "gay Ulysses"), and his ex-lover Freddy announces his marriage to another, Less decides to flee rather than face fifty under these circumstances. He does this by traveling around the world accepting speaking arrangements and literary events in Mexico, Italy, Germany, France, Morocco, India, and Japan. What follows is an often hilarious, Quixotic bumbling road trip from one baffling location to another. Less meets old friends, gets injured, loses his beloved blue suit, reads to French miners, is judged by Italian teenagers, teaches writing and has a fling in Berlin, endures the humiliation of having to host an event for a much more successful writer, takes part in a round-table discussion extolling the virtues of a former lover, is told he is not gay enough for the gay literary press, and more. The prose is exquisite, with wonderfully original turns of phrase and description. The trials Less faces are humbling and poignant, yet this is an affirmatively optimistic book, hilarious and humane, a joy to read.
Sign into Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ to see if any of your friends have read
Less.
Sign In »
