Less

Less, by Andrew Sean Greer, was a weird book, and I still don’t know whether I liked it or not.

It tells the story of Arthur Less, a homosexual man and semi-successful writer who is about to turn 50 and is panicking about it because it feels terribly old. On top of that, his boyfriend has broken up with him, and Arthur is convinced he will never find love again. When the ex-boyfriend sends him an invitation to his wedding, Arthur decides instead to accept all the invitations he has received (award ceremonies, guest-teaching gigs, etc.) and go on a trip around the world: Mexico, Germany, France, Morocco, India, and Japan.

In all these countries, of course, Arthur travels with his very American perspective of “abroad,” meeting interesting people and stumbling into various adventures. Some of it is funny, some is scary, some is sad, and some is very American and very gay — not in a negative way, just in a cultural sense.

Overall, this is an interesting book about growing older, questioning our contribution to society, trying to find our place in the world, and feeling ridiculous and weird and funny and sad — and, fortunately, sometimes happy too.

I don’t know if Arthur really learned anything from his travels, except how to (maybe) be a better writer and how not to panic (as much) about his age. Some of the criticism of the book say that he is a privileged, white, self-absorbed, unsympathetic, entitled man, and that it is therefore hard to feel sorry for him. What’s funny is that this is exactly what people (in the book) say about Arthur’s latest book, which creates a kind of metafiction that I think some critiques didn’t fully notice. The book criticizes, within the story, the same kind of writing it is itself producing, with humour, wit, and self-awareness, and I think I liked it.