Title: Less
Author: Andrew Sean Greer
Publisher: ABACUS little brown UK
printed by hachette India
Price: 499 Rupees
Indian society is slowly awakening to reality called gay sensitivity. Recently, Supreme court of India legalised gay relationship and with that India is now looking forward to understanding this unusual phenomenon. In current circumstances, this novel can become a guiding light. One of the most interesting aspects of this novel is it is not teaching you what is to be gay and how it works, but it just provides a mature outlook of American gay marriages without any bias.
Author Andrew Sean Greer is setting a higher goal post for him and average readers. And he is recognised for his efforts by winning Pulitzer prize for fiction 2018. Even Greer was surprised by the honour. He said, “Everyone was surprised! Even the Italian’s told me, ‘We can’t imagine a comedic novel winning a prize like that.”
It is interesting to note Greer began this novel as a very serious one about being gay and ageing, but in Greer’s own words “but after a year, I just couldn’t do it, it sounds strange, but what I was writing was so sad to me that I thought the only way to write about this is to make it a funny story. And I found that by making fun of myself, I could gradually get closer to real emotion — closer to that I wanted in my more serious books.”
Less is a story of a gay guy who is in 50s with all American anxieties and unique gay sensitivity. But when you are in 50s realities always beat sensitivities. And, in this novel, Andrew Sean Greer uses humour as a weapon to beat bitter reality and he succeeds with his marvellous observations of human folly.
The novel starts with hero Less in a rebellious mood and the way he is fighting his way through life makes it tragi-comic. He receives an invitation from his gay lover to be present at his next marriage. Rather than submitting to ultimate humiliation of attending the wedding, Less decides to accept a series of invitations to literary events that most American authors would have discarded. This is enough for Less to raise arms (and he has only pen or typewriter as a weapon) and like great Sancho Panza he rushes to destroy the demons of modern world.
As a reader we join him in this continent-hopping journey with all absurdities of air travelling. Off he goes, around the world, wearing his treasured blue suit, hand tailored years ago in Ho Chi Minh city. His itinerary takes him to New York, Paris, Berlin, Morocco, Southern India and Japan. His current project is a novel titled Swift about the lover who has spurned him, “All you do is write gay Ulysis.”
Less is often lost in his past memories and through his flashbacks, we became a witness to his escapades as a gay man who was in love with a great poet, who is now on a brink of mortality. Between past and present, Less struggles to hold on to his present. And in this tragi-comic struggle, we realise follies of human relationship, whether gay or not. Through this novel, the author bases his interesting premise that human relationship is important and how the choices are made, which are often guided by impulses and not by rationality.
A comic novel has become a suspect designation, as though creating laughter were some sub-craft. We have to remember Shakespeare’s comedies are as classic as his tragedies. The light that humour shines on the human condition may be of a different frequency, but it’s just as illuminating as its calamitous twin.
