Book review: Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer

By Simon Demetriou

At the end of Less is Lost, the narrator, aspiring novelist Freddy Pelu, arrives at the realisation that ‘… to love someone ridiculous is to understand something deep and true about the world. That up close it makes no sense.’ The ridiculous someone in question is the novel’s hero Arthur Less, and I defy anyone to read Andrew Sean Greer’s follow-up to the Pulitzer prize-winning Less and not end up loving Arthur just as Freddy does.

The thing that moves Arthur Less from the simply comic to the broadly lovable is that Greer depicts not a character, but an approach to life. Less’ thoughts and actions are ‘Lessian’. Lessianism – which also goes by the more ludicrous name of ‘Walloonery’ (for Less is a Walloon by heritage, a fact highlighting Greer’s Pythonesque appreciation for the comedy of single words) – is a kind of enriching, good-hearted lunacy that puts one in mind of Laurence Sterne’s Shandyism. I could give a comic novel no higher comparative praise.

But what am I talking about? What actually is Lessianism? Well, it’s trying to come to terms with being ‘a bad gay’: ‘He joined a role-playing game club that turned out to be a sex-dungeon. He joined a sex-dungeon that turned out to be a government health clinic. It was all so confusing.’ It’s embarking on a quest alongside ‘rock-star’ sci-fi author HHH Mandern and winding up criss-crossing America in a rickety RV alongside a pug called Dolly ‘with an almost human gaze. By which I mean one of garrulous idiocy.’ It’s being a member of a literary award judging panel alongside a writer ‘said to be the last word in “hallucinogenic Mormon literature”’. It’s almost losing everything you hold dear because of your own trusting innocence and folly, and then trying to win it all back using the very same traits.

Less is Lost manages the rare feat of being consistently funny and genuinely touching, which is enough to recommend it to anyone. Its one flaw is trying to do a little too much and seeming to veer into state-of-the-nation contemplation when it really isn’t needed. Of course, picaresque novels have a habit of being about the country or countries across which their heroes move, and there is often something intrinsically nation-bound about those heroes. But this is all the more reason why the moments of explicit political reflection are unnecessary. Lessianism cannot fail to tell us about America, but it doesn’t need to talk to us about it. What really matters about the novel is its author’s capacity to revive the spirit of the early picaresque, and in so doing give weight to HHH Mandern’s assertion that writers ‘are that fraction of old magic that remains’.