His ports of call? Mexico, Italy, Germany, India, France, Morocco, Japan\u2014all of which he observes and appreciates with the eye of a poet. And why not? He spent years in love with an older, Pulitzer-winning poet\u2014a certified genius who was as hard to live with as a tiger.\u00a0 That demanding, driven poet unintentionally deprived him of a separate identity. Less is still better known for his ex-lover than for his own work\u2014and he\u2019s not remotely Kardashian enough to make a career out of that.<\/em><\/p>\n I laughed all the way through the book, recognizing publishing types like the withholding literary agent, and I rooted for Less to become more. More forceful, more insightful, and more in control of his own life. I won\u2019t reveal whether he does any of that, the ending, or how ingenious Greer\u2019s narrative is, but I have to praise his gift for striking, off-kilter images like these:<\/p>\n The view out his window was of a circular brick plaza, rather like a pepperoni pizza, which the whistling wind endlessly seasoned with dry leaves.<\/strong><\/p>\n In the suburbs of Delaware, spring meant not young love and damp flowers but an ugly divorce from winter and a second marriage to buxom summer.<\/strong><\/p>\n Less<\/em> was so deeply satisfying I put everything aside to read it straight through.\u00a0 Colorful, hilarious, incisive, and surprisingly moving, it deserves to be read alongside satirical classics about the writing life like Somerset Maugham\u2019s Cakes and Ale<\/em> and Updike\u2019s Bech at Bay<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Author tours sound glamorous to people who don\u2019t do them. The truth is more complicated, even if you\u2019re happy with your editor and publisher, love the cover art of your new book, and you\u2019re in such good health that nasty recycled air can’t undermine it after all those hours trapped on planes. You\u2019re always onstage, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[877],"tags":[897,895,307,497,5,217,95,198,216,898,19,504,192,268,98,290,214,380,495,896],"class_list":["post-2830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-andrew-sean-greer","tag-author-interviews","tag-author-readings","tag-authors","tag-books","tag-comedy","tag-creative-writing-2","tag-fans","tag-humor","tag-less","tag-novels","tag-promotion","tag-publicity","tag-pulitzer-prize","tag-satire","tag-the-writers-life","tag-the-writing-life","tag-writers","tag-writing","tag-writing-festivals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2830"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2844,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830\/revisions\/2844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/less.jpg\")
<\/a>Wherever he goes, Less faces \u201cwriterly humiliations planned by the universe to suck at the bones of minor artists like him.\u201d He\u2019s publicly pronounced to be mediocre, he\u2019s informed that his work isn\u2019t gay enough, he\u2019s mocked in Germany where he confidently speaks enough German to confound and annoy people around him because of his awful blunders.\u00a0 Yet this holy fool is sexually charismatic in his own way, apparently able to stun men with just a touch…though he\u2019s not a great lover.<\/p>\n
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