Her first response was, "You can't do that. Then I had to admit to my agent that I was writing a sequel.
What if I just made it into an Arthur Less book?" Once you find a way to tell the story, there's no turning back. I thought, "If only I already had a pre-made ridiculous character and a great narrator. I wrote about a hundred pages, which were just awful. When did it become apparent that you weren't finished with Arthur Less, and he wasn't finished with you?Īndrew Sean Greer: After Less, I started a new book about a road trip across America. (This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.)ĮSQUIRE: Walk me through the origin story of Less is Lost. As Greer writes of novelists, “Are we not that fraction of old magic that remains?” Greer spoke with Esquire from his home in San Francisco about the wild ride, from his own RV adventures to the future of Arthur Less. Rambunctious and life-affirming, Less is Lost is a warm bear-hug of a book, and a winsome reminder of all that fiction can do and be. As an old lover advises him, “Go get lost somewhere, it always does you good.” Our reluctant hero blunders his way into a cascade of disasters, but the more lost Less gets, the closer he is to being found.
His scrapes with flooded communes and mistaken identities evoke belly-aching laughter, but along the way, he’s forced to confront hard truths about his estranged father, his strained relationship, and the enigmas of American life. Dogged by financial crisis and the death of his former lover, Less sets out across the American landscape with nothing but a rusty camper van, a somber pug, and a zigzagging itinerary of literary gigs. “I think people resonate with the joy and freedom of the book, despite all of Less’s troubles,” Greer tells Esquire.Įveryone’s favorite Minor American Novelist is back for more in Less Is Lost, a beguiling sequel bursting with just as much absurdity, heartache, and laugh-out-loud exuberance as its predecessor-but this time, it’s all happening stateside.
The stratospheric success of Less changed Greer’s life, then did the same for thousands of readers in the years since its release, they’ve flooded his Instagram DMs with touching messages of gratitude. But it was no joke-comic novels, it turns out, are a serious, life-changing business. At first, he thought it was a practical joke comic novels like Less, his rollicking romcom about aging writer Arthur Less and his international misadventures, don’t win Pulitzer Prizes. In 2018, Andrew Sean Greer was changing an incontinent pug’s rhinestoned diaper at a Tuscan writers residency when he learned that he'd won the Pulitzer Prize.
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