Andrew Sean Greer Is Challenging the “Great American Novel”

Akanksha Singh interviews Andrew Sean Greer about his new novel “Less Is Lost,” finding humor in uncomfortable topics, and the pleasures of a fairytale ending.

In an aptly titled essay, “Good Readers and Good Writers,” Vladimir Nabokov writes of how, as readers, we read not with our hearts, or brains, but with our spines: “It is there that occurs the telltale tingle . . . when reading.” As readers, we detect inauthenticity with a visceral ease, while honest, empathetic prose rings through us.

Andrew Sean Greer’s work is heavy on the spine tingles. The writing feels intimate in a way that books rarely do nowadays, as though what transpires in the novel is between you and the novel itself. It’s difficult to pinpoint what makes this possible, but I attribute it to the combination of well-rounded characters crafted by someone who is deeply emotionally intelligent.

His new novel, Less Is Lost, is a worthy sequel to 2017’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Less. Through intertextual and pop-culture references and perfectly timed comic relief, Greer questions the much-idealized concept of the “Great American Novel,” all while engaging in the clichés of the genre. Less Is Lost finds our protagonist, the lovable “minor American novelist” Arthur Less, zigzagging through America in a camper van, accompanied by a pug named Dolly. When the novel tackles more sensitive topics, its moments of Marx Brothers slapstick comedy––including a scene with Less on a donkey––pull the rug from under the reader (and indeed Less himself). Greer doesn’t shy away from writing about race, enslavement, the dispossession of First Nations, and Less being a fifty-something “bad gay”––all of which can be difficult to do without making the reader cringe or, worse, roll their eyes. But Greer pulls it off successfully.

In this interview (conducted over Zoom), we discussed Greer’s impression of the “Great American Novel,” upbeat endings, and saying goodbye to much-loved characters. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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Akanksha Singh: Congratulations on a lovely sequel to Less.

Andrew Sean Greer: Thank you!

AS: Unlike Less, which involves a trip around the world, Less Is Lost is solely set in America, and we get a unique glimpse into small-town life. In the last novel, we got a sense of Less the novelist. Here, we get a peek into Less the human being; it feels a lot more intimate. Was this part of the reason you chose to set the novel in America?

ASG: The idea to set it entirely in America was an early one, because I thought, “Where else could he go?” Another trip around the world just didn’t seem very interesting. Then I actually put aside the idea of writing a sequel for a long time. But after we had our election in 2016, I thought, “No––America is a good idea.”

If [Less] was about being an American in foreign places, and being wrong about them all the time, then I would like to do that with my own country.

If [Less] was about being an American in foreign places, and being wrong about them all the time, then I would like to do that with my own country, [treat it] as a foreign place I’m wrong about.

That did mean [there] was more room––because it’s not nine different countries; it’s sort of two regions really––a lot more room for the character to expand.

AS: I noticed a map of you plotting Less’s travels on your website. I’m curious to know how you went about plotting both the narrative arc and the route Arthur Less takes.

ASG: That’s a great question! I think for a lot of writers, those are different things: There’s the plot––the movement of the character through space and time––and then there’s the actual emotional movement of the book. And [those] are completely separate; you try to make them go together.

[In this book], he’s alone. That meant he had to get his emotional movement from the things around him, and then from memory.

It was hard. I did chart [it out], where I was like, “Well, something nice has to happen around now.” [Then] a third of the way through, something lovely should happen; two thirds, something lovely shouldn’t happen; and other [parts] should be total mortification!

AS: Wow! So what was your research process like, then? How did you pick the places Less stops in––did you refer to your trip journals?

ASG: I had a rule that I could only use details I wrote down in my journals. In order for [the narrative] not to take any cheap shots or make up some country-bumpkin vision that a big-city person might have, I was like, “I’m not allowed to put in a pig if I didn’t see one.” That kept me honest.

But it meant I had two [sets of] notes––I would go through the notes at the end of the night, as I was alone in my camper van, and I would think, “How would I tell this to my friends, if I were meeting them at the bar right now? How would I make it into a funny story? What immediately stands out as worth telling a story about?”––and I would make notes on that. And [I’d do that] if I was struggling to make a story out of it, like visiting the former enslavement plantations––that was hard to make a story out of, but I knew it was a story, so I just tried. I tell my students that, if they’re struggling with a story; I’m like, “How would you just tell it to someone?”

AS: Less Is Lost is so self-aware and so meta that you dismantle the idea of the Great American Novel while indulging the same clichés. Was this a conscious decision on your part?

ASG: Oh, absolutely! I was certainly not aiming to write the “Great American Novel,” but I was aware of the clichés––of what [that’s] supposed to be like [for] the white male novelist. [There] has to be a cowboy moment and a savior moment! So I thought it would be funny if I got him in a poncho but put him on a donkey and got him covered in mud! He doesn’t get to come out like a [hero in a] Sergio Leone movie in a canyon.

AS: Unlike in Less, where the narrator is revealed toward the end of the novel, we’re repeatedly reminded that Freddy––a mixed-ethnicity gay man––is the narrator in this. Is he part of the reason we get such a wholesome view of America? Through Freddy’s lens, we’re made aware when Less is the only white man in the room or the only gay man in the room.

ASG: I do think because Freddy is the narrator, I made a specific decision in this book to never write with the default human being [as] a white person, and often a man. I thought Freddy [would] let you know it’s a room of all white people, so you’re aware of that particular vibe––because that’s part of the tension in America as well.

AS: Talk to me about how you confront uncomfortable topics as a writer. Writing about the tour of the plantation, for instance, or going to First Nations’ land––how do you get over your own biases? Did you self-censor?

ASG: No one’s asked me about that! The great thing about being a novelist is you have a lot of time to think about [your work] and revise [it]. I am not a great human being, but I’m pretty good at humility––[that’s] my go-to.

So in something like being in the canyon run by the [Navajo] Nation, I thought, “What’s funny is me.” That’s what I turned to. I found myself constantly trying to make conversation with my guide, prying into his private life, and he did not want me to engage with that at all. [And] there’s a whole part in [the novel] that is not about Arthur Less at all, [but] about his guide’s rodeo experience. Everyone has a story––even if they’re reluctant to tell it, there’s something they would love to talk about.

[Similarly], I visited three different plantations in the South. Some are overtly telling the story of slavery and some [make] it look like a beautiful Gone With the Wind experience. And I thought, “I don’t know how to write about this––there’s nothing funny here.” Then I went to a third plantation where I did see what was funny, which was the crowd of white people––including myself––going in self-righteously and being like, “We know how to experience this!” And the guide, a Black woman, started to talk in second person to us, saying, “You gave us two pounds of target”––and our panic at the tables being turned on us was what was funny. So I thought, Now I can write about it because I know what’s funny is my anxiety about race.

AS: Did the Pulitzer change much for you as a writer? Did you find yourself taking more risks with your writing?

ASG: I wrote Less at a point when I was not anyone’s favorite writer. I was not selling books, I couldn’t sell Less in the UK or overseas. And because I thought no one [would] read [Less], it doesn’t matter. But then they did read it––and there’s a lot of personal stuff in it that I just didn’t think was gonna get out there!

It was hard [to] recreate that feeling of “no one’s ever going to read this.”

And it was hard [to] recreate that feeling of “no one’s ever going to read this.” Because then I also had this new problem of having this delicate thing that people felt attached to. I had to access the part [of me] that just wanted to make the thing that was in my head for myself.

AS: For a sequel, we don’t get a lot of the same characters we encountered in the first novel. Did you feel as though they had nothing else to offer?

ASG: Yeah, I tried [in] the first version. It just seemed so unlikely. It [also] felt like it was too much that you had to read the first book to enjoy the second. Because even if you read the first book, it was five years ago. It just seemed too fussy and self-centered, so I wanted to make a book that would be its own thing.

AS: In a few interviews, you’ve mentioned that this is it for Arthur Less. How do you know when your journey with a particular character is complete?

ASG: I know because I stopped writing when I turned in the book. With Less, I did not stop writing about Arthur once I turned in the book. But not this time. I thought, “Certainly not yet another book.”

AS: Lastly, this book does something I don’t think a lot of prize-winning novels do nowadays: It indulges the reader with an upbeat ending. As a writer and as a reader, why do you think that is? Why did you choose to give Less a fairy-tale ending?

ASG: I was just thinking about this last night––I came across a book from the ’50s that’s a book for adults but has a fairy-tale feeling of a children’s book. It [was] just more sophisticated. And I thought, Well, maybe there is no division between books for children and adults.

We still want a book where we stay up all night reading it, where it brings us to tears, where we laugh, where we underline things, [and] where we want to read it all over again––the feeling we had when we were twelve.

I don’t see why a book shouldn’t still feel like that, but also touch [on] deeper ideas, raise questions without pat answers––things that as adults, we like. I just thought, “That’s the kind of book I enjoy reading.”

One of my great friends who’s my best reader told me that I could not have a happy ending. And it was one [of] the few pieces of advice I did not take because [I] couldn’t live with that. I don’t want that. And readers don’t want that. So, if no one wants it, why would we do it?