Less Is Lost

“Welcome home indeed, for this Minor American Novelist has been gone a long time from his native land. So long that he now thinks of it, as the salmon must think of the streamlet of her parents when returning to it, as yet another foreign country.”

Arthur’s culture shock when returning to America represents his inability to feel truly at home in any setting. It also foreshadows Arthur’s journey through the United States, where he’ll learn more about his country as a tourist and redevelop an American identity. Greer uses a simile, comparing Arthur to a salmon. The salmon returns home by instinct, following food migration patterns. This implies that Arthur is also guided by instinct.

“But even worse was when I began to suspect a transference, or spiritual possession, in which the soul of Robert Brownburn had moved into the body of Arthur Less.”

Freddy narrates his concern about Arthur emulating Robert. In his relationship with Freddy, Arthur takes on the role of the older literary writer, thus placing Freddy in Arthur’s former role as younger, doting, and lesser. Freddy love Arthur, but here he demonstrates the complexity and challenges of that love.

“The two novelist Arthur Lesses do not even find themselves shelved together—our Arthur Less gets shelved in Queer Authors, the other in Black Authors; neither gets shelved in General Fiction. They are both too unknown for General Fiction.”

These lines poke fun at the publishing industry. If either Arthur was truly famous, they would not be shelved with subgenre literature. Instead, they are labeled by their race and sexuality, suggesting that their books are sellable and interesting to a small demographic, as opposed to a universal readership. This quote also implies that the average reader, who is more likely to explore General Fiction, is uninterested in Black and Queer topics. This reader is typically straight and white.

“Let us be honest: He is afraid. Afraid of money and travel and humiliations yet unmet.”

At the beginning of his character arc, Arthur is afraid—of money, of travel, of potential humiliations. This sets up Greer’s comedy of errors. As part of his hero’s journey, Arthur is forced to engage in all the things that he fears most. In doing so, he will learn the importance of Authenticity and Self-Acceptance.

“What he is supposed to do now is a mystery. Is this what it is like to be a character in someone’s novel?”

Greer plays with the idea of metafiction, where the text points to its own artifice. Arthur is literally a character in his novel, and also the character in Freddy’s hypothetical novel. This quote also emphasizes the anxiety Arthur experiences when he doesn’t know what to do, which happens often. Most people experience times of doubt, implying that being a character in a novel is not so unlike real life.

“’It’s…I’m a fool, Bee. I break things and forget things and put off things until it’s too late, but I always knew somebody was there to…fix things. To be the grown-up. To buy the tickets or find a ride or repair whatever I had screwed up.’”

Arthur expresses his fear of being an adult, which is comedic because he is middle-aged and therefore has been an adult—technically—for several decades. Greer suggests that you’re never too old to feel lost or unmoored. Everyone feels better when they know they have a safety net; Arthur, who is parentless, finds his safety nets in his partners. Freddy is younger and depends on him, placing Arthur in the role of the provider, a role he is uncomfortable with. Arthur spent many of his early adult years relying on Robert, even living in Robert’s shack rent-free for decades after they broke up. Robert was Arthur’s security, even if they weren’t together. Robert’s death is like a father’s death: Arthur must now reckon with the fact that he has no one to rely on but himself.

“How wonderful to believe in a universe that holds, for you, a special plan! Only the very young, Less observes, could think so. Only those still at the beginning of this novel would trust the Author knows what He is doing. While Less, being an author himself, knows that no authors know what they are doing.”

Greer again plays with his reader, pointing to the artifice of his text. He pokes fun of a writer’s abilities—and by implication himself and his own art. He also foreshadows the many ways Arthur will blunder throughout the story.

“’I don’t care who you love, but if you love someone…if you love someone, you have to love them every day. You have to choose them every day.’”

Freddy’s great uncle gives this advice on love, foreshadowing the challenges Arthur and Freddy will face in their relationship. Ultimately, Arthur and Freddy must learn to choose one another every day, rather than think of their relationship as something to be revisited or taken for granted. Their bond is challenged by their individual journeys—both external and internal.

“Who has ever spoken of Arthur Less this way? Who has ever so misunderstood him? Or is it the rest of us who have been wrong, who have ignored all the signs and portents, that this slapstick, ridiculous, zigzagging queer is in fact a reckless man? Capable of anything?”

The mischaracterization of Arthur Less as reckless is, oxymoronically, also an astute observation. Arthur is accidentally reckless, precisely because he is seen as “slapstick, ridiculous.” He is capable of anything because he gets himself in situations out of his control that demand he thinks on his feet. Freddy, the narrator, knows Arthur intimately; here he is willing to suspend judgment so that a fuller picture of Arthur can develop.

“Because the question she is really asking, without at all knowing she is asking it, without meaning anything in the world except that she detects a linguistic flourish, is Are you a homosexual?”

When people are asking where Arthur is from, they likely want to know about his sexuality. Arthur feels self-conscious about how others perceive him and attempts to disguise himself as straight. In spite of this, people sense the truth. Greer suggests that it’s better to be yourself, to not hide who you are. These lines also speak to the discomfort Americans feel around discussions of sexual identity.

“Less has come alive to his senses, his curiosity, his fears, his memory, and entered that separate realm of being in which the outer world does not vanish, not at all, but pricks with painful detail, the province not of the reader or the critic but of that suffering creature trapped behind the looking glass: the writer.”

This marks an important moment in Arthur’s character development. His travels have taught him how to pay attention, rather than focus internally on his anxieties and writing. This quote emphasizes how rare it is to truly live in the moment and to observe one’s surroundings without a need to categorize or narrate them. Arthur has grown as a character; he has become comfortable in his nomadic journey, fully living in the “outer world.”

“There is something American, too, about the rolling lawns and peaceful shade. And yet: the unshakable sensation that something awful happened here.”

Greer characterizes America through its juxtaposition. There is the physical beauty of America, but there is also its tragic and violent history. The land itself is a recording of its past, particularly in the South, where Arthur tours a former slave plantation. This quote alludes to America’s history of enslaving Black people and genocide against Indigenous Americans. It also highlights the irony of horrible things happening in such an aesthetically beautiful space. This quote characterizes America as a paradox.

“And she gives a wink; with a shock, Less understands she has identified him, for she, too, is from the Netherlands. (So they don’t kill them here in Alabama?)”

By Part 3, we understand that being from the Netherlands is a euphemism for being gay. Arthur’s sexuality is again identified without him volunteering the information. He is surprised to intuit that this woman is also gay; he didn’t except to find gay people in the conservative American South. These lines poke fun at Greer’s euphemism, but also highlight Arthur’s misconceptions about America beyond his bubble. Outside of San Francisco, there are gay people who live happy lives in settings Arthur envisioned as not gay-friendly.

“ ’I hear there’s a spot in Maine that is the first place the sun strikes America. I want to go see that. That’s what I want to go see. The first place the sun strikes America.’”

The island where the sun first hits the United States represents Freddy’s dreams of exploring both himself and the external world. This is one of the rare times Freddy identifies and expresses what he wants, regardless of what’s going on with Arthur.

“’I love you, Less,’ I say, and realize it must sound like I love him less.”

This is an example of Greer’s signature humor. The comedic play on Arthur’s last name is ripe for errors. The timing of this joke is important; Arthur and Freddy are feeling disconnected from one another. Arthur is already feeling anxiety about his relationship with Freddy and worries that Freddy will leave him. This quote, though funny, emphasizes the stress between Freddy and Arthur, and illustrates how Greer layers humor with tension.

“What do we want from the past, anyway? For it to trifle with us no longer? For it to cease its surprises, its stirrings, its stings, for it to be fixed forever—for it to die?”

Arthur Less is preoccupied with the past. Flashes of his history haunt him throughout his travels, especially with the decades-late return of his father. These lines come on the heels of Arthur’s father telling him that he forgives him, an unexpected twist in the long-awaited conversation about making amends. This forces Arthur to interrogate his preoccupation with the past, which continuously hurts him as it manifests in the present.

“What was it like for whalers’ wives and widows? Years away at sea, husbands coming back—if they came back—having seen things you cannot imagine, having wrestled with the unknown and, somehow, won? All this with barely enough money made to cover the debt accrued? I imagine it was like being married to a novelist.”

The whaler’s business is now bygone in America, but it was once the bedrock of the Northeastern U.S. economy. American literature, such as Melville’s Moby Dick, captures the adventure and isolation of the whaling experience. Freddy discovers the past manifested in the present: Like the lonely whalers’ wives, Freddy misses his lover, who is traveling for money. Greer characteristically marks this loneliness with comedy.

“One night on Valonica, wandering the island, taken by the spirit of freedom (and perhaps by the spirits in Adele’s larder), I threw my phone far out to sea to join Adele’s husband in his grave. It made not a sound in the surf. Now I was lost.”

On an isolated island, Freddy is inspired to atomize himself even further. He doesn’t want Arthur, or anyone, to contact him, demonstrating the power of setting and environment. Freddy makes himself lost, paralleling Arthur, who is also lost. The narrative raises the question if Freddy, rather than Arthur, is most lost. It also asks what it means to be lost. Is Freddy lost to himself, to Arthur, or to external pressures?

“America, how’s your marriage? Your two-hundred-fifty-year-old promise to stay together in sickness and in health?”

Freddy and Arthur are at a crossroads in their relationship; Freddy is wondering about the longevity of relationships and whether or not marriage brings people closer together. This anxiety is mirrored in America’s relationship with itself and with its people. Greer calls America a marriage because it is a nation of states that are often in ideological combat. America’s democracy, like marriage, is an experiment in partnership.

“What is the term, I wonder, for a stateless citizen born in a country that vanished long ago and now living without passport or portfolio? Walloon?”

The country which Freddy references here is Arthur’s childhood—a land which no longer exists. Arthur left Delaware and his mother is dead; the past is, for Arthur, like being stateless. Greer references “Walloon” to tie Arthur’s contemporary dilemma to his ancestors from Wallonia—both are stateless and mourn a country that no longer exists. Country becomes a metaphor for past lives and formative settings.

“Less comes to understand that life for some goes smoothly, as free from incident as it is perhaps from poetry; a fainter kind of happiness than Less has ever perceived. We are all having different experiences.”

Though life may be difficult, a life without challenges is like a life without poetry. This quote also emphasizes the ways in which people have diverse experiences. Arthur meets his former high school bully Andrew and believes that Andrew’s life is free of incident, but there’s no way for Arthur to know this. Andrew, by nature of being human, necessarily has his own problems. Arthur’s misconception of how other people live highlights his sense that his life is uniquely challenging.

“But above all else, wrong about people. No surprise, in fact; novelists, with their love of structure and language and symmetry in novels, are frequently mistaken about the people who inhabit the actual world, much as architects are about churches.”

Greer pokes fun at his own art and role as a novelist. He notes that novelists are interested in structure and symmetry, which puts them at odds with the disorganized nature of the real world. Greer’s story is about a person who feels vividly imperfect, like a real person in the world. He alludes to the artifice of novels—and by implication his own—to tease the reader. As a novelist himself, Greer is connected to Arthur, a novelist, and Freddy, who is the narrator and trying to be a novelist.

“That in real life, there are no protagonists. Or, rather, the reverse: It’s nothing but protagonists. It’s protagonists all the way down.”

This extends the idea that authors don’t understand real people. In the real world, people are multilayered in ways that may not necessarily work for narrative fiction: Everyone feels they are the protagonist in their own story.