The Literature Pulitzer has a healthy habit of recognizing works in principle without prior commercial requirements. And that's certainly how they end up discovering great works over big names. In the history of awards of this great prize, we find works by authors who hardly wrote before and after that novel or essay whatever is awarded at any given time. Nothing to do with other awards that serve as an endorsement for the commercial cause (and I do not say names ...)
The point is that in 2018 the chosen one was a Andrew Sean Greer in whose literary baggage is found that devotion to literature as an existential tool filled with an imprint loaded with lyrical, aesthetically musical prose. Undoubtedly a compendium, a balance towards a language that does not renounce the almost philosophical sophistication of the plot but composed with the lightness and forcefulness of a laudable lexical synthesis to try to reach any reader.
In Less we delve into that mental and vital construct of the creative who has not reached the desired glory for his ideas and manifestos. Arthur Less is that writer with the scent of a loser, only without the success under which he tries to fill the void and melancholy of the great storytellers.
And things can get even worse ...
Past the middle ages in which a writer feels that he should have already reached his highest level of recognition, Arthur faces a past in the form of a wedding invitation. When an ex writes to you to accompany her in that decisive vital step, there may be a component of longing or spite, of hope that someone will raise their hand when the officiant asks if someone has something to expose or, simply, of final recollection.
Arthur Less's schedule is full of events that he feels he must go to in order to find himself at the right time. And the wedding of his ex-girlfriend may have a place in the generalized farce of a guy who at times looks out on the glory of Dante and who at other times turns into a Ignatius reilly.
But the imposing lyrics of Greer that I mentioned earlier is what manages to wake up the hook. Ultimately, an idea of the pursuit of happiness prevails above all else. Different cities, vague memories, loves that come and go, always torrid kisses, like farewell ...
As we progress through Less's journey, the story takes on a deeper aspect. It must be that of the character taken out of his context and faced with new realities about the essence of what he is. What began as an almost humorous story about the pathos of our human pride, ends up taking much higher flights on the idea of any age considered as the turning point towards decadence. Because there is always time to enjoy the pieces of eternity that we are leaving at every moment, once freed from the weight of consciousness about what we must become ...
You can now buy the novel Less, 2018 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Literature, by Andrew Sean Greer, here: