https://medium.com/springboard-thought/less-and-the-comedy-of-error-f841a1b47a02

“Just for the record: happiness is not bullshit.”

Usually, I don’t like novels that are self-aware. Not too self-aware. Self-aware at all. Comedies depend heavily on my mood, more so in a novel.

Less, really shouldn’t have worked for me, then. It is perhaps the most self-aware novel I’ve ever read and the entire perspective from which the story of Arthur Less is narrated is one which goes out of its way to find the humor in any situation.

But if there’s one thing I can get behind, its self-deprecation.

“I know I’m out of your life / But the day that I die / I know you are going to cry.”

Arthur Less, 49, learns his boyfriend of 9 years is now engaged to someone else and that he is invited to the wedding. Rather than sit through the humiliation, he accepts the invitations from everyone else that he has received, ones which have come from all across the world. And so begins his travels. And the sprint that takes him away from his problems, or so he hopes.

What follows is a strange narrative style; often switching perspectives, sometimes jarringly. Sometimes the reader is privy to Less’s innermost thoughts, flashing back to his youth; Other times we see Arthur as others see him, or we are told the story in the form of actually communicating literary tropes from a sort-of writer’s room perspective.

This later one even occasionally makes its way into the mouths of characters Arthur interacts with. They criticize his life as a supposed middling white gay male author and the substance of said work, creating an uncanny effect and dissonance between character and story.

“You write what you are compelled to.”

Interestingly —and to varying degrees of success, arguably — this is by design.

Arthur stumbles from situation to situation. Almost falling in love. Almost dying. Almost being the star at a show. Almost almost almost. Arthur is unable to view himself as others see him. He is continually astounded by things working out quite well for him (a commentary on privilege if ever there was one). Each location he traverses: Paris, Berlin, Morocco, Tokyo — all have this magical-realism quality to them.

This structure and form of narration grant the narrator the ability to satirize queer literature tropes while contrasting them with the life of Less. His fictional novels apparently feature characters who bleed for the reader but are given no joy. Less defines himself by his pain and regret even when so many good things are constantly happening for him.

Our narrator’s thoughts and feelings appear to slip into the characters in order to poke fun at Less; sometimes critically, but always as a fan; cheering him on, hoping for the best, positive that more is yet to come.

“Here, all this time, Less thought he was merely a bad writer. A bad lover, a bad friend, a bad son. Apparently the condition is worse; he is bad at being himself.”

Less’s errors are then transformed by the narrator from the things which he believes makes him irrevocably unhappy, into the things that make him worthy of endearment. A byproduct is that this ultimately trivializes the stakes of the story but does make sense within the context of this god-like perspective the narrator engages the reader with.

Overall, I liked but didn’t love Less, but it does what it set out to do: a flipped perspective is exactly what some of us need.

Who knows who sees our errors as inconsequential. To the right person, these errors may be captivating or charming. To the right person, they are a comedy they want only to watch over and over and over, and over.

“I’ve got a theory. Now, hear me out. It’s that our lives are half comedy and half tragedy. And for some people, it just works out that the first entire half of their lives is tragedy and then the second half is comedy.”