Less, by Andrew Sean Greer

Less, by Andrew Sean Greer

Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Less is a rarity for that honor: a comic novel. Generally award committees gravitate to heavy fare: violence, misery, catastrophe. So it’s refreshing to discover that a tale both funny and very well written has sneaked into the select company of that short list, going so far as to win.

Not to give away too much: our hero, Arthur Less, is a gay writer on the brink of turning 50. His younger boyfriend of nine years has just left him. Less and his older longtime paramour, a noted poet, still love each other, but after twenty years together stopped sharing living quarters. And now Freddy is gone – ready to marry someone else. Knowing he will be invited to the wedding, and not wanting to provoke anyone by either refusing to attend or attending, Less accepts every speaking or teaching engagement that’s recently been offered to him. He doesn’t have to worry about the heartbreaking event, because he’ll be in New York, Mexico, then Italy, Germany, Paris, Rome, Morocco, India, Tokyo – by the time he gets back to San Francisco he’ll be fifty and Freddy will be married.

Less has published a few midlist novels, but was stung in a review as a “magniloquent spoony.” Meeting with his agent on the New York leg of his jaunt, he learns that his publisher is dropping him. He’s not PC enough. “I’m a bad gay?” he asks, incredulous. Apparently they are after less traditional endings than the one he supplied, so he is Out. He hopes to undertake a rewrite of the rejected novel on this hejira – a month in India at the retreat should do it. But this news is a tough start to his trip.

Arthur Less is a naif, even at his age, and people love him for this quality of startled sincerity. His share of misunderstandings, struggles with modern travel – airports, hotels, language barriers, luggage – are all dealt humorously: nothing catastrophic, but he’s forever making embarrassing mistakes. In short, he is Everyman, losing his dignity and bumping into people he’d rather forget. Interwoven with his awkward moments are memories – of his life with the Great Poet, the unexpected nine years with Freddy, the impression he makes on those around him. Here’s a taste:

“Name a day, name an hour, in which Arthur Less was not afraid. Of ordering a cocktail, taking a taxi, teaching a class, writing a book. Afraid of these and almost everything else in the world. Strange though; because he is afraid of everything, nothing is harder than anything else. Taking a trip around the world is no more terrifying than buying a stick of gum. The daily dose of courage.”

Not only is this book delightfully witty, it is also a good story, with poignancy and a satisfying ending. The Pulitzer Committee was right – it’s a winner, and you should read it!

The Story of Red Cloud

The Heart of Everything That Is, by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

The subject of this book, Red Cloud, is less known than Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse, though they fought in some of the same battles against US forces. This history captures the period of time starting in 1851 when the tribes came to Fort Laramie to parlay with Congressional representatives, up to Red Cloud’s emergence as a pre-eminent warrior and war chief through his victory against the Cavalry in Wyoming at Fort Phil Kearny in 1866.

Unlike most of the Indians, who preferred to ride in fast, steal horses or kill braves or kidnap women, then go back home, Red Cloud studied the strategies of the whites and applied them in battles against them. He did not trust the whites. At one point he said, “They kept only one of their many promises to us. They said they would take our land, and they did.” Some he respected as warriors, but for the most part he recognized that the tribes would always be overmatched: the whites seemed in neverending supply, and they had better guns.

Red Cloud was an upstart. His father was an alcoholic, and this disadvantaged him in tribal culture. But he was brave and adept, and earned the respect of his band despite enduring slights that must have rankled. The first part of the book chronicles his development into a leader, and his relationships with young Crazy Horse, the better-connected Sitting Bull, and other chiefs.

The meat of the story, however, is the US Army’s establishment of the Bozeman Trail, threading from Fort Laramie north and west, through the Bighorn Mountains of north central Wyoming, to the gold fields in Montana. Prospectors and the merchants who followed used this route, but without Army protection were being killed in lands previously ceded to the Sioux. So the Army drew their map, and situated Fort Phil Kearny in the Bighorns. From the start the outpost was understaffed, undersupplied, and its recruits, fresh from the Civil War, unprepared for harsh winters or isolation.

The officers in command, Colonel Carrington, who took a defensive posture against the Sioux, and Captain Fetterman, fresh from Civil War service and eager for battle and promotion, who preferred attack over waiting to be picked off, underestimated Red Cloud again and again. When they did finally muster to ride out against the tribes, most of the post’s men were massacred.

The authors are sympathetic to the Indians, describing the introduction of smallpox, cholera, and measles; liquor; and slaughter of the buffalo, making clear the genocidal character of white advancement westward. Attempts to appease the tribes were only stopgaps until they could be subdued by starvation, disease, and some of the harshest winters in recent centuries. Every treaty was broken when whites found reason to covet lands ceded to the Indians, including the “Heart of Everything That Is,” Paha Sapa: the Black Hills. Red Cloud beat the whites at their own game for a while, but he too was eventually pushed onto Pine Ridge Reservation. Read it and weep.

Harold and Maude - a fond look

Harold and Maude, by Hal Ashby

Harold and Maude is a perfect movie. It takes no step wrong, the story is complete and flows beautifully. And a fine story it is, too: Harold Chasen (Bud Cort) the 19-year old son of a wealthy single (never clear whether she’s divorced or widowed) society lady (Vivian Pickles), is obsessed with death, suicide, and funerals. At one such funeral, for someone he didn’t know, he encounters Maude (Ruth Gordon), who’d never met the deceased either.

That’s enough plot. She is 51 years his senior. He’s in love with death, she with life. The soundtrack is by the former Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam). And Ashby’s career as a film editor is on full display – every transition is a perfect little segue, yet they are never contrived. The movie has no wasted shots nor scenes – everything serves the story’s progress and its conclusion.

Comic and absurdist moments are abundant, from Maude’s penchant for stealing cars (having none of her own, she prefers to borrow what’s handy to get around, and carries a huge ring of keys for that purpose), to the dating-service dates Harold’s mother sets him up with, having decided he ought to get married. Ashby riffs on popular culture and social unrest (this was released in 1971), but in a way that plays up the human penchant for self-contradiction.

I recently had the good fortune to see this gem on a big screen, where it rightly belongs, and was delighted to note the theater was packed – plenty of folks who’d grown up with this movie, along with a number seeing it for the first time. Somewhere in the ether, the spirit of Hal Ashby is smiling along with our absorption in this excellent love story.