After several years, he headed to graduate school at the University of Montana in Missoula where he received an M.F.A. He attended Brown University, where he was the commencement speaker at his own graduation, with his off-the-cuff remarks criticizing Brown's admissions policies setting off a near riot.įollowing graduation Greer lived in New York, working in various jobs - as a chauffeur, theater tech, television extra - to support his habit as an unsuccessful writer.

Born in Washington D.C., he is the son, and identical twin, of two scientists. Currently-lives in San Francisco, CaliforniaĪndrew Sean Greer is an American novelist and short story writer.Education-B.A., Brown University M.F.A., University of Montana.Because, despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings and mistakes, Less is, above all, a love story.Ī scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author the New York Times has hailed as 'inspired, lyrical,' 'elegiac,' 'ingenious,' as well as 'too sappy by half,' Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy. QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?Īrthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. You can't say yes - it would be too awkward - and you can't say no - it would look like defeat. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else.

You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. Who says you can't run away from your problems?

Less greer review