“Less” by Andrew Sean Greer: First chapter asks who the narrator is; how many selves the protagonist has; whether the author knows how he wrote it

I have just read the first chapter of this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

The opening line—“From where I sit, the story of Arthur Less is not so bad.”—raises two questions: Who is the narrator? And does the story have a tragic ending?

The narrator seems to know everything that Arthur Less, a novelist, thinks and does, even when Less is alone, and I cannot see how anyone knows these things except Arthur Less, himself.

Then, toward the end of this first chapter, the narrator says he has known Less since he was twelve and Less was twenty-seven (1, pp. 37-39).

Perhaps something happens to Less, making him unable to tell his own story, but he has written his story or told it to an old friend.

Multiple Personality?

In this first chapter, there is one, apparently inadvertent, suggestion of multiple personality, in the discussion of Less’s custom-made blue suit:

“There is no Arthur Less without the suit…Chosen in haste from a wall of fabrics: not an ordinary blue…He loved whatever self had chosen it and after that wore it constantly” (1, p. 25).

Writing Process

“What does one ever ask an author except: ‘How?’ And the answer, as Less well knows, is obvious: ‘Beats me!’ ” (1, p. 8).

1. Andrew Sean Greer. Less [2017]. New York, Back Bay Books, 2018.