In Andrew Greer’s Less, Arthur Less spends much of the novel depressed that he and his lover Freddy are separate from each other, and therefore, are no longer in love. As he completes his journey around the world, though, he eventually discovers that being in love is not necessarily the same as being in a relationship, and instead, that true love is found where two stories combine into one, like his and Freddy’s did.
Most of the relationships in the
novel end, implying that simply being in a relationship with another person does
not, in itself, mean there is love between the two people. Arthur has many
relationships with other men outside of Freddy, and yet, while he acknowledges
that many of them would make acceptable husbands, “once you’ve actually been in
love, you can’t live with ‘will do’” (15). However, the novel also showcases
relationships which continue to have love in them even after they end. Most
prominently, while he is in Morocco, Arthur discovers that his friend Lewis and
his partner, Clark, split after twenty years. While Arthur can’t imagine ending
a relationship unless the couple fell out of love, Lewis looks at the “twenty
years of joy and friendship” he had with Clark as a success and recognizes that
“I (Lewis) still have Clark,” even while separate (181, 183). Arthur receives
the same kind of love from Robert; even though he split with Robert years
before the events of the novel, he and Robert both openly admit their love for
each other (245). Love is not determined by relationship status; there are
loveless relationships and love exists outside relationships, and as such, love
must lie somewhere else.
Ultimately, it is the
relationship at the center of Less which reveals that love lies in the
intertwining of two stories into one. Arthur Less spends the entire novel
travelling the world just so he can avoid his intimate feelings for Freddy Pelu;
as he leaves to begin his odyssey around the world, Arthur is “certain he
[will] not think of Freddy Pelu at all” (22). Illustrating the point, the
details surrounding Freddy’s wedding are entirely absent from the novel, revealed
to the reader only as Arthur becomes aware of them, suggesting that this is exclusively
Arthur’s story. However, at the end of the novel it becomes explicitly clear
that Freddy is the narrator. In Freddy’s commentary at the end of the novel, he
repeats the line which opened the book, “from where I sit, the story of Arthur
Less is not so bad,” but adds that his story is not so bad “because it is also
mine. That is how it goes with love stories” (260). Thus, love is found in
intertwining one’s story with another. It is why there isn’t love in the brief
flings Arthur has with other men and how love remains even while Freddy and
Arthur, or Robert and Arthur, or Lewis and Clark, are separated, because, in
their relationships, their stories became one.
I think the conclusion that love requires people to have their stories become one is incredibly insightful in both the context of everyday life and in the book. Of course, we real-life people know that, on some level, love is a lot more complicated than that. For one thing, Freddy and Arthur did not have the same story for a long time, and if Arthur had continued to live in his life of escapism, it may have remained that way – Freddy took the step to bring their lives together into one at the end of the novel. That is to say, I don’t think we can broadly make the claim that people will randomly find each other and discover that their stories are one and the same, they have to want them to be that way, they have to put effort into that narrative – to some extent, too, it has to be mutual.
ReplyDeleteArthur’s multiple flings don’t work out for multiple reasons, but it seems to me that the biggest one is that Arthur himself doesn’t want them to work out. Also significantly, neither party puts the effort into folding their narratives together.
I’m curious as to whether this framework of combining narratives functions with non-romantic love as well. On some level, it seems that to truly act on love, it may be important that on some cognitive or physical level, we must share our lives with the people we care about if we are to act on love – but then, it love an act or the feeling? Probably both.
I definitely agree with the lesson about love taught by the end of the novel. As much as this book has ironic depictions of love, as in the example of Lewis and Clark splitting up, it reveals by the end that romantic love is something that makes life better and is worth pursuing.
ReplyDeleteGeography is one large way in which this kind of intertwining love is explored. As Less flies around the world, he and Freddy both uphold the saying that "distance makes the heart grow fonder." Even though the space between them, both literally and emotionally, grows, it cannot break the bonds they already have. While Arthur pursues other relationships, as with Bastian in Germany, he keeps his distance romantically from them, keeping only Freddy in his mind and heart. With each mention of the details of Freddy's wedding, Less utilizes his destinations and travels to escape finding out anything. It is only when he returns physically home that he interacts with Freddy, finding out that he, too, has returned to the only place he can call home. The life they have built together and the love they share creates "home" for the characters, and while travels abroad may have been Arthur's grand plan for distancing himself from love, in the end it caused it only to grow upon returning home.
What you said is so profound and so true. Reading the novel it really hit me when he was talking to Lewis about his divorce. He believed there was failure in their separation, or that they fell out of love, but it was quite the opposite. There can still be love and success in separation as Lewis says, “Twenty years of joy and support and friendship, that’s a success. Twenty years of anything with another person is a success” (181). He proceeds to says how he can always talk to Clark and how he is even going to read a poem at his next wedding. Throughout the novel Less is asking what certain things or people love. The fact of it is that everyone loves differently, it’s not always this fantasy of being together all the time and it being perfect from beginning to end. Less needed to go and discover himself, Freddy and him both needed to embrace and understand their love for one another. They needed time. There is love in that time and space, even when they are with other people. Going along with what you said at the end, love is about stories. Specifically, it is the combining of stories. We always think about love as a joining of lives, but it’s really a joining of stories. Whatever that story is, the fact that it is shared makes it love. They are intertwined even when they are apart, because it is still their story.
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