Pulitzer board overcomes resistance to a good laugh
Andrew Sean Greer’s hilarious novel ‘Less’ wins prize for fiction.
Andrew Sean Greer did something rare this week: His latest novel, “Less,” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
That’s extraordinary, of course, but what makes this year’s winner so unusual is that his novel is funny. Very funny. Laugh-tillyou-can’t-breathe funny.
That just doesn’t happen in the hallowed chambers of literary honor. Pulitzers are endowed on funereal novels like Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” or cerebral books like Marily nneRobinson’s “Gilead.” The august gatekeepers might tolerate the humor in Michael Chabon’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” but Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” is closer to their solemn hearts.
Greer’s “Less” is nothing like those grave books. It’s not a serious story spiked with comic elements; it’s an unabashed comic novel, a descendant of the great “Lucky Jim” (1954), by Kingsley Amis.
In the opening pages of “Less,” a 49-year-old writer learns that his former boyfriend is about to get married. To avoid attending the wedding as a heartbroken g uest, he embarks on a h umiliating trip around the world, teaching classes and delivering readings at any place that will have him.
Asan ovel, it’s delightf ul.Asa Pulitzer winner, it’s a unicorn.
Oh, I see you reaching back to the early 1980s for John Kennedy Too le’s“AConfederacyof Dunces” and Alison Lurie’s “For- eign Affairs,” but their prizes only suggest the duration of this attitude: American critical opinion has been discounting comic novels for decades. (Toole committed suicide thinking his book would never be published.) We celebrate our stand-up comics, we adore our TV sitcoms, and we export our comic movies, but for some reason our funny novels must subsist on a diet of thin praise.
“A comic novel” has become a suspect designation, as though creating laughter were some subcraft, like decoupage. We used to know better. Shakespeare’s comedies are as classic as his tragedies. The light that humor shines on the human condition may be a different frequency, but it’s just as illuminating as its calamitous twin.
Despite their courageous choice, even this year’s Pulitzer judges sound determined to muffle the laughs. Their citation describes “Less” as “a generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and range, about growing older and the essential nature of love.”
That sounds about as appealing as a pair of orthopedic shoes. This is a problem, America. Our critical resistance to comic
novels attracts fewer writers to the form and leads to less interest from publishers. And that grim bias trudges out across the culture and gets disastrously reinforced in schools. We may all start off by reading the zany antics of Dr. Seuss, but by high school, the message is clear: “Abandon all mirth, ye who enter here.” Ennui and despair are the province of the Great American Novel.
But if ever an era needed a good chuckle and a sweet laugh, it’s ours. We have plenty of sharp satirists to fan the flames of our searing political arguments. We know how to mock. We’re experts at sarcasm. What we need more of is laughter — the kind of self-deprecating, warmhearted, give-mea-hug laughter that Greer provides in “Less.”
It’s a lovely irony that the first version of the Pulitzer announcement from the Associated Press mistakenly reported that Greer’s winning book is called “Fearless.”
Indeed, there is something brave about holding up a comic novel about a forlorn man stumbling through one ridiculous encounter after another and saying, “This is the best book of the year.” Bravo to the Pulitzer judges.
We need more novels like “Less.”