I have no idea how I feel about this. I wasn't super impressed. I liked it okay but not enough to say "here, you have to read this" to anyone. Less was borderline spineless, always getting cut off mid sentence and never standing up for himself. And then the ending was like How I Met Your Mother. Really? That's how this all ends? Bah.
It's bad. I stress when work is so busy because I never have a chance to catch my breath. Well, right now it's the opposite. I'm stressing because we aren't busy, and you need business to keep the doors open. Today, I worked alone from 6am to about 8:40. I filled 5 orders, all for 2 people or less. I did some prep, then i read for a while, then i did more prep, then back to reading. Then my anxiety spurred me to get up and DO something, so I cleaned and degreased a sink, set up the dish pit, and tinkered with organizing things on the prep table. Then back to reading until my boss came in to relieve me. Lord, it was dull.
Anyway, the book. I can see why everyone liked this. It's witty and well written. I just question Less's decision making. People keep giving him random pills at clubs or recommending drugs that he promptly looks for and takes. Maybe because I'm not in the drug culture and I've had really bad experiences with addiction. Anything but pot upsets me. I lost a cousin to heroin. He was a mule, and a balloon popped in his stomach while he was transporting the stuff across from Tijuana. (No, I swear to God, that is true. I went to his funeral when I was 17.) So drugs being casually accepted and taken without question just....unsettle me.
Other than that, I can completely identify with this man. He's like a Male gay me.
I have this across 3 different media platforms, so I'm sorry if this keeps flipping from percent to minutes to pages.
This whole trip to Mexico seems sketchy as Hell.
Literary awards are rarely sufficient motivation for me to choose one title over another — the enjoyment of literature being notoriously subjective — but since Less was already on my wishlist, its recent Pulitzer Prize win firmed up my decision to purchase.
What immediately struck me was the unusual narrative structure… predominantly first-person present tense (identity undisclosed) yet omnipresent.
From where I sit, the story of Arthur Less is not so bad.
Look at him: seated primly on the hotel lobby’s plush sofa, blue suit and white shirt, legs knee-crossed so that one polished loafer hangs free of its heel. The pose of a young man.
But on occasion more like third-person. It is both confounding and intriguing. Continue reading >>
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