Very PRIZE-WORTHY

A WRITER'S WIT
When I read a book, I like to be surprised. I don't want to read the same genre formula that I've read a hundred times before. 
​Chet Williamson
Born June 19, 1948

C. Williamson

New Yorker Fiction 2017

​***—Excellent
**   —Above Average 
*      —Average ​​here to edit.

Christoph Niemann

​***June 19, 2017, Andrew Sean Greer, “It’s a Summer Day”: Arthur Less, a middle-aged American novelist, is flown to Turin, Italy, by the committee of a literary award, to attend the ceremony where he will or will not be awarded the top prize. ¶ Greer’s character, Less, is more by way of his burning wit (too many brilliant examples, like emeralds, to list here). The story is about an underrated writer (by himself as much as critics) who is only attending this ceremony to avoid the wedding of his former lover, Freddy. The story is peppered with bits of backstory about an earlier partner who has won a Pulitzer. Less seems to be among the right crowd, all right, but his ego is not quite buying it, when he delivers credit to his novel’s translator: 

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“Less begins to imagine (as the mayor doodles on in Italian) that he has been mistranslated. Or, what is the word? Supertranslated? His novel given to an unacknowledged genius of a poet (Giuliana Senino is her name) who worked his mediocre English into breathtaking Italian. His book was ignored in America, barely reviewed, without a single interview request by a journalist (his publicist said, ‘Autumn is a bad time’), but, here in Italy, he understands he is taken seriously. In autumn, no less” (60). 

What any fine story does, by way of the specific, is to universalize the world, helping fellow human beings understand what it is like to have any part of us, but artistic endeavor in particular, held up to scrutiny by our peers. Greer’s new book, Less, (of which this story exists as the third chapter) is out in July.
Illustrated by Christoph Niemann

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