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Zohra’s voice comes loudly from her camel: ‘Shut the fuck up!  Enjoy the fucking sunset on your fucking camels!  Jesus!’ It is, after all, almost a miracle that they are here.  Not because they’ve survived the booze, the hashish, the migraines.  Not that at all.  It’s that they’ve survived everything in life, humiliations and disappointments and heartaches and missed opportunities, bad dads and bad jobs and bad sex and bad drugs, all the trips and mistakes and face-plants of life, to have made it to fifty and have made it here: to this frosted-cake landscape, these mountains of gold, the little table they can now see sitting on the dune, set with olives and pita and glasses and wine chilling on ice, with the sun waiting more patiently than any camel for their arrival.  So, yes.  As with almost every sunset, but with this one in particular: shut the fuck up.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

We all recognize grief in moments that should be celebrations; it is the salt in the pudding.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

‘She told me she met the love of her life,’ Zohra says at last, still staring out the window. 'You read poems about it, you hear stories about it, you hear Sicilians talk about being struck by lightning. We know there’s no love of your life. Love isn’t terrifying like that. It’s walking the fucking dog so the other one can sleep in, it’s doing taxes, it’s cleaning the bathroom without hard feelings. It’s having an ally in life. It’s not fire, it’s not lightning. It’s what she always had with me. Isn’t it? But what if she’s right, Arthur? What if the Sicilians are right? That it’s this earth-shattering thing she felt? Something I’ve never felt. Have you?’

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

For some reason, it never occurred to Less that she was a lesbian. Perhaps he is a bad gay, after all.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

Less feels on the verge of an understanding about life and death and the passage of time, an ancient and perfectly obvious understanding, when a British voice intervenes: ‘Okay, sorry to be a bother, just want to make sure.  Once again.  It’s Ait…’

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

‘It was…,’ he starts, stumbling on a rock in the path, then starts again: 'It was about a middle-aged gay man walking around San Francisco.  And, you know, his…his sorrows…'  Her face has begun to fold inward in a dubious expression, and he finds himself trailing off.  From the front of the group, the journalists are shouting in Arabic. Zohra askes, 'Is it a white middle-aged man?’ 'Yes.’ 'A white middle-aged American man walking around with his white middle-aged American sorrows?’ 'Jesus, I guess so.’ 'Arthur.  Sorry to tell you this.  It’s a little hard to feel sorry for a guy like that.’ 'Even gay?’ 'Even gay.’ 'Bugger off.'  He did not know he was going to say this. She stops walking, points at his chest, and grins.  'Good for you,’ she says.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

His Swift isn’t a hero. He’s a fool.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

Just for the record: happiness is not bullshit.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

He probes his weaknesses.  To magniloquent?  Too spoony?  ‘Too old?’ he ventures. 'We’re all over fifty, Arthur.  It’s not that you’re -’ 'Wait, I’m still -’ ’-a bad writer.'  Finley pauses for effect.  'It’s that you’re a bad gay.’ Less can think of nothing to say; this attack comes on an undefended flank. 'It is our duty to show something beautiful from our world.  The gay world.  But in your books, you make the characters suffer without reward.  If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were Republican.  Kalipso was beautiful.  So full of sorrow.  But so incredibly self-hating.  A man washes ashore on an island and has a gay affair for years.  But then he leaves to go find his wife!  You have to do better.  For us.  Inspire us, Arthur.  Aim higher.  I’m so sorry to talk this way, but it has to be said.’ At last Less manages to speak: 'A bad gay?’

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

He thinks: Hard to feel bad for a middle-aged white man. Indeed: even Less can’t feel bad for Swift anymore.  Like a wintertime swimmer too numb to feel cold, Arthur Less is too sad to feel pity.  For Robert, yes, breathing through an oxygen tube up in Sonoma.  For Marian, nursing a broken hip that might ground her forever.  For Javier and his marriage, and even for Bastian’s tragic sports teams.  For Zohra and Janet.  For his fellow writer Mohammed.  Around the world his pity flies, its wingspan as wide as an albatross’s.  But he can not more feel sorry for Swift - now become a gorgon of Caucasian male ego, snake headed, pacing through his novel and turning each sentence to stone - than Arthur Less can feel sorry for himself.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

He has nothing personal against Christ; though raised Unitarian - with its glaring omission of Jesus and a hymnal so unorthodox that it was years before Less understood ‘Accentuate the Positive’ was not in the Book of Common Prayer - Less is technically Christian. There is really no other word for someone who celebrates Christmas and Easter, even if only as craft projects.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

Here, he will kill his old novel, tear out the flesh that he wants, stitch it to all-new material, electrocute it with inspiration, and make it rise from the slab and stumble toward Cormorant Publishing.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

Look at him, look at him. How could I not love him?

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

He is remembering (falsely) something Robert once told him: Boredom is the only real tragedy for a writer; everything else is material. Robert never said anything of the sort. Boredom is essential for writers; it is the only time they get to write.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

He was eating a quesadilla; as an areligious WASP, he had no idea what to do about death. Two thousand years of flaming Viking boats and Celtic rites and Irish wakes and Puritan worship and Unitarian hymns, and still he was left with nothing. He had somehow renounced that inheritance.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

Less appeals to the setting sun: He gave up Freddy! He gave him up willingly; he even stayed away from the wedding. He has suffered enough, all on his own; he is crippled, uniplegic, forsaken, and bereft of his magic suit. He has nothing left to take away, our gay Job. He drops to his knees in the sand.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

There’s nothing like doing the crossword with your ex-wife.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

The boat ride is half an hour, during which Less sees leaping dolphins and flying fish skipping like stones over the water, as well as the floating mane of a jellyfish. He recalls an aquarium he visited as a boy, where, after enjoying a sea turtle that swam breaststroke like a dotty old aunt, he encountered a jellyfish, a pink frothing brainless negligeed monster pulsing in the water, and thought with a sob: We are not in this together.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

It is only the carrier of that wonderful mind, after all. A case for the crown.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)

But could she also have discovered his other crimes and inadequacies? How he made up ceremonies for a fifth-grade report on the religions of Iceland? How he shoplifted acne cream in high school? How he cheated on Robert so terribly? How he is a ‘bad gay’? And a bad writer? How he let Freddy Pelu walk out of his life? Shriek, shriek, shriek; it is almost Greek in its fury. A harpy sent down to punish Less at last.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (via wholesomeobsessive)