T his week’s story, “It’s a Summer Day,” follows an American novelist, Arthur Less, as he travels to Italy to attend a prize ceremony, for which he is one of the finalists. How important is that opening journey—and the sense of dislocation—to the story?
When I started this, I wanted to write something that was full of joy. I know that seems odd, but there it is. So I figured, the only way to do that was to Job-ify him—take everything away and give it back better. And it has to be his own fault. He can’t be a victim of a terrible world—he has to take the pill himself. I mean, that’s what humiliation really is, right? Not that it makes you seem ridiculous but that it reveals how ridiculous you really are. Travel is hard, and it’s mostly not your fault. But I thought, Wouldn’t it be funny if it was totally his fault? As is the rest.
“It’s a Summer Day” is taken from your forthcoming novel, “Less,” which will be published in July. In the novel, as in the story, Arthur Less has decided to take any literary invitation sent his way, because he wants to be out of the country when Freddy, his former flame, marries. When did you first start thinking about this scenario as the basis for a novel? Did you always have Arthur Less in mind as the character who would try to escape his life in this way?
I always had Arthur Less, but the novel was different—it was a wistful, quiet, poignant book about a man walking around San Francisco. I wrote bits and pieces and couldn’t seem to figure out what was wrong. Then I realized: Who could feel sad about this guy? He’s absurd! I threw it all out, waited about a month. Then I sat down and wrote this episode. It’s the third chapter in the book, but it’s where I found what I really wanted to do with my character. Torture him, I guess? And reward him.
Less spent much of his twenties and thirties in a relationship with an older man, Robert Brownburn, a distinguished poet. How much did Robert’s fame affect Less’s sense of himself as a writer, and how significant was that age difference in forming the man we see in these pages?
He thinks that he’s a boy! And he’s almost fifty! But he also thinks he can’t possibly be any good as a writer, when—as I hope comes across—he’s in fact pretty talented. I’ve never been in a relationship like that, so of course it interested me—the rewards of being with someone so much older and wiser and, of course, flawed, and the price both people pay. I do recognize, in myself, my memories of always being introduced as the “young man.” And I now live in a world where my friends are in their eighties and nineties—I am still the “young man.” It’s disconcerting, and yet a familiar role to play.
In the story, Less is one of five international novelists vying for a prize. His short-listed book was largely ignored in America, but in Italy it’s been fêted. Does Less welcome the attention, or fear the possibility that such attention might bring with it humiliation (at one stage, for example, the prom scene from “Carrie” runs through his mind)?
For Less, everything holds the possibility of humiliation; everything is booby-trapped by his own reckless optimism. He loves it, but he feels that there is a trick. There’s always a trick, and it’s usually one that he’s played, unwittingly, on himself. But he can’t help himself; he simply cannot be as cynical as Robert. He is almost fifty and he has no armor against the world, and I think this was part of his charm, for me, in writing him.
As a writer, do you think much about prizes? How important do you think they are to the literary ecosystem?
There’s a great book by James English, “The Economy of Prestige,” in which he examines literary prizes and what they are about. Basically: an exchange of prestige for either money or another kind of prestige. Prizes evolve to serve themselves. They have nothing to do with actual writing, as Robert Brownburn says, near the end of my excerpt. But Robert also says that he wants it. He wants it badly. But it’s like wanting a wedding—that’s not something to want. A wedding? Then what? You want a good relationship. A prize? Then what? You want to write something you’re proud of. Like, today, on the page. It’s easy to forget that’s the only real pleasure that writers have. And yet all the writers I know seethe when they aren’t acknowledged.
In the story, Less recalls the day that Robert answered the phone and discovered that he had won a Pulitzer. (“It turns out I’ve been pronouncing it wrong all these years,” Robert says. “It’s not Pew-lit-sir. It’s Pull-it-sir.”) Do you think most writers have a dream of receiving that call, however deeply the desire may be buried in the recesses of the mind?
Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. But what if you knew a masterpiece had been written that year? And was ignored? I’m such a sap, but I think not to at least call attention to that greater book would be utter vanity and a cardinal sin. Let me now mention “The Children’s Hospital,” by Chris Adrian, a masterpiece of 2006, which, as far I know, didn’t win a damn thing in a year I probably did. It’s certainly better than anything I’ve ever written.
The story takes its title from a line in a Frank O’Hara poem: “It’s a summer day, and I want to be wanted more than anything else in the world.” Robert has told Less, “Prizes aren’t love,” but in some ways the story proves that they can be. What’s more challenging to write about, human love and desire, or the life of a solitary novelist?
Human love and desire is my bag. It is MUCH harder to write about the life of a solitary novelist. I’ve never put writers in a novel before; I think I always believed that it was not allowed, or certainly only allowed as the last gasp of a novelist. Yet . . . you know . . . Roth hit upon Zuckerman early on as a way to tell his stories, and even after Zuckerman stopped being a main character he proved to be an excellent narrator. So that rule’s no good. What I didn’t want to write about was a poor-me story—I’m far too old to get away with that. So the sympathy in the novel goes to Robert, the greater writer. There is a whole section on Doubt. The pain of creation, as witnessed by a younger Less, who wants to relieve the pain but realizes it is a necessary part of Robert’s work. I think that must be painful for the partners of artists. They don’t know what’s going on in that room, and they don’t dare ask; they don’t know how to help. It’s like “Young Frankenstein”: “No matter what you hear in there, no matter how cruelly I beg you, no matter how terribly I may scream, do not open this door!” Of course, a moment later he begs, “Open this door!” You gotta feel for Teri Garr.
