more from less book review

The Inquisitive Biologist

Reviewing fascinating science books since 2017, book review – more from less: the surprising story of how we learned to prosper using fewer resources – and what happens next, 8-minute read.

More from Less makes the optimistic case that our impact on the planet is diminishing. We are past “peak stuff” and thanks to continued technological innovation our economy is dematerializing. That is to say, economic growth has become decoupled from resource consumption. Or, as the title puts it succinctly, we are getting more from less.

I was initially sceptical when I learned of this book. My outlook on the state of the world is not nearly as optimistic. So, from the blurb’s counterintuitive claim that “we’ve stumbled into an unexpected balance with nature”, to Steven Pinker’s triumphant endorsement that those who think we’re doomed by overpopulation and resource depletion are wrong – I was ready to go bananas on this book. But I would be a poor reviewer if I let my prejudices get the better of me.

More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – And What Happens Next , written by Andrew McAfee , published in Europe by Simon & Schuster in October 2019 (hardback, 352 pages)

More from Less starts with Andrew McAfee (a former Harvard Business School professor who is now a research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management) asking the reader to keep an open mind. He was initially sceptical too: surely, as our economies grow, we consume more resources? To understand how we got to believe this, he first provides some history and background. Starting, as one must, with Malthus’s famous Essay on the Principle of Population , McAfee highlights how population growth was kept in check by food supply for the longest time. Until it wasn’t. Malthus did not foresee all the technological advances that came during and after the Industrial Revolution: urbanisation, combustion engines, electricity, indoor plumbing (underappreciated, writes McAfee), plentiful synthetic fertiliser thanks to the Haber-Bosch process , and (thank you Norman Borlaug ) the Green Revolution.

McAfee balances this by pointing out the dark side: the Industrial Revolution was achieved on the back of slavery, child labour, colonialism, pollution, and the wholesale extermination of animals. This ultimately led to concerns: Earth Day, Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb , the Club of Rome’s report The Limits to Growth (and its update ), the IPAT equation ( Impact = Population × Affluence × Technology ), Jevons paradox (efficiency gains are often spent elsewhere, not reducing impact after all), Kenneth Boulding’s concept of Spaceship Earth … again, McAfee hits most of the relevant notes here.

For many decades, economical growth and resource consumption increased in lockstep with each other, until we hit what McAfee has earlier called the Second Machine Age , hinting at the power of computers. Since then, resource use has stabilised or decreased while the economy has kept growing, at least in the US. Examples discussed here include metals, agricultural input, wood, building materials such as sand and gravel, and energy consumption.

“For many decades, economical growth and resource consumption increased in lockstep with each other, until we hit what McAfee [calls] the Second Machine Age […]. Since then, resource use has stabilised or decreased while the economy has kept growing,”

McAfee sees four factors driving this dematerialization. First, unsurprisingly, technological progress, which has resulted in increased efficiency and reduced resource consumption when manufacturing goods. Second, capitalism, with competition encouraging companies to invent above technologies and cut costs by using less raw materials. The third, public awareness, refers to people’s willingness to embrace progress (the resistance to GMOs and nuclear power are given as examples of progress stalling when this does not happen). The fourth, responsive governments, means governments that are willing to listen (to their people, to new ideas), capable of governing and enforcing rules, and free from corruption. Democracies excel at this, argues McAfee.

The last part of the book then describes how these four factors have gone global, and what they have achieved. McAfee’s argumentation is again, in one word, balanced. Some achievements are good (increased health and wealth), others are a mixed blessing (urbanisation and fewer but larger companies), and some are worrying (a decline in so-called social capital: the disappearance of jobs has led to a feeling of disconnection in communities, especially in the US). Nor is he blind to the challenges ahead, such as climate change. Everything is not alright. But he thinks the way out is through. We need to step on the proverbial accelerator and spread all four drivers of dematerialization far and wide (though see Geoffrey West’s Scale for an interesting critique of whether this acceleration in technological breakthroughs can be maintained).

More from Less flows well, its chapters following logically on from each other. Despite my initial apprehension, I found much here to agree with. Like McAfee, I wholeheartedly support continued scientific research and technological development (I have written about GMOs and other biotech tools before). Still – and I take note here of his remarks about the power and persistence of negative thinking – I do not share his optimism to the same extent. My objections are threefold.

“Everything is not alright. But [McAfee] thinks the way out is through. We need to step on the proverbial accelerator and spread all four drivers of dematerialization far and wide.”

First, does the decrease in US resource consumption account for production that has moved overseas? McAfee mentions that US Geological Survey data on mineral consumption includes imports and exports, but I am not sure this is the same. A footnote says resources in finished goods are excluded but argues that, at 4% of the economy, they are negligible. I question whether that is a useful comparison in a service-industry-heavy economy such as the US. What percentage of all US goods does this represent? The scope of the data underlying other examples is less clear and McAfee does not clarify this point. A major theme of The Irresponsible Pursuit of Paradise was that developed countries smugly claim to have cleaned up their act when in reality they have shifted the burden of resource extraction to developing countries. As McAfee acknowledges, without sufficiently detailed data you cannot establish if dematerialization is a global or local phenomenon. And, given a globalised economy, we need to exclude the possibility it is an artefact of not doing your bookkeeping on resource extraction properly.

Second, some critical factors go unmentioned. So, the smartphone is held up as a shining (shiny?) example of capitalism giving us one device where there used to be many. But McAfee fails to mention that those very same companies have given us planned obsolescence , devices that cannot be easily repaired, and relentless marketing to push consumers into upgrading to the latest model. That negates much of your efficiency gains. And what of all the new wants and needs that capitalism has created? Another point: McAfee seems little concerned with the non-renewable nature of many resources – known reserves have increased because we are looking harder. “ Earth is finite […] but also very, very big […] The image of a thinly supplied Spaceship Earth […] is deeply misleading ” (p.120-121). Putting aside for a moment the question of whether this justifies ever-more intrusive extraction techniques such as mountain-top removal and deep-sea mining, there is no mention here of the hard limit imposed by Energy Returned on Energy Invested, a concept discussed in Ugo Bardi’s Extracted . Not all of a resource can be economically exploited. McAfee will likely reply that this holds until innovation overcomes this – we have underestimated its power before. And although Earth Day features here, there is no mention of the concept of humanity’s ecological footprint and Earth Overshoot Day (which has been criticised , but if anything is an underestimate), or the framework of planetary boundaries developed by Johan Rockström and colleagues . It seems unlikely that a former Harvard professor is not aware of these factors.

“Dematerialization is worth pursuing, but I am not convinced it is a panacea – [our impact] is a complex problem for which there is no single silver bullet.”

Third and final point: although McAfee’s argument seems logical, I am concerned it is too little, too late. To understand this, let’s return to the IPAT equation ( Impact = Population × Affluence × Technology ). McAfee’s book revolves around reducing Technology . Population is still increasing but a plateau is in sight. As mentioned in my review of Empty Planet , I do think current numbers already have an outsized environmental impact, so the questions posed in Should We Control World Population? remain on the table for me. That leaves Affluence , which is increasing rapidly globally. Eileen Crist’s call in Abundant Earth for scaling down and pulling back seems apt here. Given the above, you would need manifold efficiency gains from dematerialization just to keep Impact constant, let alone decrease it. More caution, as expressed by Vaclav Smil in Making the Modern World , seems warranted. Dematerialization is worth pursuing, but I am not convinced it is a panacea – Impact is a complex problem for which there is no silver bullet.

Overall then, More from Less highlights an interesting phenomenon and I found quite a few things in McAfee’s outlook to agree with. However, some curious omissions make me question how much of a saviour dematerialization really is.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Program for the human environment, book review: ‘more from less’ by andrew mcafee.

PHE Researcher Iddo Wernick published a  review  of  ‘More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources?and What Happens Next’ by Andrew McAfee in the Journal of Industrial Ecology

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More from Less

The surprising story of how we learned to prosper using fewer resources—and what happens next.

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Table of Contents

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About The Book

About the author.

Andrew McAfee is a principal research scientist at MIT Sloan School of Management and the cofounder and codirector of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, where he studies how digital technologies are changing business, the economy, and society. He has discussed his work at such venues as TED, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and the World Economic Forum. His prior books include the  New York Times  bestseller  The Second   Machine Age and Machine, Platform, Crowd . He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Publisher: Scribner (October 13, 2020)
• Length: 352 pages
• ISBN13: 9781982103583

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Raves and Reviews

“Contrary to the doomsayers, humanity can grow the economy while healing the environment, according to this hopeful exploration of sustainable development…McAfee synthesizes a vast literature on economics and the environment into a lucid, robust defense of technological progress, including nuclear power and GMOs. This stimulating challenge to anti-capitalist alarmists is full of fascinating information and provocative insights.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[McAfee] is convinced that, on balance, we’re heading the right way: ‘We need to step on the accelerator, not yank the steering wheel in a different direction.’ It is precisely his commitment to societal and planetary health that compels him to call on the generative power of tech and capitalism to elevate humanity, as he stands athwart progress and cries, ‘More!’” —Wall Street Journal

“McAfee’s focus on corporate use of resources is refreshing. Too often, businesses are caricatured as rapacious predators of Earth’s bounty. In fact, since the dawn of capitalism, they have produced products that become lighter on the ground and on the wallet because profit-hungry bosses see advantage in thrift.” —The Economist

“Deeply engaging and useful in understanding the roles of capitalism and technology in shaping humanity's future.” —Booklist

“The future may not be so bleak after all….A cogent argument.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Everyone knows we’re doomed by runaway overpopulation, pollution, or resource depletion, whichever comes first. Not only is this view paralyzing and fatalistic, but, as Andrew McAfee shows in this exhilarating book, it’s wrong… More from Less is fascinating, enjoyable to read, and tremendously empowering.” — Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

“The shortest path to improving the world is to notice objectively what is already working, and do more of it. As for the things that are still going wrong, figure out the minimalist way to turn them around, and do that. McAfee’s More from Less is packed with practical news and advice that will disconcert ideologues of every stripe.” —Stewart Brand, editor of the The Whole Earth Catalog

“In his new book More from Less McAfee applies his positive approach to the case of our planet, arguing that we have reached a critical tipping point where technology is allowing us to actually reduce our ecological footprint—a truly counterintuitive finding....[This book is] well worth reading even if your first impression, like mine, is: it can’t be true!” — Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund

“In More from Less Andrew McAfee conclusively demonstrates how environmentalism requires more technology and capitalism, not less. Our modern technologies actually dematerialize our consumption, giving us higher human welfare with lower material inputs. This is an urgently needed and clear-eyed view of how to have our technological cake and eat it too.” — Marc Andreessen, cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz

“I've always believed that technological progress and entrepreneurship make our lives better. Here, Andrew McAfee shows how these powerful forces are helping us make our planet better too, instead of degrading it. For anyone who wants to help create a future that is both sustainable and abundant, this book is essential reading.” — Reid Hoffman, cofounder of Linkedin and coauthor of Blitzscaling

“This book is the best kind of surprise. It tells us something about our relationship with our planet that is both unexpected and hopeful. The evidence McAfee presents is convincing: we have at last learned how to tread more lightly on the Earth. More from Less shows how we accomplished this, and tells us how to keep it going.” — Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google

“In More from Less Andrew McAfee lays out a compelling blueprint showing how we can support human life using fewer natural resources, improve the state of the world, and replenish the planet for centuries to come.” — Marc Benioff, Chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce

“More from Less is a must-read—timely and refreshing! Amid the din of voices insisting that the ravages of climate change are unstoppable, McAffee offers a desperately needed nuanced perspective on what governments and society have got right, and he compellingly argues that commendable progress has already been made….A gem.” — Dambisa Moyo, New York Times bestselling author of Dead Aid , How the West Was Lost , Winner Take All, and Edge of Chaos

“Riveting…By subverting our common perceptions of capitalism and technology as enemies of progress and environmental preservation, McAfee offers all of us a clear-eyed source of optimism and hope. Critically, he also makes the case for what comes next—offering up vital lessons that have the potential to make the world both more prosperous and more just.” — Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation

“Andrew McAfee’s new book addresses an urgent need in our world today: defining a framework for addressing big global challenges. His proposals are based on a thorough analysis of the state of the world, combined with a refreshing can-do attitude.” — Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum

“Andrew McAfee’s optimistic and humane book documents a profoundly important and under-appreciated megatrend—the dematerialization of our economy….Anyone who worries about the future will have their fears allayed and hopes raised by reading this important book.” — Lawrence H. Summers, former Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and Director of the National Economic Council

“Yet another magnificent contribution from Andrew McAfee. Along with his prior works , More from Less will help us navigate society’s future in profound ways.” — Clayton M. Christensen, Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School

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The Earthbound Report

Good lives on our one planet

Book review: Less is More, by Jason Hickel

Degrowth is often used as a confrontational word, but here it is used more hopefully. There is a nuanced view of what the world needs less of and what it needs more of, creating an inspiringly holistic vision for “how we can shift from an economy that’s organised around domination and extraction to one that’s rooted in reciprocity with the living world”.

Just as The Divide looked to history to account for global inequality, Less is More looks back to trace the origins of ‘growthism’. It digs back through climate change to fossil fuels, to economic growth and to capitalism. Capitalism “has a kind of totalitarian logic to it: every industry, every sector, every national economy must grow, all the time, with no identifiable end-point.” A central principle of capitalism is to take more than you give. Historically, that process has driven empire and slavery, and today it drives climate change and ecological breakdown. Wealthier countries take from the global atmosphere in yet another form of colonialism.

Obviously talking about capitalism is anything other than glowing deference is a kind of heresy. But Hickel has little time for this, and says that shutting down the conversation about capitalism is to be naive about the power of human creativity. Besides, young people are not afraid of this conversation. If adults won’t have it, the next generation will, and aging capitalists will have to sulkily put up with the better world they create despite them.

One of the most damaging things about capitalism is that it is “fundamentally unhinged from any conception of human need.” It piles its rewards onto the wealthiest first. The more dire the poverty, the more invisible it is to capital. And it takes no account of what it destroys in the process of turning things into money.

Instead, we should find ways to prioritise what matters most. More, in already wealthy countries, is not something that matters – something that Katherine Trebeck and I describe in our book The Economics of Arrival . Hickel calculates that with better distribution and investment in public goods, the US economy could be 65% smaller with no loss in wellbeing. Good lives are grounded in community, meaningful work, in societies that cooperate rather than compete. People and planet are being pushed to breaking point to no good end, says Hickel. “The excess GDP that characterises the richest nations wins them nothing when it comes to what really matters.”

As the book moves into its solutions, a series of antidotes to growth are revealed. Justice is one of them. Abundance is another – growth actually relies on people being unsatisfied or even deprived. An abundant public affluence defuses the growth imperative . Commons approaches and regenerative development feature. These sorts of ideas hint at much more interesting possibilities for a post-capitalist future – well beyond the knee-jerk cliches of either a centrally planned economy or a life of primitive simplicity.

“For 500 years,” Hickel writes, “capitalist growth has been a process of enclosure and dispossession. Degrowth represents a reversal of this process. It represents release. It represents an opportunity for healing, recovery and repair.”

This is an elegant evolution of degrowth ideas, expanding what the term can mean. “Degrowth begins as a process of taking less. But in the end it opens up whole vistas of possibility. It moves us from scarcity to abundance, from extraction to regeneration, from dominion to reciprocity, and from loneliness and separation to connection with a world that’s fizzing with life.”

Hard to argue with that. Perhaps degrowth will save the world.

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19 comments

I did not actually use the term ‘degrowth’ in my book “Towards Oikos” but that was what it was all about; that and a World Parliament. I am now on the search for writings that incorporate both concepts – this would include Jeremy your new interest in the interaction of racism and climate change.

Yes, I think there are a number of writers basically arguing along similar lines but without using the degrowth term. Hickel says that he debated whether or not to use it himself.

Jeremy whether concerning Climate activism or general environmental activism from the large or prominent NGO’s would you say limits to growth has been missing in action?

It’s an interesting one, because the influence of limits to growth is clearly embedded in a lot of environmental thinking, but it is rarely explicitly mentioned. That’s partly because it has been superceded by newer ideas, such as planetary boundaries. Others choose not to mention it as it’s so easily raises red flags for people – even many environmentalists seem to consider it to be ‘debunked’, although you can usually tell if they’ve read the original report or not.

Hickel mentions them and says that he doesn’t find the framing of limits particularly useful, because it’s not how nature works. Nature is best understood as a network of interconnected relationships, rather than a set of rules or quantifiable limits. I’ll have to look up the exact quote.

Wait what? He writes a book about degrowth and doesn’t see the framing of limits particularly useful? How does he square that circle?

Anyway, the trouble is the economy as it is now, plus many pushing renewables as the main answer at least regarding Climate change, seem still to think infinite growth on a finite planet is still possible. For instance, I was told Bill McKibben has been talking about degrowth for decades but if you go to 350.org you won’t find it as an important theme. In fact, you have to did to find a passing reference to a youth Degrowth camp in Europe. I fail to see how we do the Doughnut and not address limits to growth by degrowth. & rather than superseding I’d rather say they complement or expand on the original Limites of Growth work.

It’s not a rejection of the Limits to Growth, it’s quite a nuanced discussion of the framing of limits, not the idea of limits itself. It runs over several pages, but to dig out a key passage:

“The problem with the Limits to Growth report is that it focused only on the finite nature of the resources that we need to keep the economy running. This way of thinking is vulnerable to those who point out that if we can find new reserves, or subsitute new resources for old, and if we develop methods of improving the yields of renewable resources, then we don’t have to worry about those limits…But this isn’t how ecology actually works. The problem with economic growth isn’t just that we might run out of resouces at some point. The problem is that it progressively degrades the integrity of ecosystems.”

Another bit says:

“trying to predict when we might bump into the limits to growth is exactly the wrong way to think about it. We will find ourselves plunging into ecological collapse well before we run into the limits to growth. Once we realise this, it completely changes the way we think about the question of limits.”

Framing is another issue granted but I still cannot run with the second one as this is exactly what the Club of Rome was talking about with environemtal/societal collaspe. It wasn’t just about theoretical limits to economic growth separate from the global enviroment it operates in.

Anyway I will get it later after I’ve read Exploring Degrowth : A Critical Guide by Liegey & Nelson.

The risk with limits is that people think ‘how much can I get away with?’ Like speed limits – just because you can legally do 70MPH doesn’t mean it’s wise.

No serious environmentalist thinks like that, and neither does the Limits to Growth report. But it’s what industry or politicians do with the idea that can make it risky. The problems with the framing of limits to growth is much more to do with how they can be misused than the legitimacy of the concept itself.

Hmm not sure how you convey why you even need something like a doughnut economy/steady state economy or ecological overshoot if not with a big picture view of limits. Especially so when you have many seeing no limits or that all we need is a energy transition and we can keep growing the global economy. These people will ignore it anyway as many do on CO2 limits.

& given we don’t know where exactly that limit should be on CO2 even if we know it can only get worse with higher concentrations, would you say this sort of flaw in ‘limits’ thinking also applies there? Or is it limits by stealth, we look to change the thinking but not talk about limits? Good luck with that one.

If someone says we can emit 100 tonnes of waste and that’s the limit, some people will want to emit 99.9 tonnes. If we have 10 years to save the planet, some will plan to act in December 2030. That’s the danger with the framing of limits. It makes people start at the wrong end.

What we need is questions and framings that re-orient the problem. Not ‘how to avoid making the tiger extinct?’, but ‘how will the tiger thrive?’ Not ‘how much biodiversity can we safely destroy?’, but ‘how can we create regenerative systems that enhance biodiversity?’ Not ‘how much is too much?’ but ‘how much is enough?’

Limits are real, no question about that. But the way we articulate the problem will shape the solutions, especially with people who are keen to do the absolute minimum.

But that’s my interpretation, anyway. I’ll let you read the book and decide for yourself!

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This book sounds really interesting. It reminds me of some of the ideas about the economy of nature being based on gift exchange, found in the book of Anne Primavesi ‘Making God Laugh.’ More generally, I think insufficient attention is paid to the historic roots of why it is that growth has come to be seen as such a sacred cow – I would point to instrumentalism as a way of viewing and interacting with nature as an important one, and suggest that Christians should remember with humility the part that particular theologies played in the ‘disenchantment’ of nature from the 16th Century onwards.

You’re right, and the book does take a look at those historical roots and how religion legitimised certain approaches to nature and conquest. There’s also some interesting material towards the end that considers less instrumentalist views of nature, and what we might learn from indigenous cultures.

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With respect, I think you are all missing THE fundamental point. Talk of improving the future by adopting a “top-down” approach will not work. THE major problem is one of individual human greed. The present economic system places no limits on human greed. When people talk about growth they fail to grasp it is growth in greed. Greed is insatiable. When ever is enough ever enough? Just look at the world’s billionaires rocketing into Earth’s higher atmosphere. Do they restrain their levels of consuming demand on the world’s resources? No! So, what is needed is more of an individual-based psychological approach. Individuals must be steered towards lower levels of individual consumption. Organisations like Primark encourage mass consumption by individuals. This needs to be resisted and individuals asked why they “need” so much? Is it “need” or “greed” which is driving their consuming behaviours? This requires more of an individual “bottom-up” approach. In this way, “Less is More” could become a true reality and save humankind.

Jeremy, I am re-reading Less is More prior to the Climate Solutions BookClub Meeting online 17/3/22 (Paul Dawson). It is still one of the century’s great books in my opinion – blends well with Braiding Sweetgrass (R W Kimmerer) and The Corruption of Capitalism (Standing). I friend has asked have to ever review Guy Standing’s The Corruption of Capitalism?

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• Print length 352 pages
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner; Illustrated edition (October 13, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
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About the author

Andrew mcafee.

Andrew McAfee (@amcafee), a principal research scientist at MIT, studies how technology changes the world. His new book "The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset that Drives Extraordinary Results" explains how a bunch of geeks iterated and experimented until they came up with a better way to run an organization. His previous books include "More from Less," "Machine | Platform | Crowd" and "The Second Machine Age" with Erik Brynjolfsson, and "Enterprise 2.0."

McAfee has written for publications including Harvard Business Review, The Economist, The Wall St. Journal, the Financial Times, and The New York Times. He's talked about his work on The Charlie Rose Show and 60 Minutes, at TED, Davos, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and in front of many other audiences.

He and Brynjolfsson are the only people named to both the Thinkers 50 list of the world’s top management thinkers and the Politico 50 group of people transforming American politics.

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'Less' offers more in Andrew Sean Greer's follow-up to his Pulitzer-winning novel

Maureen Corrigan

Less is Lost, by Andrew Sean Greer Little, Brown hide caption

Why do we underrate comedy when we need it so badly? When Andrew Sean Greer's novel Less won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 there was a dismissive shrug on the part of some critics. After all, the Pulitzer is usually awarded to a novel that's not as much fun to read as Less was.

A satire of the pretensions of the literary world, Less chronicled the efforts of its hero — the white, gay, American, minor writer, Arthur Less — to outrun his impending 50th birthday and the wedding of his former partner by accepting every invitation to every literary conference, junket, writer's retreat and festival that came his way. Naturally, when news of a sequel to Less was announced, more dismissive shrugging ensued, as though no one remembered acclaimed sequels written by the likes of John Updike , Philip Roth and Hilary Mantel .

Less is Lost picks up with Arthur Less now living with that aforementioned partner, Freddy Pelu, who left his new husband to return to Less. You'd think that demonstration of love would be enough, but Less is a chronically uncertain person, prone to what Freddy, who acts as our occasional narrator, calls a "clumsiness of the heart." The death here of Less' first love, the famous poet Robert Brownburn, only deepens Less's uncertainty, since it turns out that Less owes a decade of back rent on the San Francisco bungalow he's been living in that was owned by Brownburn.

Fortunately, for a writer so minor he's often confused with another minor writer of the same name (even though the other guy is African American), Less has lately been receiving a strangely high number of invitations for lucrative literary gigs — public lectures, glossy writing assignments, and the like. So Less hits the road again — this time in the U.S. Both he and Freddy assume that a separation may clarify their relationship.

Less' first assignment is in Palm Springs, where he'll write a profile of the science fiction writer H.H.H. Mandern, who appeared in the first novel. Here's Greer's skewering description of Mandern:

A bestselling author since his first book, Incubus , came out in 1978 ... H.H. H. Mandern instantly became a towering figure in the world of books, with ... his striped Vincent Price beard ... [and] rock-star behavior such as  ... setting money on fire. ... But nothing stopped his output: a novel, sometimes two a year, and not just any novels but six-hundred-page portraits of interstellar war and alien empire-building that would take a normal human being a year just to type ."

Mandern, always cranky, uses the profile as a bargaining chip to make Less drive him and his pug dog in a decrepit camper van through the Mojave desert for a reunion with his estranged daughter. Thus begins a travelogue through the West and South where, among other misadventures, Less is repeatedly greeted by the proprietors of RV parks with variations on this question, here asked by a lady in Louisiana:

"Now, you're not from around here are you, honey?" ... "No. ..." [answers Less] "See, I thought from how you sounded, you was from the Netherlands.

Less, we're told, "knows what this means. ... and he has never known what to say. Because the question [this woman] is really asking, without at all knowing she is asking it, without meaning anything in the world except that she detects a linguistic flourish, is Are you a homosexual ?"

The question you may well be asking at this point is: Is Less Is Lost as good, as funny, as poignant as its predecessor? To which I would happily answer: Yes, at least!

There are extended comic passages here about Less' Walloon ancestry and a mediocre gay men's chorus singing Leonard Cohen songs that I read aloud, laughing, to anyone I could waylay. But comedy also arises out of pain and Greer smoothly transitions into the profound, such as in this rumination by Less about the empty encounter he has on the trip with his long-lost father:

The moment holds neither disappointment nor delight. Realizing we are no longer in love is not the heartbreaking sensation we imagine when we are in love — because it is no sensation at all. It is a realization made by a bystander.

Greer has said in interviews that this sequel is the end of Less. That would be a shame. Greer should add even more to Less' saga and take him as far as he can go.

The More of Less by Joshua Becker [Book Review]

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Have you ever looked around your home and become overwhelmed by all the mess and the STUFF? Do you look through your very full closet at all of your clothing and felt like you have nothing to wear? Have you asked your kids to clean up their toys and they’re unable to do it – not because of their attitudes, just because it was all too much? Joshua Becker, professional minimalist (basically) and writer, might tell you he knows how you can solve these issues, plus many other day-to-day frustrations: by owning less. He discusses his path to minimalism in his book, The More of Less .

**Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase through the links, I may earn a small commission. I link these companies and products for informational purposes or because of their quality and not because of the commission I may or may not receive.**

Minimalism is nothing new, but it’s not a concept most American households entertain. Our current way of life is more like… maximalism. But our materialist ways are wreaking havoc on the world—AND OUR HOMES. And probably even our sanity. I have experienced, firsthand, that having fewer belongings makes organizing and household management SO MUCH EASIER. It makes sense if you think about it: If you’ve only got 10 shirts, organizing your closet and “maximizing your space” isn’t even really necessary.

The More of Less

The More of Less by Joshua Becker is worthwhile and eye-opening. The book provides a dose of reality that many of us could benefit from, even if we have no interest in becoming a minimalist. Becker knows the ideas of minimalism can overwhelm — he’s not encouraging you to make your home barren or deprive yourself of necessities. Instead, he calls his type of minimalism “rational minimalism” which is a lot less intimidating.

Joshua Becker’s path to minimalism began as he was spending his entire weekend cleaning out his garage. After a conversation with a neighbor, he realized he had too much stuff, and that stuff was taking over his life and his free time, preventing him from spending time on more important things — like playing with his son.

In The More of Less , Becker takes us through minimalism from start to finish. He starts by sharing benefits of minimalism. Some benefits are obvious, such as, if you buy less stuff, you’ll have more money. Other benefits are less obvious, such as having more time and freedom, making less of an environmental impact, and leaving less work for someone else when our lives are over.

Benefits of Minimalism

I can attest that having fewer belongings means less cleaning for me. Buying fewer items makes big purchases, such as vacations or a new deck, a lot more achievable. Finally, one of my favorite byproducts of minimalism — spending money on QUALITY instead of quantity. It’s so much easier investing in a pricey pair of boots when they’re the only ones you own, you’ll wear them often, and you’ll have them forever. It takes the guilt out of spending because it’s intentional.

Tips on Minimizing

After listing the benefits of minimalism, Becker takes you step by step through reducing your belongings.

Eliminating Duplicates

He suggests starting small by eliminating duplicates — do you really need two can openers when you reach for the same one every time, anyway? Gradually work your way through your home, saving the hard-to-part with items, such as family photographs or books, for last.

Create Limits and Rules

Creating limits and rules for yourself and your belongings often proves helpful for aspiring minimalists, according to Becker. Only keep as many socks that will fit in a shoebox, only keep as many pots that will fit in one cabinet, only keep as many books that will fit on two shelves. Limits can feel arbitrary, but can help make the job of minimizing more direct.

Experiment with Minimalism

Becker also suggests doing some minimalist experiments. If you’re not sure whether you can live without something, try living without it temporarily. Put the questionable items in a box and write the date on it. If you find you need something from the box, get it, return it to its place in your home and move on, knowing that item belongs. If, after a few months, you find you have needed no items from the box, let the box go, confident that the items inside will serve someone else better than they can serve you.

Change Your Habits

When you’ve decided you need less, and you work to empty your home and life of unnecessary items, it’s important to change your habits to continue down that path. Be aware of how advertising tempts us and stores lure us in with big sales. Remind yourself that you know better and determine to do better.

Thoughts on The More of Less

I enjoyed Joshua Becker’s The More of Less . In fact, I liked it so much I read it twice, most recently just before Christmas. The book was motivating and allowed me to see my home and life with a more critical eye. While reading, I itched to put the book down and tackle my dresser drawers, my closet, my collection of gift wrap bags, my Christmas decorations, and a storage closet in the basement (so far). I also had one of the most minimal, and stress-free, Christmases that I can remember. Maybe it’s just a coincidence because my kids are getting older and life is getting easier, or maybe it’s not.

Regardless, I plan on continuing to go room by room through my house, keeping only the items that I truly use and need. I have donation pick ups scheduled and I’m doing a No Spend January — these combined efforts should give me a good head start towards simplifying. I’m also looking forward to reading other books on minimalism, namely Clutter Free with Kids and The Minimalist Home , also by Becker.

Minimalism doesn’t have to be restrictive, and it doesn’t have to be extreme. Whether minimalism appeals to you or just sounds interesting, reading up on the topic can be beneficial for everyone, even if simply makes them more aware of their surroundings and belongings. Having too much directly affects your home, your future, and your habits. Do yourself a favor and borrow it from the library today!

For more information on minimalism and Joshua Becker, you can check out his website Becoming Minimalist .

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Discussion Questions for ‘Less’

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Our June pick for the PBS NewsHour-New York Times book club, “Now Read This” is Andrew Sean Greer’s comic novel “ Less .” Become a member of the book club by joining our Facebook group , or by signing up to our newsletter . Learn more about the book club here .

Below are questions to help guide your discussions as you read the book over the next month. They go in chronological order of the book’s chapters, so you can match the questions to your pace as you read. Spoiler alert for some of the latter questions below.

You can also submit your own questions for Andrew Sean Greer on our Facebook page, which he will answer on the NewsHour broadcast at the end of the month.

1. The novel’s opening line reads: “From where I sit, the story of Arthur Less is not so bad.” Arthur Less, the book’s protagonist, is introduced as nearly 50, with “washed-out” blonde hair and “watery” blue eyes. As we soon learn, he’s also a writer less successful than his peers. How do you see Arthur Less in the opening chapters? Do you see him as a hero, as a man deserving of pity, as something else?

2. When we meet the character of Freddy, Arthur Less’s soon-to-be-former-lover, he is described as “dreamy, simple, lusty, bookish, harmless, youthful.” It is Freddy’s marriage invitation that Less so studiously avoids — choosing to go on a round-the-world trip simply to avoid having to decline the invitation without a good reason. What do you make of this decision? Have you ever found yourself doing something similarly absurd?

3. Arthur Less’s trip itinerary is as a follows: New York to interview a more popular writer, Mexico City for an obscure conference, Turin for an unknown award, Berlin for a teaching gig, Morocco for someone else’s birthday, India for a writer’s retreat (possibly during the monsoon), Japan for an article. And somewhere along the way he will turn 50. Does his sojourn remind you of any others in literature?

4. The book Arthur Less is writing is about a man on a journey through a place and his past, as he looks back on a series of disappointments. Freddy complains that Less is always writing “gay Ulysses.” Do you see echoes of or references to Ulysses or the Odyssey throughout “Less”?

5. Less’s other major relationship in the book is with the famous poet Robert Brownburn. In the chapter “Mexican,” Less recalls a day of losing his ring in the grocery store, and how, in telling Robert about it, Robert saw Less’s infidelities written across his face. “That’s what it was like to live with genius,” he writes. How does Roberts success and genius impact their relationship at the time, and how does it influence him in the end?

6. So much of Less’s focus during the round-the-world trip is on his own mishaps and foibles — or his perceived mishaps and foibles. Getting into a car with what he believes is the wrong driver because the name was a letter off. Believing he can speak German well when in fact he is bungling the words. Bringing athletic bands to every country that he will only half use. Do you see these as actual mishaps and foibles or is it a problem of perception for Less? Do you identify with that feeling at all?

7. The book alternates between Less’s trip in the present to memories of his youth — mostly memories involving nostalgia or regret. And yet the narrator tells us that Less also understands the pleasures of age: “comfort and ease, beauty and taste, old friends and old stories….” How does Less’s grappling with age play a role in the book? Is it something you can relate to?

8. In a scene at a party in Paris, Less is told that in fact he is not a bad writer, as he had come to believe, but a bad “gay writer,” in that he is not telling the narratives the gay writing community wants him to. What do you make of this critique?

9. In several countries, simply being around Less seems to make other characters sick. Why?

10. Arthur Less is self-deprecating throughout the book to a fault; in one of many descriptions he calls himself insignificant compared to other writers he knows, “as superfluous as the extra a in quaalude.” (Earlier, though, he asks if there is “any more perfect spelling” than the word quaalude “with that lazy superfluous vowel.”) Did you find these negative descriptors by Less funny or frustrating or silly or all of these? How does Greer complicate these descriptions by having some of them echo back?

11. A number of people try to tell Less about what happened at Freddy’s wedding. And while the wedding dominates his thoughts, he doesn’t listen to them. What is keeping him from hearing the story? What do you think (or hope) happened?

12. In the book, “Less” is always referred to by his last name, while Javier only by his first, and Robert Brownburn by both. Why do you think Greer chose to refer to the characters in these different ways?

13. What lines in the book made you laugh out loud?

14. Toward the end of the book, Less reunites with his supposed enemy and Freddy’s father, Carlos. When they meet, Carlos tells him that he believes that people’s lives are half-comedy and half-tragedy and that those just appear at different times. What do you make of this theory?

15. Were you surprised (or glad) to find out who the narrator was? Do any elements of the book change for you when you revisit them with Freddy as the narrator in mind?

16. The penultimate lines of “Less” (from Freddy’s voice) read: “After choosing the path people wanted, the man who would do, the easy way out of things … after holding it all in my hands and refusing it, what do I want from life?” What do you want from life? Have you similarly strayed from the path you thought you should be on?

17. After learning he won the Pulitzer Prize, Andrew Sean Greer wrote on Twitter that “Less” is a book that’s most of all “about joy.” “A writer friend once said the hardest thing to write about is joy,” he wrote. “I took it as a challenge.” Do you think he met the challenge?

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Less by Andrew Sean Greer review – a literary skewering of stealthy genius

T wo thirds of the way through Andrew Sean Greer’s latest novel, he risks letting his novelist hero – white, gay, knocking 50 – describe his latest novel, which has been turned down by his publisher. “It was about a middle-aged gay man walking around San Francisco. And, you know, his … his sorrows … ” “A white middle-aged American man walking around with his white middle-aged American sorrows?” replies his lesbian friend. “It’s a little hard to feel sorry for a guy like that.” Greer can afford this moment of metafiction because, by this third act of the novel, his hero has won us over, for all that he enjoys most of the blessings of existence.

Despite its lampooning of the literary world, Less won this year’s Pulitzer prize for fiction , prompting its publication in Britain. It introduces us to minor novelist Arthur Less as he finds himself abruptly single, having coasted through a studiedly casual not-quite-relationship with a vain younger man for several years. Less is “an author too old to be fresh and too young to be rediscovered, one who never sits next to anyone on a plane who has heard of his books”. The younger man, who happens also to be the son of his arch enemy, announces his engagement to someone else.

While still not acknowledging to himself that he was in love all along and that his heart is cracked, if not quite broken, Less accepts a slew of writerly invitations that conveniently slot together to provide a round-the-world trip. Not only will he thus avoid the wedding, but sidestep the pain of turning 50 in company.

The various stages of this journey lend the novel its structure and, as is customary, provide both a parade of colourful characters and a voyage of self-discovery. They also neatly illustrate the scrabble-and-make-do that most freelance writers must resort to in order to survive, all those little jobs that make you feel like an author but that are not quite writing – “the crazy quilt of a writer’s life: warm enough, though it never quite covers the toes”.

Greer mercilessly skewers the insecurity of authors as well as the vanity of the literary industry’s self-absorption in the face of its irrelevance to most people’s lives. The stealthy genius of this novel is that it simultaneously tells the life story of a basically sweet man whom the industry has eaten alive. Less’s undoing, perhaps, is that he has been loved by a genius – he passed his youth as the lover of a celebrated poet – so has fallen into the habit of seeing himself as on the periphery of things. A twink -turned-daddy, he has yet to make the adjustment from kissed to kisser, and wreaks emotional havoc on anyone drawn in by his air of baffled innocence.

We first meet him in New York, where he has the humiliation of chairing a huge event for a wildly successful and wildly overrated science fiction writer. His next stop is Mexico, where he must take part in a panel discussion about his former lover’s genius. Then Italy, where an earlier novel of his, apparently brilliant in translation, is up for an obscure but well funded award: a sequence that catches particularly well the artificial camaraderie and false modesty of rivals thrown together for a prize. And so on to Germany, where he teaches a writing course entitled Read Like a Vampire, Write Like Frankenstein. There he has a fling with a besotted business student and it is from the intimate details the narrator lets slip about the way Less kisses (“like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can only use the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you”) that the reader begins to suspect this story is being told not by some omniscient figure but by a character in it whom Less has underestimated. And then on to Paris, an ever less romantic journey across the desert in Morocco, a nightmarish food article he researches in Japan, and finally an Indian writing retreat. Here he plans to polish the rejected novel to perfection but, as the past reaches out to reclaim and challenge him, he is actually being prepared, we realise, finally to fall in love.

Novels about novelists are always a risk, but Less is about anyone who has allowed their calling to define them at the expense of their humanity. Writers may blush in the mirror it holds up to them, but many readers will find it as endearing as the very best of Armistead Maupin .

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Pulitzer Prize Winner

by Andrew Sean Greer ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 18, 2017

Seasoned novelist Greer (The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, 2013, etc.) clearly knows whereof he speaks and has lived to...

Facing his erstwhile boyfriend’s wedding to another man, his 50th birthday, and his publisher’s rejection of his latest manuscript, a miserable midlist novelist heads for the airport.

When it comes to the literary canon, Arthur Less knows he is “as superfluous as the extra a in quaalude,” but he does get the odd invitation—to interview a more successful author, to receive an obscure prize, to tour French provincial libraries, that sort of thing. So rather than stay in San Francisco and be humiliated when his younger man of nine years' standing marries someone else (he can’t bear to attend, nor can he bear to stay home), he puts together a patchwork busman’s holiday that will take him to Paris, Morocco, Berlin, Southern India, and Japan. Of course, anything that can go wrong does—from falling out a window to having his favorite suit eaten by a stray dog, and as far as Less runs, he will not escape the fact that he really did lose the love of his life. Meanwhile, there’s no way to stop that dreaded birthday, which he sees as the definitive end of a rather extended youth: “It’s like the last day in a foreign country. You finally figure out where to get coffee, and drinks, and a good steak. And then you have to leave. And you won’t ever be back.” Yet even this conversation occurs in the midst of a make-out session with a handsome Spanish stranger on a balcony at a party in Paris…hinting that there may be steaks and coffee on the other side. Upping the tension of this literary picaresque is the fact that the story is told by a mysterious narrator whose identity and role in Less’ future is not revealed until the final pages.

Pub Date: July 18, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-316-31612-5

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Lee Boudreaux/Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017

LITERARY FICTION

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SEEN & HEARD

THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad.  The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized).  As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest ) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses).  Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture.  Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

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