Greer was, naturally, elated by the news, but also confounded: He never expected “Less” to reach a wide audience, because his previous five books hadn’t. (In one scene, a renowned poet wins the award, then observes cynically that it’s not a real measure of talent: “The slots for winners are already set … They know the kind of poet who’s going to win.”)

It satirizes the literary world’s obsession with status, and even pokes fun at the sanctimony surrounding the Pulitzer. It’s a book about a writer who struggles with his craft. It’s a gay love story with a happy ending. “ Less” - a rollicking romantic comedy about a heartbroken novelist who goes on a journey around the world to avoid his ex-boyfriend’s wedding - was not a typical choice for the prize committee, which tends to favor dense novels with lofty themes. The fact that Greer had just wrangled a pug into diapers made the life-altering news seem all the more surreal. “He was like, am I the person who’s telling you?” Greer recalled. Puzzled, Greer called a friend, the novelist Michael Chabon, who confirmed the news: Greer’s novel “Less” had won the Pulitzer Prize. One evening, after he had finished swaddling the pug, he got a barrage of congratulatory text messages, with emojis of fireworks and dancing ladies. Greer began dressing the dog in diapers, held in place with snazzy rainbow and rhinestone suspenders. “Margaret Atwood is coming, and I was like, we can’t.” “I decided we can’t have this happening at the dinner table,” Greer recounted recently at a coffee shop in the West Village. The pug belonged to his boss, a baronessa, and Greer felt the frequent messes had gotten out of hand. In the spring of 2018, the novelist Andrew Sean Greer was working as the director of a writers residency in Tuscany, where his unofficial duties included cleaning up after an incontinent pug. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

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