Growing up in the suburbs of Washington, DC, where her parents worked as chemists, Greer began writing novels at the age of ten. During his creative writing major at Brown University, he confided in his family that he was gay. His parents thought he was gay since he was four years old, but his announcement was controversial because it prompted his mother, Sandra, to come out as a lesbian. I might
After college, he moved to New York City, lived in a fifth-floor walkup in the West Village, struggled to make ends meet writing, and juggled gigs as a chauffeur, restaurant receptionist, and Saturday Night Live TV extra. rice field. New York became financially untenable, so he moved to Missoula, Montana, where he obtained his MFA, then to Seattle, where he worked for Nintendo, played videos of his games, and wrote columns in magazines. I wrote In 1998 he moved to San Francisco, found work as a paralegal, and was tasked with naming new gadgets at a toy company.
In his spare time, he wrote fiction. After years of rejection, he eventually sold his collection of stories and published his debut novel, Asteroid Road, in 2001. When he published his second novel, Confessions of Max Tivoli, In 2004, Greer, a fantasy about a man born old and stepping back in age, seemed to be at the height of literary stardom.John Updike compared to Proust and Nabokov. The TODAY show picked it up for the book club, but the limelight was short-lived and his next two novels sold modestly. He was unable to get his advance payment back. Foreign publishers dropped him.
Greer tried to reinvent himself book after book, experimenting with magical realism and fantasy. It was creatively fulfilling, but perhaps not great for his brand.