Through the course of ''A Year of Lesser,'' Johnny's fumbling choices and mistakes are revealed not as those of the dark sinner he and his townsfolk would have him be, but as those of Everyman (or woman). Bergen's considerable achievement is to have drawn so subtly shaded a portrait of this ''hollow, flawed man,'' which allows Johnny, in his quest, an obstinate and resonantly human dignity. Early on, Loraine asks him, 'who are you?' But ''Johnny doesn't like questions like this. It reminds him of exams and impossible expectations and gnawing on pens. Stupid questions about people long dead, about history.'' In the end, though, the lessons of Lesser are about who Johnny Fehr is when the town's work is done and everything is stripped away. Unaccommodated man, he sits alone in a tent in a thunderstorm, alive with optimism. ''There is a lot of room inside Johnny for everyone's foibles. He is a trusting man; he feels full of luck. Love too.'' And what is that, if not salvation?