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Straight Man: A Novel, by Richard Russo
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In this uproarious new novel, Richard Russo performs his characteristic high-wire walk between hilarity and heartbreak. Russo's protagonist is William Henry Devereaux, Jr., the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Devereaux's reluctance is partly rooted in his character--he is a born anarchist-- and partly in the fact that his department is more savagely divided than the Balkans.
In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television. All this while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise, and the ominous failure of certain vital body functions. in short, Straight Man is classic Russo--side-splitting and true-to-life, witty, compassionate, and impossible to put down.
- Sales Rank: #13055 in Books
- Color: Red
- Brand: Vintage
- Published on: 1998-06-09
- Released on: 1998-06-09
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .80" w x 5.20" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 391 pages
- Great product!
Amazon.com Review
First Jane Smiley came out of the comedy closet with Moo, a campus satire par excellence, and now Richard Russo has gotten in on the groves-of-academe game. Straight Man is hilarious sport, with a serious side. William Henry Devereaux Jr., is almost 50 and stuck forever as chair of English at West Central Pennsylvania University. It is April and fear of layoffs--even among the tenured--has reached mock-epic proportions; Hank has yet to receive his department budget and finds himself increasingly offering comments such as "Always understate necrophilia" to his writing students. Then there are his possible prostate problems and the prospect of his father's arrival. Devereaux Sr., "then and now, an academic opportunist," has always been a high-profile professor and a low-profile parent.
Though Hank tries to apply William of Occam's rational approach (choose simplicity) to each increasingly absurd situation, and even has a dog named after the philosopher, he does seem to cause most of his own enormous difficulties. Not least when he grabs a goose and threatens to off a duck (sic) a day until he gets his budget. The fact that he is also wearing a fake nose and glasses and doing so in front of a TV camera complicates matters even further. Hank tries to explain to one class that comedy and tragedy don't go together, but finds the argument "runs contrary to their experience. Indeed it may run contrary to my own." It runs decidedly against Richard Russo's approach in Straight Man, and the result is a hilarious and touching novel.
From Library Journal
Hank Devereaux Jr. is the kind of guy who turns anything serious into a joke. Pushing 50, he's the interim chair of a squabbling English department at a small rural college. Big budget cuts are rumored. Each department chair has been told to provide a list of those who will lose their jobs. His department believes that Hank has prepared such a list, but he hasn't and won't. Instead, he goes on television and spontaneously jokes that he will kill the campus geese until the administration gives him his budget. When a goose really is killed, Hank becomes the prime suspect. In his earlier novels (e.g., Nobody's Fool, LJ 4/15/93), Russo captured with compassion and humor the lives of the people in small backwater towns; now he does the same for those who inhabit the groves of academe. This novel is filled with laughter but also much seriousness. Give it a straight A.?Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Hank Devereaux was voted interim chair of the English department at a Pennsylvania college based on his loudly voiced contempt for bureaucratic procedures. Long mired in old grievances and thwarted ambitions, the contentious English faculty figure they can count on Hank to do absolutely nothing, thereby preserving the status quo. They figured wrong. Perpetual wise guy Hank has managed to stir things up on all fronts: he's goaded the reigning campus poetess into gouging him with a spiral notebook, bringing the faculty meeting to a screeching halt as the janitor attempts to remove the offending notebook from his nose; he's been broadcast on all the early-morning TV shows, while wearing a Groucho Marx^-style fake nose and glasses, threatening to kill one of the ubiquitous campus ducks unless the administration releases his budget; and he's enraged both the administration and the union with his dearly held motto: A pox on both your houses. In the highly satisfying conclusion, a shakeout results in all the wiseacres being richly rewarded while the bean-counting bureaucrats are bounced. Leaving behind his trademark blue-collar milieu (Nobody's Fool [1993], made into a movie starring Paul Newman), Russo has lost none of his gifts for fashioning wry comedy, endearing characters, and an artful blend of high jinks and heartache. Like Michael Malone in Foolscap (1991), another rollicking academic satire, Russo proves himself a master of bighearted, old-fashioned storytelling. Joanne Wilkinson
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Richard Russo is a great writer. It's just hard to like the main ...
By Kindle Queen
Richard Russo is a great writer. It's just hard to like the main character in this novel, which is intentional, I'm sure. But after awhile, I got tired of his arrogant, self-destructive behavior. I stuck it out to the end, and it's worthwhile, for the cynical take on a struggling college English department. Good writing, but the protagonist was someone I just didn't much care about.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
A Perfect Novel
By Debra Hamel
I am not the kind of reader who regularly registers my appreciation of humor in books by laughing aloud. So it wasn't until chapter 28 of Richard Russo's Straight Man that I broke my silence. By that time the book's protagonist, William Henry Devereaux Jr., had landed in a situation too delightfully absurd for anyone, Mr. Devereaux included, to hold it in.
Hank Devereaux is the acting chairman of a Balkanized English Department at an undistinguished university, the sort of place academics find themselves stuck in, La Brea Tar Pits-like, after the receipt of tenure and other of life's snares have eroded their ability to move on to better things. Hank is defined largely by what others perceive as his principal character flaw--he annoys his friends and family and makes enemies of his colleagues because of his failure to take most things in life seriously. He is, as a result, a very funny character.
Hank is also a devoted if somewhat oblivious husband, the sort who depends on his wife to balance the check book ("Our portfolio, I'm to understand, is intact. This is good news. That we have a portfolio, I mean."); and a sympathetic dog-owner ("I know and understand my dog well. We share many deep feelings."); and a one-book author; and the son of William Henry Devereaux Sr., a literary critic and author more distinguished but less reliable than his son. In the course of the book Hank is beset by the academic infighting that attends a university-wide budget crisis, by animal rights activists incensed by his on-air near strangling of a goose and his threat of further fowl play, and by his inability to produce satisfactory quantities of urine.
Richard Russo, on the other hand, is evidently the kind of man who cannot write a bad sentence. There are passages in Straight Man that demand re-reading, either because they are that funny or that well-written or because, for example, he has *so* captured the murderous annoyance that can come with wifedom and motherhood [pp. xiv, 136]. (How could he have known?) This is a book to be savored. It's as good as it gets.
Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
No Regrets
By Loligag 1953
All I can say is that if it were possible, I would give it six stars instead of five. One of my biggest regrets after reading this book was that my enjoyment of it had come to an end. My other regret is the way that this book reaffirmed for me the fact that I'll never be able to write nearly as well as its author. Oh well.
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