Straight Man: A Novel | Richard Russo

Straight Man: A Novel | Richard Russo | Hidden Gem - Hilarious

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Straight Man: A Novel

	Straight Man: A Novel Richard Russo Vintage, 1998 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 251 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Free-Flowing Comedy

Richard Russo (born 1949) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist born on Johnstown, New York. The prize winning novel was Empire Falls from 2001.

Many concentrate on the plot or story of Straight Man, and what are the characters doing and what do they represent? I think it is best for you as a reader to discover this for yourself, and to read the book and skip anything that gives away the plot. Like many works of fiction, the discovery of the story is one of the great pleasures of the book.

It is a humorous book about university professors, and it concentrates on an English professor and the story is one week in his turbulent life. But Russo is not attacking professors. He is trying to write a book with a different approach and in his own words he has no grudge to vent against being an academic. He uses deadpan humor and he uses contrasts between people's self image versus the reality of their situations - or what some might call a mid-life crisis of sorts. And he uses the college setting as more of a metaphor than an attack on institutions of higher learning. As Russo himself has said in interviews, the characters including the protagonist Hank are filled with self-destructive urges, and they talk about serious issues - in many cases - which are cloaked in humor.

As a writer, Russo shows a lot of what one would call a lack of limits or boundaries in his writing. There is a free flowing element to the novel. He makes other writers seem constricted and less interesting. He carries that to the end where we have a very chaotic and unfinished end to the story. Perhaps as an afterthought, he realized this and wrote an epilogue to do the clean up and to explain what has happened to all the characters.

This is my first novel by Russo and I am looking forward to his others, especially Empire Falls.

Interesting novel: Recommend 5 stars.

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Hidden Gem - Hilarious

My sister came across this book at the Goodwill store and sent it to me in the mail. It may be the best package I received all holiday season. I laughed...I laughed some more...I learned, I enjoyed...I chuckled helplessly in the middle of the night keeping my husband awake. It was the kind of laughter you're not sure is coming and if it does...is it appropriate? Then...who cares? It's hilarious.

I want to hang out and have cocktails with the main character and wait for some gems to just flow from his mouth.

My used copy is not going to the Goodwill...I'm only giving it to people who will feel obligated to take my recommendations and make a full report on how right I am about this book after they've read it. Good Stuff!

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I can play that role

I am not a novel reader but I can play that role. Books like this make it easy. As a contrast with Charles Taylor's new book, reading this one feels like walking through an airport on a moving walkway. This is a metaphor or, if it is "like a metaphor, [it'd] be like, a simile". "A Secular Age" requires a thorough understanding of the argument. "Straight Man" requires one to catch the sense of humor. But except for what I missed, and one comical situation that was above the ceiling of the rest, it struck me as straightforward stiff male humor. But I do have misgivings. As funny as the situations are, the characters are mean to one another. Life seems purposeless. All the main characters seem stuck in the mediocre with the town, college, students, and careers all less than they hoped. But no one seems to really read among these characters except the main character's father -- who is not given good press. None really seem enthusiastic about their academic enterprise. The book makes it look like there is no work to do either to stay abreast of what is happening in the world or to do a good job for their students. An awful lot of things happen during the day that move the plot along but make academic life look like a scam. This is almost as believable as a room so full of faculty they are unable to open the door to get out. This is all hilarious and may even make a good movie if the men's room sequences could be managed. But I certainly hope there are no universities quite like this. But I will remember "Orshe" and the story, better perhaps then I will remember Charles Taylor's arguments. But now I really must get back to the Taylor book.

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"For every complex problem there is a simple solution. And it's always wrong."

Russo's gaspingly funny *Straight Man* affords a knowing look at midlife crisis, parent-child dynamics, marriage, and tenured life in small-town academia. As well, the novel's humor is leavened with a sense of mystery regarding political machinations on the narrator's campus and which of the novel's characters is to be thrown under the bus. That narrator, William Henry Devereaux, Jr., known to his friends and enemies alike as Hank, is an anarchist by nature who finds himself in the unenviable position of chairman of his English department. Along with the typical struggles of academic life (I've heard it said that "never have the stakes been so low"), Hank is plagued with worries. He is concerned that he might have kidney stones (an ailment that plagued his highly successful novelist-academic father whom we find in the first chapter abandoned Hank and his mother when Hank was still a kid), he wants to sleep with several of the women with whom he works (including his secretary who ends every sentence with an upwards inflection, as if she is permanently uncertain about everything), and he is plagued by the fact that he wrote only one novel as a young man and has contributed nothing else to American literature.

For all these concerns, the book is a very funny read. We find our narrator hiding in the ceiling to spy on a meeting to decide on his status as department chair. On the spur of the moment, he threatens (on live television, no less) to kill a duck (or is it a goose?) unless the university's funding situation is resolved by the state legislature. The cast of characters will be all-too-familiar to anyone fortunate enough to work in academe; it includes the violent poet whose poetry isn't all that great, the aforementioned uncertain secretary, and the young professor ("Orshee") whose specialty seems to be contradicting everyone else (a good obstructionist/deconstructionist, if nothing else) and posing as an uber-feminist at every chance.

Throughout the novel Hank repeatedly returns to his favorite philosopher, the medieval William of Occam (after whom his dog Occam is named), to find the simplest possible explanation for all the craziness that seems to be filling his life. Through the novel's wry twists and turns, Hank comes to the conclusion that life is a little more complicated, coincidental, mysterious, and perhaps even magical than he'd like to believe.

"Because the truth is, we never know for sure about ourselves. Who we'll sleep with if given the opportunity, who we'll betray in the right circumstances, whose faith and love we will reward with our own...Only after we've done a thing do we know what we'll do, and by then whatever we've done has already begun to sever itself from clear significance, at least for the doer. Which is why we have spouses and children and parents and colleagues and friends, because someone has to know us better than we know ourselves. We need them to tell us. We need them to say, 'I know you, Al. You're not the kind of man who.'" (373-4)

A special thanks goes out to Bruce Clark, who recommended that I read this book over the Christmas break, and his lovely wife Caryn Clark, whose copy I borrowed and read.

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Slow starter that picked up steam.

I think Russo is one of the most talented living writers. This is my third Russo book in the last month and I just purchased two more. Straight Man took me a little while to warm up to, but once I did I couldn't put it down. It's about academics, so it's understandable that the characters are not supposed to be instantly likable and have to grow on you. It's one of the few books that made me laugh out loud...and that's rare.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

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