Hank Devereaux, a fifty-year-old, one-time novelist now serving as temporary chair of the English department, has more than a mid-life crisis to contend with when he learns that he must cull 20 per cent of his department to meet budget. Half in love with three women, unable to understand his younger daughter or come to terms with his father, he has a dangerous philosophy that life, and academic life, could be simpler, but he fails to see the larger consequences of his own actions or of the small-world politics that ebb and flow around him, as his colleagues jostle for position and marriages fall apart and regroup. The despair of his wife, and the scourge of the campus geese, he is a man at odds with himself and caught somewhere between cause and effect. (19980424)
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After a while you begin to wish you lived in Richard Russo's world (Sunday Times )
A funny and clever novel (Times Literary Supplement )
The author has never been funnier-It is a testament to Russo's skill and originality that Straight Man often seems as fresh as if it were the first of its sort (Literary Review )
Sentence by sentence Richard Russo shows that his is an eminently accomplished comic talent (The Times )
A funny and clever novel (Times Literary Supplement )
The author has never been funnier-It is a testament to Russo's skill and originality that Straight Man often seems as fresh as if it were the first of its sort (Literary Review )
Sentence by sentence Richard Russo shows that his is an eminently accomplished comic talent (The Times )
Book Description
'Funny and tender' Daily Telegraph
Author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Empire Falls
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By Eileen Shaw
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
This has to be the best novel I have read in some time. It is funny, literary, intelligent and tender. William Henry Devereaux Jr is a tenured professor of English in a small town college on the eastern seaboard of the United States. He is happily married to Lily and has two grown-up daughters. The novel concerns the politics and absurdities of academic life.
Henry is fun. He is coming up to 50 but he has never really reached the stage where age has hampered his sense of the ridiculous and neither has it much got at his sense of honour. There is no false dignity in Henry, however, and he is ready to mix things with the best of them. The college itself thrives on the sense of insecurity it can induce in its teaching staff. Henry is currently the Chair of the English faculty and this small area of power has led to a prickly understanding of the ridiculous lengths most of the others will go to in order to ensure their tenure continues. There is much political manoeuvring, to which Henry is not quite immune.
This book is very funny and is written with gentle irony and understanding. It is lovely in its way - full of insight with a cast of marvellous characters, few of whom are keeping their heads above water in the killing fields of academe. Full of incident, full of grace, full of laughter and life.
Henry is fun. He is coming up to 50 but he has never really reached the stage where age has hampered his sense of the ridiculous and neither has it much got at his sense of honour. There is no false dignity in Henry, however, and he is ready to mix things with the best of them. The college itself thrives on the sense of insecurity it can induce in its teaching staff. Henry is currently the Chair of the English faculty and this small area of power has led to a prickly understanding of the ridiculous lengths most of the others will go to in order to ensure their tenure continues. There is much political manoeuvring, to which Henry is not quite immune.
This book is very funny and is written with gentle irony and understanding. It is lovely in its way - full of insight with a cast of marvellous characters, few of whom are keeping their heads above water in the killing fields of academe. Full of incident, full of grace, full of laughter and life.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In STRAIGHT MAN, Russo performs a balancing act of surface playfulness combined with searing truths about life's missed opportunities and moments of quiet despair. Behind the one-liners and the buffoonery of Henry Devereux Jr.'s comic mask, exists an enigmatic, compassionate, troubled soul, whose personality disorder has been triggered by a single incident he shares with his mother when he is a young teen. His humorous guise is something he has created so as to safely retreat from the seperation anxiety that is his constant companion. To his friends and colleagues he is "Hank," easy to dismiss or to to ridicule, or in two instances, to physically attack (OK, three, if you count the goose!). Russo does a very subtle and masterful job of slowly developing the interior Henry Devereux Jr., however, and by the novel's end, the reader has been granted the full revelation of character and the whole man stands naked (figuritavely speaking) before us.
STRAIGHT MAN is definitely my recommendation of 2003, thus far. The funny bits are truly hysterical. The dramatic bits ring true to life. This certainly not just another humorous novel about Academia. It's as well written and well rounded as any novel I've read in recent years. I look forward with great anticipation to reading EMPIRE FALLS.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By "debcat68"
Format:Hardcover
This is a typically wonderful Russo book, full of the love of comic human frailty and the understanding that some things "better left unsaid" are actually far better articulated and how! It is multi-layered and well worth a second and third read, a book forever.
Format:Paperback
This was my first Richard Russo book. I've enjoyed other books set in academia, from Bradbury's The History Man to Chabon's Wonder Boys, and this is worthy of its place in such exalted company.
It reminded me quite a lot of Wonder Boys at times, with its typical, if not stereotypical, middle-aged, middle-life-crisis professor getting into some awkward situations, weird and semi-dangerous students and dysfunctional, alcoholic faculty members. But I'm not saying this just goes over the same ground. It's its own book, with its own style.
I thought the first chapter was pretty poor to be honest though, and hardly a warm welcome the rest of the book. For some reason I noticed the small type and narrow margins and this put me off a bit. But it's well worth sticking with.
Because Russo creates a very believable world, full of believable characters who speak with believable voices. And he's very good at giving each character their own voice. I always appreciate when an author does this well and Russo does it well. Characters like Tony Coniglia, the New Yorker, is vivid and funny; he comes alive on the page, as does the narrator Hank's father-in-law who gets a tour-de-force monologue towards the end that's a treat to read. If you like doing voices in your head when you read, you'll have plenty of material to draw from.
Hank, the narrator, is more low key, probably sensibly, but you warm to him despite his many faults and occasionally irritating mannerisms (the `but I can play that role' line soon wears thin, as does his habit of referring to himself in the third person).
Russo is the master of sowing the seeds of future storylines.... Read more ›
It reminded me quite a lot of Wonder Boys at times, with its typical, if not stereotypical, middle-aged, middle-life-crisis professor getting into some awkward situations, weird and semi-dangerous students and dysfunctional, alcoholic faculty members. But I'm not saying this just goes over the same ground. It's its own book, with its own style.
I thought the first chapter was pretty poor to be honest though, and hardly a warm welcome the rest of the book. For some reason I noticed the small type and narrow margins and this put me off a bit. But it's well worth sticking with.
Because Russo creates a very believable world, full of believable characters who speak with believable voices. And he's very good at giving each character their own voice. I always appreciate when an author does this well and Russo does it well. Characters like Tony Coniglia, the New Yorker, is vivid and funny; he comes alive on the page, as does the narrator Hank's father-in-law who gets a tour-de-force monologue towards the end that's a treat to read. If you like doing voices in your head when you read, you'll have plenty of material to draw from.
Hank, the narrator, is more low key, probably sensibly, but you warm to him despite his many faults and occasionally irritating mannerisms (the `but I can play that role' line soon wears thin, as does his habit of referring to himself in the third person).
Russo is the master of sowing the seeds of future storylines.... Read more ›
By Keith M
TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
Richard Russo's 1997 novel Straight Man is his fourth novel and, as with much of his work, focuses around a small town American community, tracing the lives, loves and complex interpersonal relationships existing between his chosen protagonists. The novel tells the story of a group of academics, the main focus of which is soon-to-be-fifty year-old William 'Hank' Devereaux Jnr., the chair of the college English department, and Russo's intimate novel (no doubt) draws extensively from his own earlier career as a college lecturer.
As in Russo's other books, he skilfully and vividly describes his cast of characters, exposing their foibles and conceits, whilst throughout making typically brilliant use of his wry sense of humour. Lead character Hank is struggling to make sense of his own ambivalent academic ambitions, a dilemma made all the more challenging by the imminent need to make some controversial college staff cuts. Russo paints a subtle and perceptive picture of Hank's frustrating relationships with his closest family (wife, daughter, mother, father), together with various romantic temptations he is battling at work. But whilst Russo's story does contain some unsavoury characters and themes of deception, guilt and selfish ambition, what shines through in the writing is Russo's overriding humanity.
For me, Russo is one of the best American authors of his generation. When compared with two of my other favourite contemporaries of his - I regard him as less sophisticated, but generally more readable, than Philip Roth, and less inventive, but with more obviously appealing (and funny) narratives, than Paul Auster.... Read more ›
As in Russo's other books, he skilfully and vividly describes his cast of characters, exposing their foibles and conceits, whilst throughout making typically brilliant use of his wry sense of humour. Lead character Hank is struggling to make sense of his own ambivalent academic ambitions, a dilemma made all the more challenging by the imminent need to make some controversial college staff cuts. Russo paints a subtle and perceptive picture of Hank's frustrating relationships with his closest family (wife, daughter, mother, father), together with various romantic temptations he is battling at work. But whilst Russo's story does contain some unsavoury characters and themes of deception, guilt and selfish ambition, what shines through in the writing is Russo's overriding humanity.
For me, Russo is one of the best American authors of his generation. When compared with two of my other favourite contemporaries of his - I regard him as less sophisticated, but generally more readable, than Philip Roth, and less inventive, but with more obviously appealing (and funny) narratives, than Paul Auster.... Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heartily recommend
Superb mixture of comedy and pathos and kicking myself I have not got into Richard Russo until my 35th year. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Mr. M. Ogborn
5.0 out of 5 stars
Russo had me at 'good dog'
This is quite possibly the funniest novel I've ever read!
OK, it probably does help to be one of those unfortunates who has insider knowledge of the grim comedy that is... Read more
OK, it probably does help to be one of those unfortunates who has insider knowledge of the grim comedy that is... Read more
Published 21 months ago by S. D. Nunn
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