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Original Essays | April 26, 2012

Florence Williams: IMG Breasts

2 comments By Florence Williams

When I set out to write a book about the natural history of breasts, I knew I'd have to answer some awkward questions about my book topic. At a... Continue »
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    Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History

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Straight Man: A Novel

by Richard Russo

Straight Man: A Novel Cover

 

Review-A-Day

"[My] second reading of Straight Man was just as engrossing, entertaining, and satisfying as the first. Again, I found myself laughing out loud at Russo's pitch-perfect prose and the jokes that seem as effortless as they are hilarious. Again, I found myself enraptured with the book's eclectic cast of characters. And again, the pages of this meandering academic comedy turned faster than the most gripping Stephen King thriller." Chris Bolton, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

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.

Review:

"[A] hilarious, wise and compassionate novel....Readers who do not laugh uncontrollably during this raucous, witty and touching work are seriously impaired." Publishers Weekly

Review:

"[G]loriously funny and involving....Laconic, deadpan, disarmingly modest and self-effacing, it's the perfect vehicle for another of Russo's irresistible revelations of the agreeable craziness of everyday life." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"[Russo] skewers academic pretensions and infighting with mad abandon...in a clear and muscular prose that is a pleasure to read....I had to stop often to guffaw, gasp, wheeze and wipe away my tears." Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times

Review:

"Russo can penetrate to the tender quick of ordinary, American lives." Entertainment Weekly

Review:

"Straight Man...is so funny, so beautifully written, so fully imagined, it is easy to forgive its familiarity....Russo is an easy, elegant writer. The book is beautifully plotted, and Russo makes you care about Devereaux and his fate. He also makes you laugh out loud." Joan Smith, Salon.com

Review:

"There is a big, wry heart beating at the center of Russo's fiction." The New Yorker

Review:

"Russo is a master craftsman....The blue-collar heartache at the center of his fiction has the sheen of Dickens but the epic levity of John Irving." The Boston Globe

Review:

"What makes Richard Russo so admirable as a novelist is that his natural grace as a storyteller is matched by his compassion for his characters." John Irving

Review:

"After the last sentence is read, the reader continues to see Russo's tender, messed-up people coming out of doorways, lurching through life. And keeps on seeing them because they are as real as we are." E. Annie Proulx

Review:

"Funny, bighearted, resolutely untrendy, ultimately moving...at once a delightful entertainment and a wise handbook for living." New York Newsday

Review:

"Richard Russo's novel is as simple as family love, yet nearly as complicated." San Francisco Chronicle

Synopsis:

The author of The Risk Pool and Nobody's Fool delivers a brilliant new novel about a professor whose sense of humor is tested by the cosmic joke. Hank Devereaux, Jr., failed novelist, creative writing teacher, and estranged son of one of academe's stars, is a hero whose cynicism must be mitigated by his love for family, friends and, ultimately, knowledge itself.
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About the Author

Richard Russo lives in Waterville, Maine, with his wife and two daughters. He is the author of three previous novels, Mohawk, The Risk Pool, and Nobody's Fool.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 10 comments:
SophieS, January 1, 2012 (view all comments by SophieS)
This book had me hooked at the first page and crying with laughter by the tenth. Nowhere else does there exist such a perfect depiction of Academia.
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Mark Ducharme, January 1, 2011 (view all comments by Mark Ducharme)
Well written, entertaining, funny, and intelligent. A little paranoid fantasy blended ever so deftly into the main character’s mind produces laughter and suspense throughout the story. I found myself imitating the lead character and being entertained all over again. Not only a must read but for me a must re-read.
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OneMansView, March 30, 2010 (view all comments by OneMansView)
The perils of insular academic life

Shorter than some of the author’s sagas, this book is a compassionate, though rather limited, look at the lives of a group of aging literature professors in a small, rural college in Pennsylvania that is part of the larger university. Told from the perspective of fiftyish Henry (Hank) Devereaux Jr., the current English dept chair, the immediate concern of all are rumored severe budgetary cuts that could reach into the ranks of tenured professors. Consistent with the constant, low-level wariness that they exhibit towards each other, now heightened, they are convinced that Hank has colluded with the administration in creating a “list” of names to be terminated. Of course, the inevitable recall movement is started – the solution to their problems that always proves to be inadequate.

More broadly, the author captures the securities, but more so the insecurities, that are a part of living and working in such an insular academic setting. All have achieved a secure position through either political maneuvering or, in the case of Hank, cashing in on a long since dissipated notoriety for a work of fiction. Ironically, the security of tenure gives them the means to assiduously guard their turf and freely exchange caustic barbs when threatened, or otherwise. What they cannot escape is the unsettling realization that they have reached their academic limits with few prospects. It’s hardly surprising that the anxieties and demands of the college find their way into their domestic lives as manifested by affairs, divorces, and reckless competitiveness.

But Hank Devereaux is the author’s main focus. He is an amused, detached kind of guy, irritating to most to a greater or lesser degree, including his colleagues, his wife Lily, and his daughters. Perhaps it is his general outward indifference that has allowed him to navigate these perilous waters, especially the temptations, better than most, which in the end is not entirely lost on the others.

The book is probably more an amused, imagined look at college academia than one of hard-nosed reality. The quips, barbs, developments, and shenanigans are entertaining and at times somewhat comic, but do sometimes strain belief.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780375701900
Author:
Russo, Richard
Publisher:
Vintage Books
Location:
New York :
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Humorous
Subject:
College teachers
Subject:
College teachers -- Fiction.
Subject:
College stories.
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Copyright:
1997
Edition Description:
Trade paper
Series:
Vintage Contemporaries
Publication Date:
19980631
Binding:
TRADE PAPER
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
416
Dimensions:
8 x 5.1 x 0.8 in 0.65 lb
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Related Subjects

Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z
Languages » Foreign Languages » Spanish » Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z

Straight Man: A Novel Used Trade Paper
0 stars - 0 reviews
$2.95 In Stock
Product details 416 pages Vintage Books USA - English 9780375701900 Reviews:
"Review A Day" by , "[My] second reading of Straight Man was just as engrossing, entertaining, and satisfying as the first. Again, I found myself laughing out loud at Russo's pitch-perfect prose and the jokes that seem as effortless as they are hilarious. Again, I found myself enraptured with the book's eclectic cast of characters. And again, the pages of this meandering academic comedy turned faster than the most gripping Stephen King thriller." (read the entire Powells.com review)
"Review" by , "[A] hilarious, wise and compassionate novel....Readers who do not laugh uncontrollably during this raucous, witty and touching work are seriously impaired."
"Review" by , "[G]loriously funny and involving....Laconic, deadpan, disarmingly modest and self-effacing, it's the perfect vehicle for another of Russo's irresistible revelations of the agreeable craziness of everyday life."
"Review" by , "[Russo] skewers academic pretensions and infighting with mad abandon...in a clear and muscular prose that is a pleasure to read....I had to stop often to guffaw, gasp, wheeze and wipe away my tears."
"Review" by , "Russo can penetrate to the tender quick of ordinary, American lives."
"Review" by , "Straight Man...is so funny, so beautifully written, so fully imagined, it is easy to forgive its familiarity....Russo is an easy, elegant writer. The book is beautifully plotted, and Russo makes you care about Devereaux and his fate. He also makes you laugh out loud."
"Review" by , "There is a big, wry heart beating at the center of Russo's fiction."
"Review" by , "Russo is a master craftsman....The blue-collar heartache at the center of his fiction has the sheen of Dickens but the epic levity of John Irving."
"Review" by , "What makes Richard Russo so admirable as a novelist is that his natural grace as a storyteller is matched by his compassion for his characters."
"Review" by , "After the last sentence is read, the reader continues to see Russo's tender, messed-up people coming out of doorways, lurching through life. And keeps on seeing them because they are as real as we are."
"Review" by , "Funny, bighearted, resolutely untrendy, ultimately moving...at once a delightful entertainment and a wise handbook for living."
"Review" by , "Richard Russo's novel is as simple as family love, yet nearly as complicated."
"Synopsis" by , The author of The Risk Pool and Nobody's Fool delivers a brilliant new novel about a professor whose sense of humor is tested by the cosmic joke. Hank Devereaux, Jr., failed novelist, creative writing teacher, and estranged son of one of academe's stars, is a hero whose cynicism must be mitigated by his love for family, friends and, ultimately, knowledge itself.
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