Synopses & Reviews
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
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"[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
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"[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
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"Russo can penetrate to the tender quick of ordinary, American lives." Entertainment Weekly
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"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
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"There is a big, wry heart beating at the center of Russo's fiction." The New Yorker
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"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
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"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
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"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
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"Funny, bighearted, resolutely untrendy, ultimately moving...at once a delightful entertainment and a wise handbook for living." New York Newsday
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"Richard Russo's novel is as simple as family love, yet nearly as complicated." San Francisco Chronicle
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"[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)
Synopsis
Hilarious and true-to-life, witty, compassionate, and impossible to put down, Straight Man follows Hank Devereaux through one very bad week in this novel from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo.
William Henry Devereaux, Jr., is 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, poignant, compassionate, and unforgettable."
Synopsis
Hilarious and true-to-life, witty, compassionate, and impossible to put down, Straight Man follows Hank Devereaux through one very bad week in this novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls. Soon to Be an Original Series on AMC Starring Bob Odenkirk. William Henry Devereaux, Jr., is 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, poignant, compassionate, and unforgettable.
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.
About the Author
Richard Russo lives in coastal Maine with his wife and their two daughters. He has written five novels: Mohawk, The Risk Pool, Nobodys Fool, Straight Man, and Empire Falls, and a collection of stories, The Whores Child.
Reading Group Guide
1. Why does Hank begin his tale with the story about his parents getting him a dog? What does this story tell us about the Devereaux family, and of Hank's place within it? "To me, his son, William Henry Devereaux, Sr., is most real standing in his ruined cordovan loafers, leaning on the handle of a borrowed shovel, examining his dirty, blistered hands, and receiving my suggestion of what to name a dead dog" [p. xvii], Hank writes. What is it about the moment, and the act, that shows up Devereaux, Sr.'s essential realty?
2. Why did Hank decide to become a writer, and an English professor?
3. "Teddy belongs to that vast majority who believe that love isn't something you kid about. I don't see how you could not kid about love and still claim to have a sense of humor" [p. 7]. Is this the real Hank talking, or is it part of the compulsive cynicism that his mental state has engendered? Is it in fact a cynical observation, or simply a true one?
4. Early in the book, various characters, including Lily and Hank's mother, let Hank know that they are worried about him. What symptoms of distress and instability does Hank show in the first half of the book? How do we, the readers, know that there is in fact something to worry about?
5. Why does Hank have persistent fantasies of seeing Lily with other men? Do these fantasies represent his fears, or his desires?
6. Hank dreads his colleagues moving to Allegheny Wells and becoming his neighbors. Lily wonders why: "Jacob Rose is your friend," she says. "There's nothing wrong with Finny and Marie" [p. 29]. Is she right: are they his friends? If so, why has Hank become so suspicious of them?
7. Why has Julie chosen to build a replica of her parents' house? Why does Russell hate it, while liking Hank and Lily's house? What does Russell and Julie's stalemate over the house tell us about their marriage, and their life together?
8. "Anger . . . is an emotion that's foreign to me" [p. 52], says Hank. Is that true? What signs of anger do you find in his behavior? Why might he choose to suppress anger?
9. What effect does the academic tenure system have upon the tenured professors themselves? When Lily goes on her job interview, Hank finds himself filled with admiration for her; "Tenured these last fifteen years, I find it hard to imagine being in that position again, of allowing myself to be judged" [p. 59]. Why does Hank make his surprising career decision at the end of the novel?
10. Why does Russo call the first portion of the novel "Occam's Razor"? William of Occam, says Hank, "sought to reconcile Faith with rational inquiry" [p. 107]. Would you say that this describes Hank's search during the course of the novel?
11. "In English departments the most serious competition is for the role of straight man" [p. 106]. What does Hank mean by this? Is the meaning of the novel's title clear after Hank makes this statement?
12. Why does Hank keep harping on William Cherry, the man who lay down on the town's railroad tracks?
13. Why has Hank never written another book after his first, quite successful one? Is there any indication that he will write one in the future: that is, after the action of the novel has ended?
14. The character of Hank's mother is a complex one. What does she want for herself? For Hank? What bargains has she made with life? What has she given up? Is there any chance, at the end, for her and Hank to become close to one another?
15. Why does Hank feel exhilaration rather than fear when he suspects he may have prostate cancer? Is this feeling related to his fascination with William Cherry? With his fantasies about Lily?
16. West Central Pennsylvania University is clearly a mediocre institution; when it comes to hiring the new chairperson, for instance, Hank admits that "to hire someone distinguished would be to invite comparison with ourselves, who were undistinguished" [p. 18]. Part of middle age, for many people, is settling for the second-rate, the acceptance of life's inevitable limitations. "We have believed, all of us, like Scuffy the Tugboat, that we were made for better things. . . . We've preferred not to face the distinct possibility that if we'd been made for better things, we'd have done those things" [p. 132-3]. Does this process of settling, or acceptance, diminish Hank, or does it strengthen him? Why does Russo include the Spender poem on page 207?
17. How does Hank's midlife crisis compare with that of his father at Columbia? Is Hank's crisis successful: that is, does he resolve the pain and fear that has begun to emerge from his subconscious and take over his life? Did Hank's father resolve any such issues when he broke down at Columbia? What might the father's present emotional state have to do with his having coped, or refusing to cope, with that breakdown? What do his changing attitudes towards Dickens signify, and what does his admission that he had misjudged Dickens tell us about his mental state?
The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group's experience of reading Richard Russo's Straight Man. We hope they will provide interesting new angles from which to examine this funny, poignant, and compassionate novel by one of the most compelling storytellers of our day.