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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. • Now the AMC Original Series Lucky Hank.

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.

Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005WBGNZS
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; 1st edition (November 9, 2011)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 9, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3725 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 418 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0375701907
Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Loved it.
Review: Loved this book because it was funny and Russo is a fine writer whose prose is enjoyable to read. One more word is required, so here it is: Petaluma.

Reviewer: John W. Cooke
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Really Good, but Flattens Toward End
Review: I'm torn to say anything negative because the book is so satisfying. But I'm about to ... some slight quibbles. First, as a former long-time academic, Russo very accurately captures some of the absurdity of college teaching, w/o becoming cartoonish. (OK, there are some cartoonish moments, but then again I once watched a full professor drop his pants in a Rank and Tenure Committee Meeting.) The story and the characters are warm-blooded. He portrays the culture less about the silliness of academia than the fallibility of man. It's an easy read by a gifted writer.That said...Some tropes are overused. Russo's protagonist refers to himself in third person far too much. He also keeps noting some version of "I'm not an [X] but I can play one" far too often and to little effect.Finally and most importantly, the novel seems to lose its buoyancy w/ about 20% to go. All the literary and narrative elements remain, but they seem to be running out of gas. I found myself somewhat impatient as I awaited the conclusion.That conclusion, however, taking place in a small room at a professor's home, is one of the saddest, funniest depictions of academic behavior I've ever read. Russo nailed that ending.

Reviewer: Wanda B. Red
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Season of Grace
Review: Like the "Straight Man" of his title, Russo sets one zinger up after another. Despite the ensuing repetition, this may be the funniest book I've ever read. At one point I found myself, alone in the room, laughing out loud. Russo's timing is a thing of beauty.Beneath the comedy, as is always the case with good comedy, there is some genuine pathos. As an academic myself, I can attest that the profs that Russo lambastes are only slightly exaggerated and the students are spot on. Most pathetic of all in the grand scheme of pathos is the magnificent narrator himself, William Henry Devereaux, Jr., whose hijinks and devastating one-liners make him his own worst enemy, which is clearly his self-destructive intent."Lucky Hank's" luck seems to be running out in this story. Temporarily deserted by his wife, plagued by prostate woes, seized by the impulse to threaten a goose to get a budget, jailed for drunk driving, Henry confronts one hurdle after another, nor does he clear them all. He hits bottom, figuratively that is, when he finds himself climbing into the rafters of his office so that he can eavesdrop, literally that is, on the department meeting that will decide his fate as temporary chairman. But I don't want tot spoil the book by going further into the figure he cuts when he makes his undignified exit from this position. As Jacob Rose, the dean of liberal arts, tells him, "You are the physical embodiment of the perversity principle. . . . Fake left, go right. . . . Keep everyone in suspense. . . . If you have to f*** yourself over to surprise them, so be it" (361). The epic tale of how not-so-young Henry manages this anatomical impossibility blends brutal wit and no small amount of wisdom.In every man's life, as one of his characters concludes, there is a "Season of Deeds" and a "Season of Grace." In the first, a man asks himself, "who am I?" In the second, the question is, "what have I become?" Hank, God bless him, is constitutionally unable to make the transition. He remains a delightfully aging prankster to the very last page.

Reviewer: Al
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Enjoyable, well put together narrative that hits too close to home
Review: Straight Man is well put together, drawing you along with occasional laugh-out-loud moments. Richard Russo is an accomplished novelist and here captures the dilemma that is unique to English Departments in American universities: the nature of the vocation is to perpetually self-justify it and why your special niche in it is of some value to anybody, anywhere outside of the academy ... and even then. The best part of Russo's tale is that it captures the claustrophobia and absurdity of cloistered small town university staff life, epitomized in the one drunken evening where the entire faculty turns up at the one passable restraurant in the gated suburban academic ghetto where they reside. In all - there are fewer LOL moments than, say Franzen's academic bozos. Unfortunately, it's a perverse and occasionally disturbing read for any of us who have actually spent time in English departments: it isn't just about the brutal corporate cutbacks and new age management talk that are a regular feature of university life. The hurtful bit here is that what appear to be farcical academic characters turn out to be too close to real life, all of us knowing perpetual professorial bores who refuse to grow up and accept that they aren't the cleverest people in the room, who never finished that great book, and then, as Russo's closing comments confirm, expect that they'll be a cadre of family, friends, helpers, students and hanger-oners who will straighten them out. The big question here remains whether we even want to know people like Hank Devereaux Sr or Jr and their colleagues, and that the general bad taste in the mouth remains well after the accounting of his 'career'. Well done, Richard Russo. Point made and taken. No follow up needed.

Reviewer: Kindle Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good
Review: Inexpensive way to read a book.

Reviewer: Nacho
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Very good writing and with terrific character development. Witty and real. One main protagonist throughout, but many interesting colleagues also. This book takes place in academia, in a small college town in Pennsylvania. The book starts slowly but with each chapter gets both more profound and more interesting.

Reviewer: L
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This is a proper novel with a relatable and funny protagonist who meddles his way through his career, family, friends and frenemies. Straight to the point narrative with no slacking and no deviation. Loved his writing

Reviewer: Geoff Naylor
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Russo can really write so this book was no surprise. My only issue was with the epilogue which I hated. I don't need all the loose ends tightening up; life's not like that... it's messy and disjointed.

Reviewer: Nina
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: You dive into the characters‘ world. Great humor.

Reviewer: Hector
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Straight Man is a very funny novel yet an extremely poignant story that shows a high degree of sensitivity to the human condition. The setting is a second or third level state university in Pennsylvania in the 1990s, in April toward the end of the academic year. Henry (Hank) Devereux, Jr. is an English professor and interim chair of his department and is turning 50. A delay in the university's budget from the legislature has exacerbated the conflicts within his dysfunctional department and put Hank in the uncomfortable position of providing the administration with a list of faculty to fire. These conflicts are amplified by a developing mid-life crisis which leads him to question his relationship with his wife, his two adult daughters, his distinguished and rather overbearing academic parents, and particularly the worth of his own academic career.The two threads of this novel are the window that it provides on academic life and the second window that it opens on the travails - mental, emotional and physical - of reaching middle age. Both are approached through humor and biting satire, but with an element of tenderness for both the individuals and institutions that are the objects of Hank's concerns. Henry Devereux, Jr., himself, is a very well-crafted character - someone you will likely feel that you know intimately by the end of the novel.Straight Man is a good example of a modern `campus novel' Its humor and elegant prose resonate with that of Changing Places, by David Lodge, and The History Man, by Malcolm Bradbury - both late 1960s/early 1970s representatives of this genre. Its humor and trenchant portrayal of academic characters and politics also echo with Lorenzostein, by Mary Smetley, a more recent magical-realistic treatment of these issues in academia in the 1980s and 1990s.A must read for anyone interested in the `campus novel' genre and for those readers who would enjoy a humorous, but sensitive, treatment of mid-life issues.