Helpful Score: 4
*****
I LOVED this book. As a person who places a high value on seeing the ridiculous in life's ordinary moments, AND as the wife of a college professor, I enjoyed this book more than any I have read in a long time. The author captures the absurdities of the academic career, where the struggle for power is paramount. I found myself laughing out loud many times.
I LOVED this book. As a person who places a high value on seeing the ridiculous in life's ordinary moments, AND as the wife of a college professor, I enjoyed this book more than any I have read in a long time. The author captures the absurdities of the academic career, where the struggle for power is paramount. I found myself laughing out loud many times.
Gretchen F. (MOMSBOOKS) reviewed Straight Man : A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) on + 64 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
The plot twists around a professor(sans PhD) in a small western Pennsylvania coed university, William Henry Devereaux Jr. by name. He tells the tale of a small segment of his life as he rounds age 50. His wife, who is a high school teacher, is out of town. It is time for the powers that be to set the University budget for the coming year causing great paranoia among the faculty. Hank, as he prefers to be known, is the acting head of the English dept. and is therefore in charge of the hiring and firing list. There are many sub-plots and an interesting group of characters. If I were grading the book I would give it a C because I couldn't identify with the main protagonist, and an A for clever, if doubtful manipulation of circumstance, characters, timing and plot.
Helpful Score: 2
Terrific Russo, but slightly different than other books. Rather than dealing with blue collar, small town America, it takes you into the politics of academia, providing a satirical look at that very incestuous world.
Helpful Score: 2
Russo is clever and sarcastic and had me laughing out loud at the turn of every page. I agree with the New York Times Book Review, "The funniest serious novel I have read..." It was so nice to pick up a story that may have serious life topics, but dealt with them in a lighthearted, hopeful way.
Helpful Score: 2
I read this book just as I was starting out as a faculty member at an unnamed university in an unnamed health sciences department. The funny thing was, all the stock characters in "Straight Man" were in my department, too! To describe my version of Russo's misadventures would be to jeopardize my life and livelihood (you know how small the academic world can be in any specialty); suffice to say that I was so very, very grateful to have a secret chuckle (and sometimes a very difficult-to-suppress guffaw) thanks to Russo's artful and hilarious satire of life on the faculty of an English department at a small New England liberal arts college.
Mandatory reading for anyone aspiring to make a living in academia, or anyone already suffering through academic life (time distorts horribly during those mandatory faculty meetings)!
Mandatory reading for anyone aspiring to make a living in academia, or anyone already suffering through academic life (time distorts horribly during those mandatory faculty meetings)!
