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Summary: Straight Man is the best novel I've read this year.
Review: Russo manages to be both comic and serious at the same time. This is always a difficult task, but he handles it superbly. Straight Man has great, true-to-life, memorable characters. Russo writes clear, brilliant dialogue. There's not a false note in the entire novel. He manages to spear academia without falling into the predictable or the easy. I hesitate to say this, but I think this novel has "movie" written all over it. In the right hands with the right script, Straight Man will make a movie as strong and funny as the novel
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Summary: Exellent!
Review: I picked this book up on a whim (because of the odd cover, actually) and now I can't wait to read Russo's previous works. Straight Man is a must-read book for anyone who has an appreciation for a story well-written--it's a sublime page-turner. Laugh-out-loud funny.
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Summary: Can this book really be that good?
Review: As a college professor in a small, but certainly not "backwater", academic institution there is no way that Russo's latest book can be as funny, as cynical, as unbelieveable, and as "Marx Brothersesque" as the real thing...then again...this is Russo and if book reviews are to have any value what others have said leads me to believe that "STRAIGHT MAN" may just be the guide to the comic set-up called higher education
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Summary: A complete novel
Review: Low-key, with few pyrotechnics, but Richard
Russo paints a portrait of a middle-aged academic, his family, and his community that is unmatched. Russo does not go for cheap laughs at the expense of academics, but sees how their lives have a pathos that is indeed representative of many men (or women) in American today. You have to read the book to get the joke in the last line!
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Summary: Where is this Man's PULITZER?
Review: To paraphrase our protagonist, Hank: "I'm not a literary critic, but I can act like one." Richard Russo is a genius. ALL of his books are wonderfull. "Straight Man" is hillarious - I TRIED to read it slowly to savor every moment...but I just couldn't put it down
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Summary: Loved it! Great read for Russo fans.
Review: As is the case for all of his novels, the setting is central. In Straight Man, his trademark small town America is complicated by the milieu of a small but politically charged adademic institution. I found this to be, by far, the most amusing of his books (laugh out loud on every page) but I am an academic and personally relate to the setting
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Summary: Another great book by Russo, but with limited focus.
Review: Another entertaining book by Russo. Unfortunately this time he focuses on the head of the English department of a small northeastern college. Much of the political infighting could be unfamiliar to those who aren't English majors. I am burdened by the fact that I have three undergraduate degrees, one being English and so I can't tell if this book is for "we English department lackeys." I'd like to hear from others who aren't English majors
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Summary: If you're a John Irving fan...
Review: ...you'll love Richard Russo's writing and "Straight Man" in particular. Russo and Irving both share the ability to find the absurd in the most mundane places. By setting the world as we know it on its ear, they create characters and situations that are once familiar and hysterically unreal. And yet their themes are serious, thought-provoking. In this, his fourth book, Russo takes on academia, marriage, middle-age, parent-child relationships, loyalty to ones co-workers, father-son conflicts -- all weighty issues -- and does so with brilliant insight and laugh-out-loud hilarity. And I mean hilarity. If, like me, you read in public places, be prepared to embarrass yourself by your constant chortling.
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Summary: Life With Father
Review: Richard Russo's "Straight Man" is a marvelous novel in the tradition of "Lucky Jim," which is acknowledged in the nickname of Russo's protagonist, William Henry Devereaux, Jr. Lucky Hank chairs the English Department at West Central Pennsylvania University, overseeing a faculty that personifies eccentricity. Devereau's department is in chaotic rebellion, and he must try to herd them through academic politics while he is beset by friends who aren't, enemies who are, family members of three generations in crisis, and an erratic bladder.The plot is absurd, a surrealistic slice of life around a few critical days at the University and in Devereaux's personal life. The characters are vivid and sympathetic. I wanted the book to continue, so I could learn the rest of the story for Meg, Tony, Julie, Rachel, Orshee and several others. A literary critic, perhaps the great William Henry Devereaux, Sr., might find the book to be undisciplined. Who cares? How many novels can be "can't put them down" exciting and at the same time add something of value to what are usually overworked topics: mid-life crises, academic politics, middle-aged romantic and platonic love, and parent-child conflict.
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Summary: RICHARD RUSSO'S STRAIGHT MAN BY JOHN CHUCKMAN
Review: This has to be one of the funniest books ever written.
Russo brilliantly sends up the pretensions and foibles of the staff and administration of the English Department at a small Pennsylvania university. It's one of those truly dismal, mediocre places, rarely mentioned in the same breath as America's world-class institutions, but which abound across the country.
About the first third of this book is almost non-stop laughter. The pace slows for a while, but picks up again. Near the end Russo gives us one of the funniest scenes ever written. I wouldn't want to reveal any of it to spoil your enjoyment.
The book is a departure for Russo, most of whose novels are reworkings of another theme, his childhood relationship with his very unusual father. Russo's effort along these lines reached its highest achievement in the modern masterpiece, "Nobody's Fool."
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