Rating: 
Summary: Best academic novel I've read.
Review: I teach at a small college and have probably read over 30 satirical novels about the academic life. Straightman is the best of the lot. (Moo would be about #19.) I then read his other 3 (totally different) novels, and they were excellent as well. Bravo.
Rating:
Summary: An absolute HOOT and at turns heartbreaking. MUST READ!
Review: Although I liked NOBODY'S FOOL better as a whole, Hank Devereaux is as compelling a character as Sully. His (Hank's) surrounding cast of characters are not nearly as interesting as Sully's, but I think that is in part due to STRAIGHT MAN's being written in present tense first person. STRAIGHT MAN, however, is filled with some lucid wisdom and insight. My copy has passages underlined and pages dog-eared. Richard Russo's narrative voice is unequalled in contemporary literature. He is funnier than Dave Barry and as literary as John Updike.
Rating: 
Summary: A great premise - but misses the mark
Review: My reactions to this book are generally quite different to most of those I've read thus far. I didn't really like this book very much, but I didn't dislike it either. It's one of those books that is destined to recede into the vast abyss of forgetfulness in my (addled) brain.(1) I didn't think it was all that funny. I had read all these reviews about people falling off their chairs and collapsing with convulsive laughter upon reading this thing, and I just didn't get that kind of response. Not at all. Having grown up in an academic family and having been exposed to the sort of lunacy that goes on within academic departments, I thought he actually kind of underplayed things. Real life (if you can call what goes on in academia "real") is infinitely funnier than what goes on in this book. (2) The book failed to capture the intellectual pretensions that lie at the true source of academic hilarity. For instance - postmodernism, radical feminist critiques of cell biology, etc. Again - real life is infinitely more entertaining that what was covered in this book. (3) I actually found the book quite sad! The main character is a loser who has basically thrown his life away and doesn't give a damn about anything. He has an annoying tendency to prattle on about Occam's razor without really seeming to know what it's about, etc. In general, he was more a tragic than a comic character to me, and not a very interesting one. (4) The characters, primarily the members of the faculty, are all caricatures. They never seemed particularly real to me - they were all "types" - not real people. Most of the human interactions in the book did not come across as particularly compelling or believable to me. In summary - the academic world offers perhaps one of the richest sources of lunatic comedy currently available today. This book does not take anywhere near the advantage that COULD be taken of this gold mine. I hope that someday, someone will write a truly good book in this area.
Rating:
Summary: Perceptive, funny, insightful!
Review: I enjoyed this book a great deal. I'm planning to read the Risk Pool next.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful.
Review: I came to Straight Man through Amazon by way of Moo and Risk Pool. The latter was disappointing at the time, but maybe I wasn't in the mood. The comparisons with Moo are unfortunate, because both are wonderful books, Moo, I think, being Smiley's best, and in literature one book doesn't necessarily have to "win." Having said that, Straight Man is the book I've been waiting for this year. After reading three "10's" last year (The Shipping News, The Englishman's Boy, A Fine Balance), this year had been disappointing up to now, but Straight Man fixed that. Russo is like Richard Ford with a sense of humour, and Straight Man could have given Independence Day a run for the Pullitzer. Don't misunderstand, I loved it, too. A tangent.
Rating: 
Summary: Witty, fast-paced and totally enjoyable
Review: The book is totally fun! I purchased it without knowing much about it, other than being on a bookshelf of "Staff recommendations" in a book store. I'm a big reader of John Irving and Pat Conroy and find "Straight Man" easily compared to characters belonging to Conroy and Irving without all the whacked out and twisted plots, but still maintaining character depth and interest. Someone suggested this might not be a "chick" book.. but I'm one chick who has passed it along to other chick friends knowing they too will thoroughly enjoy reading "Straight Man". There seems to be only sadness and dysfunction on the Best Seller List these days - lighten up your subject matter for a change. You'll enjoy this one!
Rating:
Summary: A rollicking good read
Review: It's been awhile since I read a book so funny, so poignant, and so hard to put down! Russo skewers academic life, but gives the impression of someone who has truly been there, unlike Jane Smiley's Moo. Smiley is a good caricaturist and an excellent observer, but Russo knows that our institutions of higher learning are full of real people whose foibles need not be exaggerated to be farcical. I recommend this great story to anyone with a sense of humor, and if you've ever taught at the college level, you simply must read this academic satire. It's so much more than a conventional mid-life crisis story.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting in spots, but ultimately unrewarding.
Review: I looked forward to reading this after the reviews. I know Russo only through the film of NOBODY'S FOOL, which was lovely and evocative in its way. This one started out interestingly, and there are some funny moments, but ultimately you really don't care at all about any of these characters (it was hard to keep them straight) and the satire gets tedious and wears thin. Perhaps I shouldn't have taken this on vacation for a read, and should have put it down half way through, as I had to force myself to the end. I see, though, that I'm largely in the minority, but I suspect this book will be out of print in a few years and that won't be anybody's loss. One thing I found particularly vexing about this first person narrator was the fact that although he was ostensibly a creative writer and student of literature, you could not sense that he ever had literature as a fund to draw on for interpreting his experience; I'm not talking about gratuitous allusions to be dropped in just for the hell of it, but a real literary sensibility that might have been captured however mockingly. I sensed that the narrator's wife, committed to literacy among the pre-collegiate, might have been a more interesting character. Russo's final image of the academics crowded into a room whose door opens to the inside (so they can't get out) is supposed to be an attempt at comic profundity --you know, academic ineptitude, etc.--but it's just a strained image that stretches for meaning without satisfying. I want someone to do a better job on academe, but then maybe the real can't be parodied any bertter than UIC's rewarding someone like Stanley ("I won't read any poetry unless someone pays me 100 grand") Fish with a deanship that will give the school prestige. Maybe that is parody enough, for the reality of academe is simply beyond satire any longer. I'll take David Lodge's work instead; he knows his subject (academia) and his satire is so much more penetrating and artful than Russo's.
Rating: 
Summary: A father thing
Review: There are two main reasons for having knocked off two stars from this book. First that for the second time, Risk Pool being first, I see the author again knocking on the door of the dificult emotions towards one father. Second star dropped out because it seems just too right for a man like him to come over all pending solutions to his life over a weekend. But all in all, pick it up and enjoy a funny story.
Rating:
Summary: Marvelous
Review: For many, many years I have searched in vain for a book that would be a match for my all time favorite, The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk. What a find to stumble across Straight Man. Richard Russo has that rare ability to bring his characters vividly to life using almost no descriptive prose. Hank Devereaix's congenital talent for self destruction in spite of his better intentions remind me a great deal of Mutiny's Willie Keith except that Willie eventually grew up. From cover to cover this book is a delightful comedy, and character study as well as a wonderful spoof on the world of academia. Being one who from time to time suffers from Reader's Block, this book also opened the door on the path back to discover all of Russo's talents in Nobody's Fool, Mohawk, and The Risk Pool. Please, Mr. Russo, keep tapping away.
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