Rating: 
Summary: A captivating read for anyone, heart felt and funny!
Review: A straight man is the partner in a comedy team who feeds lines to the other comic who then gives the funny line, getting the laughs-Abbott to Costello, Martin to Lewis. Although I'm not quite convinced that William Henry Devereaux, Jr., called Hank by his friends, in Richard Russo's delightfully quirky 1997 novel Straight Man is in actuality a straight man, I am certain that Russo's story has some big, wonderful, warm-hearted laughs. What Hank is is the temporary Chair of the English department at West Central Pennsylvania University, a possible serial duck murderer, suffering from what he's convinced is an inherited kidney stone. He is also a wise guy, who at 50 may or may not be going through a mid-life crisis.Setting the tone of the novel is its "Prologue," written by Devereaux for his column in the local paper. He tells the hilarious story of nine year old Henry's relentless attempts to convince his parents to get him a dog and his ultimate success-of sorts. It is here that we see the early relationship between William Jr. and his academic parents: his father, the founder of modern American literary criticism, and mother, a well-respected professor in her own right. But it is not the philosophies of his parents that has most influenced Hank's development but that of William of Occum, the 13th century philosopher responsible for the axiom known as "Occum's Razor," which Russo uses as the title of Part One of his book (Part Two counterpoints with "Judas Peckerwood"). Simply stated, Occum's Razor declares that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity or as a recent film put it, "All things being equal, the simplest explanation has to be the right one." It is against this that William Henry Devereaux, Jr. judges the events and actions around him. The story, told by Hank, opens with a friend driving him home after a department colleague, a feminist poet, has hooked him in the nose with a spiral notebook, one that she raised in anger at him, d! uring a department meeting to select outside candidates for permanent Chair of the department. Soon members of English department split into an organized coup to remove Hank from his temporary position. Amid rumors of mandatory budget cuts in personnel, to include tenured faculty, Hank announces to a TV news crew that he will kill a duck a day from the school pond unless budget cuts are restored to hire adjunct (the cheapest form of legalized slave labor in the world, I might add) freshman composition teachers. Although politics abound at the school (as they do at all schools), Hank attempts to stay afloat as best he can and with good humor and equal verve, even after some unknown person starts killing ducks. Along the way we meet a host of uniquely offbeat characters, some of whom you start to recognize in real life. One doesn't have to be student or teacher to enjoy Russo's new novel. Straight Man is a captivating read for anyone--a genuinely funny, warm, loving story. There's an old joke somewhere about Creative Writing graduate students writing their "college" novels for their dissertations, one that I'm sure Russo is aware. Thankfully, this is not the case here. What is most satisfying to me is that each of Russo's novels has increased my reading enjoyment, from Mohawk to The Risk Pool to Nobody's Fool (an equally terrific movie, starring Paul Neuman) and now Straight Man. This is one of the year's best! END
Rating:
Summary: Move Over Kingsley Amis
Review: Straight Man is now residing next to Lucky Jim on my bookshelf. These two books are the funniest that I have ever read about academic life. The characters are wonderful; the story pleasantly absurd. Tom Sharpe should take writing lessons from this guy. Its amusing to read some of the sobersided academic dissections of this book. Its this type of musty criticism that Mr. Russo likes to poke fun at. If you've spent any amount of time around a college, and like to laugh, then read this book.
Rating:
Summary: A funny book, well-written.
Review: I enjoyed reading this book. The main character had me laughing out loud approximately three times per chapter (sometimes more).The twists and turns of the plot keep the story moving along and interesting. I would highly recommend it for middle aged males, or anyone seeking to understand the psychology of the American middle-aged male (which should include many people).
Rating: 
Summary: good story, stale prose
Review: The story itself, while familiar (middle-aged English professor at Anonymous State U. deals with the usual crowd of loony colleagues, facile students, and useless administrators) makes for a good read. Russo manages to weave the various threads of his narrative skillfully. They are rarely boring and often howlingly funny. The prose, however, leaves something to be desired. It's smooth, but lackluster. The impulse other reviewers have had, when writing of his terse, present-tense style, to call Russo a comic sort of Raymond Carver is completely misguided. Russo's prose has little of the tension, irony, careful observation, or immediacy of even Carver's least inspired short stories. To make things worse, he seems compelled to hammer (often relentlessly) meaningfulness where it isn't. The narrator, for instance, feels driven, over and over again, to refer to himself, cloyingly, in the third person. I suppose Russo means to show us that our hero has become so demoralized with his stultifying position that he has, in fact, alienated himself as much from himself as he has from his surroundings. Of course, a careful reader gets the message rather quickly and the strategy becomes tiring. Similar relentlessly repeated devices abound. "What," our narrator asks every few pages, "would William of Occam think?" An interesting question, but ultimately, as a trope, it's unsatisfying. The story never really proposes--or even implies--a satisfying answer, unless, of course, the narrator's solution, to leave the university and live simply, is meant, somehow, to address this theme. Of course, it doesn't. Our narrator is a rather shallow, disaffected fellow from the start; his conclusion, finally, is no more than simplistic response to a not too terribly complex problem. William of Occam, I suppose, would shrug. Nevertheless, the book makes for a fun read. Russo is especially good with the deftly (often lovingly) described minor characters who appear, at regular intervals, to torment the narrator. And, of course, his satire is especially acute as he examines the state of the all-American university English department. God knows the Academy has earned, of late, all the teasing it can bear.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best I have read in some time.
Review: I read Moo and enjoyed it but Straight Man beats it by far. The characters are more real and every line is a laugh. More importantly, the ending didn't just drop me. Anyway I have just purchased two more of his earlier works and have recommended Straight Man to everyone I know who likes a good story and good writing!
Rating:
Summary: A laugh or two per page
Review: Richard Russo's Straight Man turned out to be a diamond in the bookstore. His ability to bring his characters (and they are characters) to life, making them so real that you cared about them, is an art. They were human with foibles and faults just like everyone else. What a delight to read; the humor was infectious. Now that I've reluctantly finished the book, I will backtrack to his previous novels and see if they're as good as Straight Man. Richard Russo...keep on keeping on and thank you.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent quick read
Review: I laughed out loud when I read portions of this book. I agree with the critique that the story is reminiscent of John Irving's work. The story line really flows and it is difficult to put down. I read this in a couple sittings and made time out of a busy schedule to finish it. When I say it is a "quick" read, I don't mean to suggest that the novel is "fluff." Its just that I was so caught up with the story from its beginning, that I had to finish it immediately. I look forward to read Russo's other work.
Rating: 
Summary: Funny, compassionate, realistic
Review: Rick Russo taught across the river from where I now live, and when the waitress in _Straight Man_ asks what you'ns wants, I was sure he had transposed a snippet of the midwest to Pennsylvania. Nobody *ever* called me you'ns back in Tucson; I never heard it until I moved here. But then my pal Bill from Pittsburgh informed me that it's very much a western PA expression. Still, it's just one more thing about the novel that hits home with me. Is _Straight Man_ just another _Moo_? I don't think so; his characters are much more three- dimensional than Smiley's, and his North Central Pennsylvania State is not the caricature of academia that Smiley created. Russo's school could be my own--we're even in the process of choosing a site for our new Polytechnic Institute!--and his English Department could be Philosophy, where I'm secretary, or Foreign Languages, where I teach as an adjunct, or Biology, where my husband is a full professor, or, I suspect, any other department on this campus. Russo's view of Academe strikes me as deadly accurate, but consistently humane. He has a wonderful ability to reveal the various absurdities of his characters' natures and circumstances (from those of his narrator down to students and townies who make only an occasional appearance in the novel) without ever reducing them to pathetic or ridiculous or bullying stick figures. His characters have substance, and the things they do and say and wonder about really matter, to Hank Devereaux and to the reader as well. Whether Russo's characters are blue collar workers in _Nobody's Fool_ or academicians, their lives have meaning and relevance to our own. I am glad if Russo's literary success has enabled him to become a full-time writer, but I'm sorry for all those students who will never have him. I can't help but feel he was a heck of a good teacher.
Rating:
Summary: Dead on depiction of the Academic Life
Review: I read Rick Russo's latest novel right after finishing _Perfect Agreement_, another marvelous comment on the state of higher (and lower) education in this country. Russo's book captures the small campus of a state university just about perfectly. I am an adjunct Spanish instructor and also work halftime as the secretary of the Philosophy Dept at just such an institution, across the river from where Russo used to teach at SIU. My husband is a full professor in the Biology Dept. We have friends in various other departments across campus. Russo's observations of human nature, both in and out of Academe, apply equally to those in the sciences as well as the liberal arts; he describes the faculty, students, and situations that abound in such a setting with almost perfect accuracy, yet without sacrificing either the wit or the compassion that have marked his earlier novels. I don't give 10s easily, and I can't say that this is the greatest book I've ever read, but it is, I think, Russo's best to date, and I've read and enjoyed them all. The only academic novel that I've read that might be better is Don DeLillo's _White Noise_, but I guess I prefer Russo's less bleak viewpoint.
Rating:
Summary: Great novel!
Review: Well, the fact that this novel is loosely (maybe not so loosely...)based on Penn State (the Altoona campus), and the fact that I work at Penn State (University Park), made this book even more hilarious to me. It's a very hot item in this town. It has the spirit of a John Irving novel, back when John Irving cared about more than bears and dwarfs. I laughed out loud so many times, mostly from the phrasing, the language and the not-so-far-from-reality nature of the setting. Now I'm making my husband read it. Way to go!!
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