Rating: 
Summary: Russo=Genius, Straight Man=Perfection, Moo=Sucks
Review: 10 is an inadequate score because Straight Man is at another level of pefect entertainment. I've never enjoyed a book more, including Russo's 3 other masterpieces. After reading Doctors I loved Erich Segal and read all his books, but Russo is even better. By the way, the comparison of this book to Moo is only justified by setting, Moo isn't even very good without comparing it to Straight Man.
Rating:
Summary: I laughed out loud, again and again
Review: I hate to admit it, but I am the chair of an English department at a state university, and there is no doubt about it -- Russo has got it right, punturing the pretentions and small-mindedness that crop up all too often in modern academic life. Hey, we have our better sides (so does Russo's protagonist in this novel, and a few of his friends), but life in a near-the-millenium university is sometimes closer to farce than to high-minded mission. And whenever it is, you can be sure that Russo has captured it, skewered it, in this hilarious novel.
Rating:
Summary: A 10+
Review: This is so much more than a "college story." It is all of us wherever we work at our human best and worst. Russo's writing is so beautifully controlled that the reader just doesn't want to put the book down for fear of interupting the perfect flow.
Rating:
Summary: Funny, re-readable. A rare 10 for me.
Review: I laughed, I cried, I bought two copies so I could read one over and over again and still have one that looks nice! (Well, okay, I don't think I cried. But I did laugh out loud so that everyone else on the subway shuffled away from me.) The narrator, Hank Devereaux, is a likable but obnoxious eccentric who belongs in academia. I'm so glad Russo didn't make him good-looking, or I probably would've had a crush on him -- mostly because he's a stone riot, out loud and in his private thoughts, which sometimes escape him. I don't give out 10s frequently! His books always end too soon. This even made me wish I was back in school (yikes, that's surprising). I didn't like Mohawk, but did like all his other books -- try them if you liked Straight Man.
Rating:
Summary: Morituri te salutant
Review: Russo kills off academe very effectively in this satire.In real life, the caracters he descibes, are actually worse. And, unfortunately, the good guys never win. They are never anymore invited for Chablis and cake, and in the end are even ignored by the guys who clean the washrooms. If that doen't get them out, their department will be abolished. Mr. Russo did not write a comedy - he wrote a true-to-life tragedy.
Rating:
Summary: His Best Effort
Review: It is hard to believe, but Richard Russo has outdone himself. A dab hand at the craft of characterization and setting, Russo creates a landscape that has room for the elegance of medieval philosophy, the mind-numbing foolishness of academic life at a third-rate university, the inherent pathos of a man at mid-life, and the often transitory nature of even the most intimate of relationships. The bonus: Straight Man is laugh out loud funny. Read this book at once!
Rating:
Summary: Everyone needs a straight man
Review: I don't mind reading about deep-down, soul-searching questions, mid-life crises and all that stuff, though the gloom can get a little oppressive. But if the same content can be handled with wit and humor, so much the better. Then much has been added with nothing taken away but that gloom. Richard Russo's book is fun, laughs and giggles fun, all the while dealing with a small college professor's accumulated deluge of problems. And most of the problems are self-inflicted by his overwhelming need to use everyone else as his straight man. But as professor William Henry Devereaux says, there's no shortage of straight men (and women) in a small college, especially a small college's English department. Some of Professor Devereaux's problems include a department chairmanship he doesn't want but enjoys playing with, a faculty that despises him and abuses him with grievances, and friends who are sometimes enemies and enemies who are sometimes friends. Oh, and I forgot to mention his hilarious urine problem. And there's much, much more, almost unbelievably so in such a relatively short book, now that I think about it. By the way, if you've had your run-ins with administrators or managers, you'll appreciate this book's treatment (in a Dilbertesque sort of way) of the dilemmas that naturally arise. So read this fine book, and as I did, enjoy it immensely.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad, but recycles ground covered by Smiley and Hassler.
Review: This book has generated comparisons with Jane Smiley's "Moo." But it reminded me more of Jon Hassler's novels about academic life, "Rookery Blues" and "The Dean's List." While fairly satisfying, Russo's style and tone left me wanting. If you enjoyed "Straight Man" but want something even more insightful, funny and poignant, try Hassler.
Rating:
Summary: An hilarious look into the real workings of American academe
Review: The serious comic novel is an almost impossible invention. Can a writer be funny without sacrificing real characterization, important themes, and poignancy? Richard Russo's incredibly deft "Straight Man" is proof that the serious comic novel is possible. The novel is funny without being slapsticky, emotional without being sentimental, and, best of all, incisive in its examination of the state of American education. Wow. The novel's narrator, a smart-ass English professor (and long-time interim chair of the English Department) uses wisecracks to hide the fact that everything in his life seems to be falling apart, all at once. His long estranged father has returned. His prostrate is acting up, His daughter's marriage is ending amidst bankruptcy and adultery. And, worst of all, he is suspected of writing a list of fellow professors to be fired. Russo juggles a dozen different plot strands, tying it together with an engaging first-person narrator capable of making the reader laugh while infuriating
Rating:
Summary: True--truly hilarious and truly ionic and true to life
Review: As a retired English professor who taught in what might be the department shown in this book, I realize the truth of Russo's people and setting. Since I taught with Russo for several years, I know many of the characteristics he describes. Part of his brilliance is that no one character is straightly equivalent to one person. He mixes and matches. Several friends who are not academics and who don't know the department(s) he uses found the book as hilarious and as scathing as did I and several of my academic friends. Russo's ability to create people you don't want to leave (as in RISK POOL and NOBODY'S FOOL) is as its best in STRAIGHT MAN. I slowed my reading as I drew near the end, because I didn't want to leave the people Russo created. I understand there will be a movie, probably from Spielberg. I can't wait!
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