Rating: 
Summary: I laughed so hard
Review: The wonderful car ride at the beginning of the book paved a good read. What a champ Richard Russo is to his readers.
Rating: 
Summary: I don't get it.
Review: I must be missing something. I found this story about an ordinary college english teacher to be quite dull. Not funny at all, in fact I found Hank to be one of the most irritating characters of any book I've ever read, I think maybe he was supposed to be that way but why would anyone want to read about it!? Nothing happens in the week or so that this book takes place in his life at least nothing to write an entire novel about. My advice would be to skip it, there are so many other good books out there!
Rating: 
Summary: What really is important in life
Review: I think that is the main subject of this book. Not that it is a long, corny lecture. Much on the contrary, it is a very funny novel, full of sarcasms and dark humor. Hank Devereaux, the son of English professors who had a painful divorce when he was a kid, is chair of the English department at a second-rate university in Pennsylvania. There is much politics going on there, for there are rumors that budget cuts -and layoffs- are on their way. So Hank's colleagues are giving him a hard time trying to find out if he's really going to set up a list of fired-to-be.At the same time, hank is having physical ailments and some difficult situations with his family, so the week in his life that we are witnesses to is full with bizarre situations, troublesome for him but funny for us. But Hank hangs on to his sense of humor in order to go through this week, revealing us a small world of pettiness, mediocrity and full humanity. But don't think this is just a gag-after-gag book. Below the sarcastic surface, there are deeper situations and human actions, some kind, some awful. Despite his grumpy style, Hank is a good guy and he gets to discover he has real friends. I liked the book but I especially liked him. And when you care about the characters, you keep reading.
Rating:
Summary: Humor in academia
Review: After reading Empire Falls and thoroughly enjoying it, I knew I'd have to read more Richard Russo. This, my second Russo book, while not quite the same caliber of Empire Falls, is still a very good book. Straight Man is the story of William Henry Devereaux, an English professor plagued with political maneuvering at the college he works at, where budget cuts threaten various jobs. Meanwhile, he is suffering from physical ailments and doubts about the happiness of his wife and daughter. It could be typical mid-life crisis stuff, but Russo's humor and writing ability make the story stand out. There can be a couple different messages you can get out of this book. The one that stands out for me is that education does not remove pettiness or irrationality; Devereaux and his coworkers may have a lot of knowledge, but it doesn't stop them from acting in less-than-high-minded manners. Not that lack of education is much better, as depicted by other characters, including Devereaux's daughter and father-in-law. It's just that education, by itself, is not enough to make someone a good person or, sometimes, even a competent one. This is a good book which reminds me a lot of Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys as they cover similar ground, but the emphasis here is more on humor. For almost any fiction reader, this is a good book to read.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone battles for the role of Straight Man
Review: The protagonist is William
Henry Devereaux, Jr., acting chair of the English department of an underfunded regional state university in Pennsylvania...
While some interesting turns of events occur that seem to contrive to save "Lucky Hank" Devereaux's professional career, the book ultimately seems to deal with the question of what's really important in life, and it also seems to suggest the possibility that people actually do have options in life even if they don't seem to think they have.
It's a very funny but also very poignant book, and I'd recommend it, especially to anybody who's ever been involved in higher education at a state supported institution. Overall, the novel was very engaging. The plot just trips along incessantly. His days are long and filled with absurdity, not a small amount of it of his own making. The writing is very, very clever, and is also loaded with allusions to literature and pop culture that make it a trip to read aloud with another. Sometimes he gets it; sometimes you do. I also found the characters all to be fully developed; as in most good books, the people around the main character, whether he liked them or not were not all good or all evil, and part of the beauty of the book is in "Lucky Hank's" discovery of this gray area in others. The suffering never seems to end here, but it's not excruciating; it's just kind of touching and funny at times.
Rating:
Summary: Life in Academia
Review: Wry and humorous side of life between college faculty and administration on and off campus. Memorable, true-to-life characters.
Rating:
Summary: funny and truthful
Review: Heh. :) It's ironically funny how many reviews of this novel sound like they were written by the sort of characters that Russo skewers. If you know anything about academia, you'll either be mortally offended or--if you know something about academia but somehow still have an ounce of sense--you'll find this both one of the saddest and one of the most hilarious books around. And if you've had any experience with mid-life crises, well, see the paragraph above for the same options. This book is fun, funny, and truthful. If you've been interested enough in it to read this many reviews, you'd better go ahead and read the book.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: Creating a caricature of an English Department is gilding the lily. For readers in the know, it's always hard to determine where exaggeration leaves off and realistic representation begins. Richard Russo, certainly not the first to choose this subject, manages to present the idle fingers of such a world with great wit and balance while delving into the psychological problems of his complex and sympathetic protagonist. Russo is as close to being an heir to Charles Dickens as any living writer in English. Like that master, one of his strengths is the wealth of secondary characters, vivid, diverse, believable, and coherently involved in plot and theme. He is very funny, but funny in a serious context and with brave true things to say about the world. The Pulitzer Prize Committee should show this kind of judgment every year.
Rating: 
Summary: Amusing Tale
Review: This novel about academia does not employ the barbed wit of some of the biting observations of the ivory tower (e.g. "Pas de Deux," "Mickellson's Ghosts") although the protagonist likes to think he does. The story does not portray in depth the characters that fuel the absurd environment of college faculties, although there are some broad-stroke collegiate types. The situations are farcical enough, but the book reads more like Smiley's "Moo" than Lurie's "Foreign Affairs." The story is told from the point of view of a middle-aged professor whose dreams and aspirations have leaked out of him during his tenure at a third-rate state university branch. As such, this is an interesting premise. Unfortunately, the author does not provide incisive-enough observation to allow the reader to understand the character despite his self-delusions and denial. The protagonist sees himself as more raucously funny than he actually is. The cast of supporting characters is sometimes sketchily drawn, with many of the prime players-- the wife, for example-- out of the story for the majority of the book. The author's symbolism is at turns obscure and obvious. And like some of the reviewers on this site, I felt the plot was fairly insipid and ennervating to the novel. The book does display, however, the author's command of language and his amusing take on dialogue. Good for beach reading, this snack is less substantial than a literary meal.
Rating:
Summary: Funny and poignant
Review: I have just finished reading Richard Russo's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Empire Falls, and decided to look back on what else Russo had written. It dawned on me that Straight Man was my personal introduction to his work. Narrator, Hank Devereaux is full of middle age angst. He takes a hard and very funny (bitter-sweet)look at his life of mediocrity as a teacher, parent and human. Other reviewers have outlined the story better than I can recall it. The fact is, though, that upon skimming a few customer reviews, the personality and foibles of Devereaux returned to me as if I had read the novel last week. In fact, I read it in 1998 when it was first released. That Straight Man is so memorable bespeaks its excellence.
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