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3.5 stars.This had parts I found interesting, some very funny scenes, some compassionate, and some where I tuned out. Russo's humor is wry and masculine. Often jokes are made at the expense of others (students, females, academic colleagues, and academia alike are targeted), but also self-deprecating. I adore him, but will probably always compare all his works to Empire Falls, a tough one to live up to. IMO.
4/5Well, I put off writing this review of Richard Russo’s Straight Man long enough so many of details that I enjoyed so much while reading are fading and hiding somewhere in the back of my mind. But I won’t let that stop me from sharing what I do remember. Russo’s protagonist, Henry “Hank” Devereaux, Jr. is a professor of English at a third rate college tucked into a rural corner of Pennsylvania. He is now in his fifties but was the promising bright young man when they hired him: a successful no...
Another good story from Richard Russo – I previously reviewed Empire Falls.This one is studded with humor. It’s really an academic novel, centered on a 49-year old professor (mid-life crisis?) at a lower-tier university, perhaps a branch campus, in a by-passed town in Pennsylvania. He is in the “sandwich generation” with a wife, whom he loves, who is a school principal, and two daughters. One married daughter lives in town and they worry about her financial situation and that she might be in an
Life's a duck! ... or a goose?Whatever!Sometimes you just have to grab it by the throat and give it a good shake if you want to make sense of it. As I tell my students, all good stories begin with character, and Teddy's rendering of the events fails entirely to render what it felt like to be William Henry Devereaux, Jr., as the events were taking place. Richard Russo strikes [gold] again!I definitely managed to get into the mind of Hank, an English teacher at a small university in Railton, Penns...
Richard Russo is one of my favorite authors. His books are always embedded in forlorn towns, circling around Dilapidated Central, suffering blue-collar havens, podunk as can be, with sell-by-dates splashed all over it. The people, towns, souls and minds have lost their initial charm while slowly sliding into obscurity. The atmosphere is always a bit depressing. The stories are always slow-moving, and satirical social commentary becomes the mainstay of all the conversations everywhere. FROM THE B...
I have read enough of Richard Russo’s novels to become very familiar with his style of writing and storytelling. The types of characters he creates, the settings in which he places his characters, how he builds his characters and the type of conflict he creates in his stories. While some level of predictability comes with this familiarity, I continue to enjoy Russo’s work. For one thing, he makes me laugh. I also enjoy his characters and find myself rooting for them despite their insistence on r...
Hilarious!!!! I imagine the guy from "House" playing this role in the film. Anyway, Russo is so funny and satiracle and wonderful and you will love and hate the main character because he will remind you of yourself in so many ways. Fabulous. It bothers me so much when people have such auper high expectations of a novel. IT IS FICTION, people, it isn't supposed to mimic real life, the characters aren't supposed to appear super realistic. The story is supposed to transport you to another time and
He lives his life as head of the English Department at a western Pennsylvania University.. Married, he is the father of grown children, the owner of a house and dog. The fifty years of his life has been dedicated to the fine honing of obstinate vengeance, the satisfaction of tripping others up, the culmination not of progressing himself or family but the endless monotone of self-destruction. These are the consequences with which he sculpts himself, along with a sealed isolation protecting him
William Henry “Hank” Devereaux is temporary chair of the humanities department of a bad community college with budget problems in Railton, PA. Hank is a scamp, a man who can’t seem to take anything seriously, and therefore this book is sometimes hilarious—a romp through the inane political infighting of academia from a man in the throes of a midlife crisis.Either I’m one of these people or I’m not. . . . I should either throw in my lot with them, live among them, my friends and colleagues, or ta...
Not much to say about this one. I was highly disappointed, reading this due solely because of my affinity for Russo's Pulitzer Prize winning "Empire Falls". This seemed as if it were written by a completely different author. The goose on the cover honestly gives the deceiving impression that this is funny or silly. Neither of which it is. Maybe it tries. An attempt in which it failed miserably. Mundane and uninteresting stories fill the novel, the telling of a week in the protagonist's middle ag...
Someone posted on a Goodreads book review the phrase "the late Richard Russo". I just about had a stroke. Russo is my favorite living (?) writer, and to think that he is gone, and also that I didn't even hear about it, was a stunning blow. A quick check revealed that he is not dead. Whew!My initial impression as I got into Straight Man was that both Russo's main character, Hank Devereaux, and the overall setup seemed Updikean. I love John Updike, but when I read Russo, I want Russo, not Updike.
