Straight Man: A Novel

By Richard Russo

During this uproarious new novel, Richard Russo plays his attribute high-wire stroll among hilarity and heartbreak.  Russo's protagonist is William Henry Devereaux, Jr., the reluctant chairman of the English division of a badly underfunded collage within the Pennsylvania rust belt.  Devereaux's reluctance is in part rooted in his character--he is a born anarchist-- and in part within the indisputable fact that his division is extra savagely divided than the Balkans.  

In the process a unmarried week, Devereaux can have his nostril mangled by way of an offended colleague, think his spouse is having an affair together with his dean, wonder whether a curvaceous adjunct is making an attempt to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on neighborhood television.  All this whereas coming to phrases along with his philandering father, the dereliction of his younger promise, and the ominous failure of convinced important physique functions.  in brief, Straight Man is vintage Russo--side-splitting and true-to-life, witty, compassionate, and most unlikely to place down.

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Lily continuously loves to go away me with a prediction. “Jail? ” I ask. while I bend right down to kiss her, she says, ahead of our lips meet, “When’s your assembly with Dickie Pope? ” “This afternoon? No, day after today. ” honestly, I can’t have in mind. “Any directions? ” “Be the fellow you're. Be the fellow I married. ” Our lips meet. “Which? ” i need to understand. “Make up your brain. ” in a single day, posters have seemed at the outer doorways of contemporary Languages, one saying subsequent week’s donkey basketball video game pitting management opposed to college, the opposite asserting that military ROTC’s scheduled Saturday morning M-16 perform has been canceled. cause? Ammo didn't arrive. those neighborhood bulletins recommend how a lot the campus has replaced because the arrival of a definite younger, bearded, radical English professor named William Henry Devereaux, Jr. , over two decades in the past. again then, such indicators could were unthinkable. Now it’s challenging to visualize somebody objecting. The CIA recruits on campus, so it’s most likely applicable sufficient for senior school to saddle up diaper-clad donkeys for the aim of mocking recreation, our establishment of upper studying, the lifetime of the brain, and themselves, the send of dignity having sailed in the past. i actually am watching for the sport. The donkeys may still negate my age and lack of ability to run the short holiday. I’m convinced i will shoot from my ass. “I’m yes you can,” says a voice in the back of me. whilst I flip, I see that Mike legislations, Gracie’s husband, has arise at the back of me, and that I’m blocking off his front. It needs to be precise. I’m talking aloud with no figuring out it. “Nice nose,” he provides. Shaggy-bearded and stoop-shouldered, Mike legislations is the main morose-looking guy on campus, and that’s announcing anything. We stand dealing with one another, sheepish, middle-aged males, every one of whom fears he owes the opposite an apology. foolish, when you consider it. Mike is unquestionably no longer accountable for the habit of the girl who's his spouse. And if i've got come into clash with Gracie, goaded her to violence opposed to my individual, then I owe her, no longer her husband, an apology. but right here we stand, the 2 people, sharing an invalid emotion. nonetheless, approximately all of the feelings of fellows our age are it seems that invalid. “I’m advised I had it coming,” I admit. “I’m instructed a similar thing,” Mike informs me. “I’d continue my protect up if I have been you. I don’t imagine she’s complete. ” I nod and we shake arms. Why we should always shake palms is maybe as doubtful to Mike legislation because it is to me. “Stop via a few night and we’ll shoot a rack of pool,” he urges me, as he does each time we run into one another. Mike has spent the final 5 years completing his basement, the place he’s positioned a pool desk, a dartboard, a jukebox stocked with fifties rock and roll, and a rainy bar. He’s rumored to have a small keg of beer tapped within the spare fridge normally, and it’s a degree of his isolation that regardless of such enticements only a few of his colleagues will supply corporation for a guy so heavily depressed. “I’ve obtained my very own front now,” he explains, one other unhappy enticement.

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