Straight Man

Straight Man, by Richard Russo

Put any of the novels that you might have missed by the irrepressible Richard Russo on your summer reading list. Straight Man is a complete hoot.
It's a savvy, sweet satire. Russo sends up small college town life, particularly the bureaucracy of academe. Somewhere in west central Pennsylvania a not top-notch institution of higher education is struggling with its budget for the year to come. Fifty-something-year-old Hank is the reluctant English Department Head pro tem.
Hank's had a one hit wonder literary career that peaked decades ago. Not ambitious, he's riding just a bit on his father's relative literary fame.
As the inevitable year-end job slashing rumors rise, his department of quarrelsome increasingly hysterical egotistical professors plot mutiny against him and the administration bean counters. Academic love-hate relations abound. Hank is finally driven to instigate a bizarre media campaign. He's going to kill a duck a day at the campus pond for tv news until fiscal sanity (as defined by the English profs) is restored. Enjoy the romp.
-Sue