Straight Man by Richard Russo.
Unlike most of the books that I summarize, this one is a novel, a novel approach for Bob at the Bookshelf in the Basement in Boston.
In 2002, Richard Russ won a Pulitzer Prize for <em>Empire Falls</em>, which was about life in a small Maine town that was hollowing out due to the loss of good jobs at good wages. That was a serious book that captured the highs and lows of people trying to cope with changes in their lives and livelihoods.
Straight Man, which was written in 1997, is not as serious, at least in tone. The book chronicles ten days in the life of William Henry Devereaux, Jr., a professor at West Central Pennsylvania University. His father, William Henry Devereaux, Sr. and his wife, were “academic nomads” until WHD Sr. hit it big when he wrote a book that became a staple in college English departments. After that, two things happened. WHD Sr. was sought after by prestigious higher educational institutions, and he left his family to pursue academic pursuits and comely young women.
Henry Jr. followed his parents into academia and wrote a moderately successful novel at age 29. That, and his father's success, got him an appointment to West Central Pennsylvania University, where he is currently serving as acting head of the English department, which is akin to herding cats. It’s April and his colleagues are having their annual panic as they fear that budget cuts by the state legislature will lead to layoffs. To the extent that there is a plot, this is it. The possibility that some people will lose their teaching situations frames most of what happens in the book.
Professor Devereaux’s hero is William of Occam, a medieval Franciscan friar and an independent thinker who was eventually excommunicated by Pope XXII for questioning the church’s teaching. Devereaux admires the friar because of his gift to later generations, Occam’s Razor, a principle which states that the simplest explanation of something is usually correct. That most things in life are just not that complicated is a benchmark belief of the book’s protagonist.
Russo’s books are known for his superb way with words and his memorable characters, who tend to be everyday people who have to navigate through the eddies and currents that can get in the way of a smooth sail through life. Since the book is about a college, faculty members are a major piece of the narrative. As a college department head, WHD Jr. doesn’t really get to manage his staff, but he does have to humor them to keep things from unraveling.
The book starts off with a female feminist professor, Grace (who doesn’t have much grace), throwing a spiral notebook at the department head and cutting his nose. She was miffed at something he said at a meeting, no surprise since WHD Jr. is a wise guy who takes very little seriously, especially his colleagues.
Grace the notebook-thrower is jealous of him because of his one-hit wonder book. She calls Devereaux a successful writer which he finds indicative of the “low expectations held around here. My slender book, published twenty years ago, and forgotten the year after, is the cause of Gracie’s insecurity. The last thousand copies of the eight thousand print run were purchased by the campus bookstore at remainder price and sold there for full jacket price for the last fifteen years. Last I checked, there were a couple of hundred left. Who but Gracie would be jealous of such success?”
The faculty members are a motley crew, besides the aforementioned Grace. One feminist male professor refuses to use textbooks because they are phallo-centric. He is up for tenure but maintains that he would not vote to grant himself tenure because of sexism he was probably hired instead of a more deserving woman. Another older academic dumped his first wife and can’t keep up with his much younger second wife who is stoned a lot of the time. Tony, one of WHD Jr.’s best friends in the department, is what we would politely call a hound; he chases younger women, including students (only those in graduate programs), a no-no even in 1997. Another professor, Bill Quigley, drinks a lot and is always angry. He has 10 kids and is constantly trying to get more money out of department head Devereaux so he can pay to put them through college. His daughter, Meg, is an adjunct professor who flirts with WHD Jr. a bit. Nothing happens, but they both enjoy it.
Professor Finny had a nervous breakdown and spent two weeks as a transvestite. His soon-to-be ex-wife got him treatment and left him. He returned to the classroom, “and since then caused no problems unless you consider his arrogant incompetence and brain-scalding classroom tedium problematic.” Finny is an ABD (all but dissertation - he finished his doctoral course work but didn’t finish the dissertation). During the last year, “He has become the proud recipient of a PH. D. from American Sonora University, an institution that exists, so far as we’ve been able to determine, only on letterhead and in the form of a post office box in Del Rio, Texas, the onetime home, if I am not mistaken, of Wolfman Jack.” (That is correct. Early in his career, legendary radio disc jockey Wolfman Jack worked out of an unlicensed pirate radio station in Mexico, just across the border from Del Rio, TX.)
Rachel is Devereaux’s administrative assistant. He lusts after her in a fairly wholesome manner. She is really good at keeping him organized, and it turns out that she may be a better writer than he is.
Devereaux is in trouble with the faculty union for various things. For one, the English department has fifteen grievances pending, more than all of the other departments combined. WHD Jr. sees this as good. “These grievances are the only sign of life we’ve had from some of these folks for years.”
The faculty union rep “has been begging for an audience for weeks, probably in order to discuss my continuing misconduct as interim chair, a position I’ve been elected to precisely because my lack of administrative skill is legend.” WHD Jr. believes that he got the job because, “I am regarded throughout the university as a militant procedural incompetent.” People in the know were sure that he couldn't accomplish anything, so he was a perfect choice for interim department head.
WHD Jr. is semi-happily married to Lily, a high school teacher. They get along well, but he does lust in his heart for other women, including a professor who is a lesbian in the Women’s Studies department. Both his wife and the professor understand his tendency to get high school crushes on women. For most of the period of time covered in the book, Lily is out-of-town for a job interview. Before leaving, she admonished her husband not to do anything stupid while she was away, advice he pretty much ignored.
The Devereauxs have two daughters. Karen is away and shows up at the end of the book for a summer cookout. The other, Julie, lives near her parents and is in a troubled marriage where money is tight and both partners are frustrated. She never finished college, which is OK with her mother and father but scandalous to the rest of the English faculty. WHD Jr. is having a heart-to-heart talk with Russell, Julie’s husband, who is spraying a wasp’s nest with insect killer. During the conversation, WHD Jr. realizes that Russell is spraying a nest from last year, but the son-in-law is enjoying soaking the nest so much that WHD Jr. doesn’t want to spoil his fun.
WHD Jr. is turning 50, magic time for a mid-life crisis for a guy. He’s having trouble urinating and self-diagnoses a kidney stone, which his doctor assures him is not his problem. We don’t know what is causing the health issue until the end of the book, but WHD Jr.’s urinary tract situation presents some pretty funny moments as the story unwinds and he tries to find bathrooms.
One of the underlying points of the book is that youthful ambition often gives way to comfortable inertia as one grows older. WHD Jr., the author of a book that got a good review in the <em>New York Times</em> 20 years ago, now writes for the local paper – book and movie reviews and an occasional column on the university. His agent keeps asking him when he’ll write another book and he keeps not answering her.
Most of the characters in the book are frustrated because they didn't make the move – or at least try – to get something better. Most of the members of the English department have been there for a long time.
“We hadn’t, any of us, intended to allow the pettiness of committee work, departmental politics, daily lesson plans, and the increasingly militant ignorance of our students let so many years slip by. And now in advancing middle age we’ve chosen, wisely perhaps, to be angry with each other rather than with ourselves. We’ve preferred not to face the distinct possibility that if we’d been made for better things, we’d have done those things.”
Professor WHD Jr. and wife teacher Lily live in a nice house in a one-size-fits-all development in Allegheny Wells, the next town over from Railton where the college is located. Twenty years earlier, WHD Jr. used the advance from his book to buy the place, which they assumed would just be the launching pad for a distinguished career in higher education. That never happened. WHD Jr. never got his PhD and they became comfortable in the starter university and they stayed in the starter house.
The college is in rough shape as the Pennsylvania economy dips because of the loss of manufacturing jobs. Railton has been especially hard hit, with the closing of its factories and a dramatic reduction in the train traffic that used to run through the town moving its goods all over the country.
Much of the book revolves around Professor Devereaux’s trying to figure out if this budget cycle will lead to staff reductions, which would represent a departure from the previous 20 years where rumors of layoffs ran rampant with no one losing a job. That’s his Occam’s Razor point: Since there never have been staff cuts, there won’t be this time.
He and the dean of liberal arts meet at the local bowling alley that has great luncheon specials. Dean Jacob Rose reveals nothing, so Deveraux has no information to share with his colleagues who constantly bug him about the budget.
A subplot revolves around the return of WHD Jr.’s father, WHD Sr., to the family house where Junior’s mother lives. Dad has not visited his family for ten years, while essentially being out of their lives for almost forty years. WHD Jr.’s mother, a retired academic, is not warm and fuzzy. She is being courted by a local businessman, Mr. Purty, who likes WHD Jr. and gives him a fake nose and glasses to cover up his “mutilated nostril” courtesy of Professor Grace’s throwing the spiral notebook at him.
The fake nose is important. Professor Tony and WHD Jr. go to watch a press conference announcing the start of construction of a new technical center. Tony has his eyes on the woman TV reporter while Devereaux is wondering how they can build this huge edifice yet worry about not having enough money to maintain staffing levels. Right before the activities begin, someone spooks the ducks and geese who frequent the campus pond. The reporter goes nuts because the squawking birds are messing up her sound level. Deveraux is attacked by one of the geese who goes after the fake nose/glasses he’s holding in his hand. WHD Jr. grabs the glasses from the goose and puts them on. Meanwhile, the reporter and camera crew walk over to get an interview about the new building. Devereaux, ticked off at the combative goose, grabs him by the neck. The light goes on and the videotape rolls and WHD Jr. is on-camera.
He identifies himself as a professor and department head and then proceeds to rail against spending all of this money on a building yet letting faculty languish. As the goose in his hand is loudly trumpeting, WHD Jr. ends by saying, “So here’s the deal. Starting Monday, I kill a duck a day until I get a budget. This is a non-negotiable demand… or this guy will be soaking in orange sauce and full of cornbread stuffing by Monday night.” Please note that he is holding a goose, not a duck, but who notices.
Just about now, the university CEO and the local state representative drive up and WHD Jr. observes that, “They are not men of great imagination, but one can hardly blame them for not being prepared for this particular contingency, the sight of a tweed-jacketed, tenured, middle-aged senior professor and department chair in a fake nose and glasses, brandishing a live, terrified goose.”
Devereaux becomes a local and even national hero as the news report is shown on ABC’s Good Morning America. He is celebrated at the local bar and rises in stature on campus.
There is a lot of inside academic baseball in the book, especially about how to get tenure – being obsequious or outrageous seems to lead to success. Department heads have to go to a lot of silly meetings. Be nice to the university CEO, especially when he is really irritated at you for the goose stunt which puts pressure on everyone in leadership to come up with full funding.
Devereaux finally meets with Herbert, the union rep, who wants him to support a strike which WHD Jr. thinks is silly since the semester is almost over. He and the rep go back and forth. Herbert, in commenting on all of the grievances in the English department, says “I know it runs deeper than that. You think we defend incompetence and promote mediocrity.” To which Devereaux replies, “I wish you would promote mediocrity, Mediocrity is a reasonable goal for our institution.” This reply does not sit well with Herbert.
Devereaux does teach students who range between “the vocal clueless and the quietly pensive.” He is concerned that college students “have learned from their professors that persuasion – reasoned argument – no longer holds a favored position in university life. If their professors – feminists, Marxists, historicists, assorted other theorists– belong to suspicious, gated intellectual communities that are less interested in talking to each other than in staking out territory and furthering agendas, why learn to debate?”
As the semester winds down, Devereaux faces more pressure to tell his faculty what to expect concerning possible layoffs. He has no idea. He is accused of having a list of the people to be terminated if the budget is cut, which he doesn’t have. While he realizes that many professors come up a bit short, he likes his colleagues and does not want to see them dismissed.
The troops do rise up and call a meeting to vote to dismiss the interim department head, WHD Jr. Ted, one of his faculty members, comes in to ask Devereaux to not make a farce out of the meeting to bounce him. Professor Ted says that the English department has been a joke on campus for long enough. Devereaux thinks that “in an English department, the serious competition is for the role of straight man.”
As it turns out the budget takes forever to be released and two geese are killed. (Don’t forget that WHD Jr. threatened to kill ducks.) Most people don’t think Devereaux did it. He was kidding with his threat, most believe. The dean of liberal arts knows that his favorite department head didn’t do it because he didn’t think WHD Jr. could take a goose in a fair fight. Because of constant pressure from his faculty, being ignored by the administration, and believing that he has a fatal disease in his urinary tract, Devereaux tells his agent on a phone call that “This day is already the worst month of my life.”
After initially failing to get a second on the motion to recall Devereaux as department head, the faculty finally got it together. A two-thirds vote barely removes the chair, who is in a crawl space above the conference room observing things.
Undeterred because he expected it, WHD Jr. goes off to talk to his daughter Julie’s wayward husband, Russell. It’s a good talk, and both partners in the marriage have some work to do. Russell goes off to Atlanta to a new job, which will give him an income for a change and provide the couple with some space to sort things out.
WHD Jr. and Professor Tony go out to dinner that night, get drunk, and end up in the local jail. They walk once the cops figure out that they have bagged Devereaux, he of the goose/duck threat. Who says academics aren’t privileged?
The semester is just about over as is Devereaux’s career as department head. It turns out that Occam’s Razor didn’t work for WHD Jr. For the first time in decades, the university’s budget was cut, with the loss of four positions in the English department. And, it turns out that there is a list of cuts that was made up by the dean.
WHD Jr. spends time with WHD Sr., the wayward dad who finally shows up. Dad is still a selfish jerk, but he is now a really old jerk. Father and son take a walk through a shuttered midway in town and sort of reconnect. Ever the academic, WHD Sr. says that he wishes he had paid more attention to Charles Dickens work. WHD Jr. figures out that his father is sort of apologizing so they are semi-good.
The book nicely winds down. The four people who lost jobs in the English department were reassigned to other positions, generally to places where they’d probably do a better job. Former department head Devereaux is offered the position of dean of liberal arts which he turns down and resigns from the university.
After the semester ends, WHD Jr. falls down and hits his head. He has some great dreams while he’s unconscious and wakes up a new man. He probably collapsed due to stress, the same thing that probably caused his urinary tract problems. He does not have cancer. WHD Jr. has lost his sophomoric infatuation with women other than his wife Lily, and their marriage is really solid. Lily is made principal of her high school. Julie and her husband are working things out.
Money is no problem for the Devereauxs now. Although WHD Jr. resigned from the university, it turns out that he is owed a sabbatical which he takes. The new university CEO, old friend and former liberal arts dean, Jacob Rose, finds a grant so that WHD Jr. and Lily can run a college program at the high school. Finally, his agent calls up and says that Devereaux’s publisher saw him during his fifteen minutes of fame throttling a goose and was impressed. He wants Devereaux to put his newspaper columns into a book, along with some new essays, so he will be published again.
The Devereauxs throw a summer barbeque that reunites his English department staff and just about everybody else in their life. It goes well. Sometime later, Tony, who is off to Pittsburgh for his sabbatical, drops by. After drinking a bit and having a very muddled conversation about the true meaning of <em>Beowulf</em>, the two friends muse about their lives. Tony says that for most of our lives we live in a Season of Work. We do things. We accomplish things. We’re very busy. Later, as we age, we move into a Season of Grace – quieter, more introspective, but still very important and memorable.
Not a bad way to end a great book.
Bob’s Take
This is probably the best book I’ve read over this past pandemic year, and it resonates with me on a lot of levels. While it’s a send-up of academia, it’s also about a lot more that is part of everyone’s life – dreams, hopes, fears, family, friends, geese.
William Henry Devereaux, Jr. is an interim dean at a stressed-out public university during bad times. In a 2007 New York Times interview, author Russo said: "Whenever you have a 'southern' or a 'northern' or an 'eastern' or a 'western' before an institution's name, you know it will be wildly underfunded."
>Russo is an older Baby Boomer with a doctorate who spent a lot of time teaching college before he hit it big as an author. He is about the same age as Devereaux. Russo knows of what he speaks.
I have never been a professor but I spent ten years doing university research and rainmaking to get money to fund such. I’ve been on the edge of the academy, and even from there it looks pretty silly sometimes. Many years ago, in my exit interview after my master’s degree, the head of the department asked me if I planned on getting a doctorate. I told him probably. He asked me if I wanted to teach college. I assured him that I did not. He said that was good because I would have a hard time tolerating faculty meetings. He knew me well.
Straight Man was written in 1997, before the nation was as politically polarized as it is now. Russo wrote this about faculty meetings: “Anyone who observed us would conclude the purpose of all academic discussion was to provide the grounds for becoming further entrenched in our original positions.” It seems that the peculiarities of academic discussion have moved out into the general population where many people are really set in their beliefs and don’t want to hear anything else.
The protagonist is turning 50 and having a mid-life crisis. His life sometimes threatens to go off the rails. He was very damaged when his father abandoned the family when he was 9 years old, and his mother wasn’t the most caring person. He’s sometimes infatuated with other women, which confuses him because he has a good marriage. One of his daughters is in a crumbling marriage. He thinks that much of his professional life is just silly. He doesn’t take too much too seriously, which infuriates many of his colleagues and increases tension, although it keeps him sane.
Life can be confusing, especially when we’re living it fully. As Devereaux muses, “Because the truth is, we never know for sure about ourselves. Who we’ll sleep with if given the opportunity, who we’ll betray in the right circumstance, whose faith and love we will reward with our own.”
“Which is why we have spouses and children and parents and colleagues and friends, because someone has to know us better than we know ourselves. We need to tell them to tell us.”
That’s what friends and family are for. First, they provide us with the scaffolding we need to build our lives. Then, if things go awry, they’re our guardrails. They’re there when you need them.
Bob at the Bookshelf and a Movie On a related note, last night Sue and I watched <em>Nobody’s Fool</em>, the 1994 movie that was based on Richard Russo’s 1993 book of the same name. It was great. It’s available on Amazon Prime. Paul Newman is the lead, and it is one of his better performances. The movie captures the style and tone of Russo’s writing and, it finishes in a really nice way. The poker game near the end of the movie is one of the funniest scenes we have ever seen in a film. If you don’t like hilarious upper body full frontal nudity, fast forward by it.
