Straight Man

Richard Russo's campus satire Straight Man combines elements of David Lodge and Don DeLillo as it recounts the mid-life crisis of a professionally-frustrated English professor (William Henry Devereaux, Jr.) at a small Pennsylvania college (West Central Pennsylvania University). The petty turf wars, budgetary pressures, sexual tensions and PC flare-ups make for several extremely funny scenes. Devereaux knows how ridiculous it all is — a "promotion at an institution like West Central Pennsylvania University was a little bit like being proclaimed the winner of a shit-eating contest" — but, like most of us, he persists anyway.