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Bezig met laden... Straight Man: A Novel (origineel 1997; editie 1998)door Richard Russo (Auteur)
Informatie over het werkStraight Man door Richard Russo (1997)
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The narrator of Richard Russo's hilarious fourth novel is a man whom nearly everyone finds exasperating. It is not hard to see why. William Henry Devereaux Jr. can never swallow a quip or a saucy comeback, nor does he try to. Stick a wisenheimer like him in a dour, paranoid college English department (has there ever been another kind?) and comedy can practically be guaranteed. But Russo, the author of the novels ''Mohawk,'' ''The Risk Pool'' and ''Nobody's Fool,'' is interested in more than generating laughter, and ''Straight Man'' strikes me as the funniest serious novel I have read since -- well, maybe since ''Portnoy's Complaint.'' Comfortably, if complacently, married, and the father of two grown daughters, Hank Devereaux is a midcareer academic a month shy of his 50th birthday. Like most of his tenured colleagues, he is amazed still to be ensconced at West Central Pennsylvania University, a third-rate state school. ''We have believed, all of us, like Scuffy the Tugboat,'' he says, ''that we were made for better things.'' But while committee work, departmental politics, annual budget cuts, puny raises and ''the increasingly militant ignorance'' of students have soured and embittered his fellow academics, Hank refuses to sing the professorial blues, to participate in feuds, to bed any students or to curry favor with Dickie Pope, the oily and malignant campus executive officer. It does seem possible, though, even likely, that being stuck for so long (two decades and counting) in the stale and dreary town of Railton has made him reckless and a little bit crazy. After all, here is a man -- the interim department chairman, no less -- who will gleefully tease the touchy and extravagantly perfumed faculty poet, then find it entertaining when she hauls off and slams him in the face with a fat notebook, bloodying his nose and hooking his left nostril with the barbed end of the spiral ring. ''People who know me,'' he says, ''refuse to take me seriously.'' Which is just how he wants it. Which is not to suggest that Hank Devereaux does not have his devils. His chief devil happens to be his own father, a philandering ''academic opportunist'' whose books of trendy literary criticism guaranteed him a career of cushy appointments at the best universities. All intellect and no heart, the famous scholar abandoned his wife and young son for the pursuit of academic laurels and the smiles of pretty female graduate students. ''I have inherited from my father most of what I had hoped to avoid,'' Hank muses in one of his many endearing moments of self-deprecation. ''When all is said and done, I'm an English professor, like my father. The most striking difference between him and me is that he's been a successful one.'' At the age of 29, Hank published a novel called ''Off the Road.'' It was respectfully received, but quickly remaindered. He has never started a second one. These days, when he writes at all, he writes satirical columns about university life for the local newspaper. As in Russo's earlier novels, there is a lot of ambling and driving around, and frequent stops along the way. Plot is a minor consideration. Things happen, of course: in a concentrated period of time, less than a week, Hank's ailing father shows up in Railton, and his younger daughter's rocky marriage abruptly ends; Hank is arrested, hospitalized, charged with dereliction of duty and romantically pursued by a colleague's daughter. The novel's greatest pleasures derive not from any blazing impatience to see what happens next, but from pitchperfect dialogue, persuasive characterization and a rich progression of scenes, most of them crackling with an impudent, screwball energy reminiscent of Howard Hawks's movies. (In its most inspired set piece, Hank -- wearing a fake nose and glasses -- appears on local television facetiously threatening to kill a duck a day until he gets a department budget. ''This is a nonnegotiable demand,'' he snarls. ''I want the money on my desk in unmarked bills by Monday morning.'') Hank's perambulations and cumulative misadventures in his town-and-gown world, like that famous Irishman's around Dublin, are fateful ones. Always infusing the comedy are sadness and smothered panic. ''I appear to be a man in trouble,'' Hank finally admits to himself while hunkered in a filthy ceiling crawl space, about to eavesdrop on his convened department mates. It occurs to him that perhaps all of his anarchic Robin Williams-type role playing might actually be a deep-rooted ploy to self-destruct. Russo is a traditionalist when it comes to conclusions. His meandering stories inevitably bring their major players to a new place, or at least to a new vantage on things. Before ''Straight Man'' ends, in an epilogue that jumps us from April to August, Hank Devereaux has run an emotional gantlet, and he has been changed by the experience, though not, of course, changed utterly. He has made a tolerable peace with himself and his predicaments. For Richard Russo's small-town Americans, contentment is always understood as a temporary state, just as exuberant high spirits are recognized as a thin, but useful, disguise for sorrow. PrijzenOnderscheidingenErelijsten
William Henry Devereaux, Jr., spiritually suited to playing left field but forced by a bad hamstring to try first base, is the unlikely chairman of the English department at West Central Pennsylvania University. Over the course of a single convoluted week, he threatens to execute a duck, has his nose slashed by a feminist poet, discovers that his secretary writes better fiction than he does, suspects his wife of having an affair with his dean, and finally confronts his philandering elderly father, the one-time king of American Literary Theory, at an abandoned amusement park. Such is the canvas of Richard Russo'sStraight Man, a novel of surpassing wit, poignancy, and insight. As he established in his previous books --Mohawk,The Risk Pool, andNobody's Fool-- Russo is unique among contemporary authors for his ability to flawlessly capture the soul of the wise guy and the heart of a difficult parent. In Hank Devereaux, Russo has created a hero whose humor and identification with the absurd are mitigated only by his love for his family, friends, and, ultimately, knowledge itself. Unforgettable, compassionate, and laugh-out-loud funny,Straight Mancements Richard Russo's reputation as one of the master storytellers of our time. From the Hardcover edition. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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