Though the quests for tenure and priority are generously detailed, and though Hank's relationship with his long-absent father reaches a satisfying closure, plot is only secondary (or maybe tertiary or quaternary) in a Russo novel. And, in addition to possible prostate cancer, Hank is assailed by even more undignified woes: His nose is bloodied by a poet's notebook, and he's suspected (with good reason) of murdering a goose-and of even worse things-by a hilarious, vividly rendered cadre of fellow academics, townspeople, and students, each of whom is sharply individualized.

Hank's crushes on various women, including a colleague's adult daughter, complicate his otherwise passive devotion to his no-nonsense wife Lily. The state legislature promises to eviscerate his departmental budget. A nearby married daughter is having husband trouble. Hank tries to keep his wits about him by adopting the philosophical principle known as Occam's Razor (that the simplest explanation of a phenomenon or problem is usually the correct one), but his life keeps getting in the way. is a one-shot novelist (Off the Road) who's settled into an embattled stint as department head at an academic sinkhole where he finds it prudent to simply tread water and go with the flow (anyway, promotion in an institution like West Central Pennsylvania University was a little like being proclaimed the winner of a shit-eating contest). Writing teacher William Henry Hank Devereaux Jr. A gloriously funny and involving fourth novel from the author of such comfortable-as-old-shoes fictions as Mohawk (1986) and Nobody's Fool (1993).

Straight man richard russo review