Straight man
By: Richard Russo.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 391
Subjects: College teachers -- Fiction
Description: 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 goose, 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.