Sunday, December 17, 2006

Straight Man

I don't recommend books very often for the simple reason that time that I would be spending reading fun ones is usually spent keeping up with the federal tax code and other such head-turning legal literature.

However, Ursa gave me a copy of Straight Man, and I've made the time to read it and not been sorry--even though it's taken me a month to finish it. There are very few books that can cause me to laugh out loud, but this one did the trick. It's a delightful fictional account of one man's tenure as an interim head of an English department at a small university in western Pennsylvania. The main character is absolutely the life and heart of this book, as he lives solely to wreck havoc on the well-ordered world of academe around him for his own perverse entertainment in the middle of his midlife crisis.

The synopsis on booksamillion.com sums it up pretty well:

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'll have to check it out. Looks good.