I am not sure I understand the title as I do not think it
applies to the main character. William
Henry Devereaux, Jr. seemed anything but straight. He liked to think of his
wife having affairs, had sexual thoughts about his secretary and a grad student.
Maybe the fact that he thought without acting made him the straight man. He also was not the best liked person on the
campus. His department seemed to relish
filing grievances against him. This being said, I went on line to see why the
book was so well received.
A straight man is the person who gives insight into a
comedy. Having read that I can see the title has relevance. The life WHD, Jr lived was a comedy, or so he
thought. He might simply have been trying to rationalize his complacency in
living on the reputation built by his first, and only, novel. One might psychoanalyze him as being another
man trying to live up to and make amends for the mistakes his father had. While he had thoughts about other women and
never acted upon them, his father seemed to go after many women, switching one
for the next until he finally returned home to his first wife and the mother of
his child when he was ill.
One thing I did like about the book was when he learned that
his father was not the great teacher he though. Dad got stage fright. WHD, Jr was surprised by this.
The relationships with his own daughters seemed to reflect
the relationship he had with his own parents. Everyone in the book is
flawed. Some drink too much, some spend
too much. Others are hanging on in jobs they should give up.
As strange as I found the book, I did recognize a lot of
educational politics in the book. That
made it a bit more real for me.
As this is presented as a comedy I will admit that I found
the parts with the duck/goose hilarious!
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