Russo's Straight Man is the funniest novel I've read in years. It's the kind of book you feel self-conscious reading on a bus because a solitary passenger suddenly bursting into laughter makes everyone else nervous. "Straight Man" is as funny as "Lucky Jim" was supposed to be, but wasn't.
Did anyone else feel like his talk was never ending? Every time he came back to the gravestone metaphor, I thought to myself "thank christ, he's finished". But alas, he would go into some other story that inevitably made the large old woman seated in front of me nod and say "uhhuh, he's right" every 10 seconds, and then proceed go into histerics with the punchline of the story.
My rule of thumb for these lectures is that if the buzz from my two pre-lecture martinis at Shuckers wears off while the lecture is going on, it has lasted too long.
@2: What a wise rule, I believe I will adopt it myself.
In general: I wanted to go to this (being from Maine, I'm required to like Richard Russo), but I knew I couldn't sell w7ngman on going and didn't want to to alone. Thanks for posting a recap!
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