Straight Man

This novel maybe should have been funnier for me, but I think it hit too close to home -- it's about a professor in a small college in western Pennsylvania who is having a mid-life crisis. Throw in the fact that his only real success was the one book he wrote, and he seems unable to write another, and the whole thing is like someone's been spying on me! Anyway, the book is fun and funny, and a very fast read -- it's witty without being glib (ok, not too glib), and it proceeds apace. Despite its many laughs and witticisms, its message of slow decay was kind of dispiriting, I thought. Forget that stuff! I will not go gently into that good night. Well, ask me again in ten years!