SOURCE: Ingalls, Zoë. “A Novelist Finds Humor in Academic Woes.” Chronicle of Higher Education 43, no. 48 (8 August 1997): B8-B9.

In the following essay, Ingalls discusses the publication of Straight Man and Russo's use of his own experiences in the academic world as fictional material.

Richard Russo says his first attempt to write fiction wasn't just unsuccessful, “it was wretched.” You can picture him holding his nose at the other end of the phone. He's in Denver, on the first leg of a three-week, cross-country tour to promote his fourth and latest novel, Straight Man.

“It was not only bad,” he continues. “Almost anybody can write a bad story. But it was bad and pretentious.”

The pretension he attributes to being in the throes of a dissertation in English at the time. Only someone in such a position could write something that “exquisitely, painfully off,” he says. “It exhibits a...