SOURCE: Lee, Michael. Review of Straight Man, by Richard Russo. National Catholic Reporter 33, no. 41 (26 September 1997): 33.

In the following review, Lee asserts that Russo joins the ranks of several modern authors who satirize academia—Kingsley Amis, John Barth, and Jane Smiley, among others—with the publication of Straight Man.

No contemporary institution has felt the bite of novelistic parody and ridicule more keenly and more frequently than has academia. From Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim and John Barth's End of the Road in the 1950s to David Lodge's more recent novels and Jane Smiley's Moo, the academy has been laid bare in the comic mode with far more regularity than the military, the law, science or even Madison Avenue.

While some would suggest that this is because the university has become a parody of itself, the more obvious explanation is that parody is an inside job, and there are more...