Is ‘Straight Man,’ Bob Odenkirk’s attempt to create his own Big Lebowski?
Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: An aimless professor at a backwoods university creates a stir when he threatens to exterminate the local duck population if his college doesn’t get its act together and provide his department with a budget.
About: This is the big AMC project that will keep Bob Odenkirk in the fold after Better Call Saul. The book was written by Richard Russo in 1997. It’s being led by Aaron Zelman (supervising producer on Silicon Valley) and Paul Lieberstein (HR rep and Michael Scott foil, Toby Flenderstein, from The Office). Peter Farrelly (There’s Something About Mary, Green Book) will direct several episodes.
Writer: Richard Russo
Details: 391 pages
Since this may appear to be a strange project for a review, let me give you some quick background. Richard Russo’s novel, “Empire Falls,” is one of my favorite books. It would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 and continues to hold a special place in my mind/heart library.
For reasons I don’t have an answer for, I’ve never read another Russo novel. Flash-forward to last week, and I saw that Bob Odenkirk had picked his next project with Better Call Saul ending. It was the Richard Russo book, “Straight Man.” It seemed like the perfect excuse to finally read another Russo story. So with that out of the way, let’s see if it’s any good!
“Straight Man” – A straight man is a member of a comedy act who plays a stooge, feed, or foil.
Our story, which takes place over one week, follows 49 year old William Henry Devereaux, Jr. a once famous author who wrote a New York Times best seller 20 years ago. But today William is an English professor at West Central Pennsylvania University who seems to be the only person in his department who isn’t worried about the impending budget cuts, cuts that most surely will result in the firing of several professors.
William has other things on his mind, such as his extremely successful author father moving back into town after having a mental breakdown. There’s also his wife, who sees him less as a husband every day than a child who needs to be taken care of. Then there’s William’s own child, his adult daughter, Julie, who moves back into his house after her seemingly sweet husband may or may not have hit her.
As the week goes on, more and more professors keep coming to William, wanting to know if they’re safe from the budget cuts. William finally has a mini-breakdown at a local park. Spotting a news crew doing a story, William grabs a goose by the neck and holds it up until the cameras are pointing at him. He then says he’s going to kill one “duck” a day starting next week until West Central Pennsylvania University gives him a budget. The fact that a man would make such a crazed demand and not understand the difference between a duck and a goose results in the video going viral (or “1997 viral”), where it ends up on Good Morning America.
This causes a stir in the school’s ecosystem. Some want William fired. Others think his outburst was productive, as it will put more pressure on the college to deliver a budget. William doesn’t seem too bothered by it, even as PETA moves into town to protest his actions. He’s more worried about his decreasing ability to pee (he fears a kidney stone may be forming). And if you’re wondering just how much play peeing gets in this novel, I’ll put it this way: More than in any other novel in history.
In the meantime, William attempts to fend off all the romantic feelings he has for his female professors and mentally prepare for the arrival of his father. He never takes any of it too seriously as William often sees life as one big joke. In a pivotal moment near the end of the story, someone frustratedly asks William, “What is it you *want*?” William doesn’t know the answer to that question. And, unfortunately, neither do we. The End.
Boy.
There’s a lot to say about this novel. It’s meandering. It’s frustrating. It thinks it’s funnier than it is.
Probably the worst thing about it is the lack of a plot. I understand that a lot of novel writers don’t care much for plot but jeez. Make SOMETHING happen. Just to give you an idea of how slowly everything moves in this story, we get our first indication that William needs to see a doctor about his urinary issues on page 75 and then don’t take our first doctor’s visit UNTIL PAGE 250!
And don’t get me started on the dad stuff. We never even meet the dad! We just keep hearing about him and hearing about him and hearing about him. But no dad! What an odd choice.
Nor do I think the novel’s main comedic storyline – William holding a goose by its neck and threatening to kill it – is going to go over as funny as the author, and apparently, Odenkirk, think it will. In screenwriting, your hero is supposed to save the cat, not kill it. Threatening to kill an animal is a surefire way to kill audience interest. Even in a comedy.
Another issue is that the main character doesn’t want anything. Your character has to want SOMETHING. To instead want nothing makes them uninteresting as a person and uninteresting as a character, since the lack of wanting anything ensures that they won’t be active. Indeed, William is highly inactive. He essentially stumbles around all day thinking about pointless nonsense.
So then what did Odenkirk see in this?
Well, if I were arguing FOR this novel, I would point out a few things. One, I like the real-time approach to the story. Russo seemed to understand, at least on some level, that his story could be perceived as boring, since there’s no plot. So by condensing everything into a single week, he was able to keep a stream of momentum that, at least, feigned structure.
Russo is also great at creating fully-fleshed out interesting characters. His best work in this novel is chronicling all these weirdo professors. One of my favorites was a fellow annoying professor who was such a devoted feminist that whenever a student used a masculine pronoun, he would always correct them by saying, “Or she.” He would do this to such an extent that everyone eventually began calling him, “Professor Orshee.”
Russo can also be quite witty at times. While jawing with a fellow professor, they say to William, “I hear you don’t write anymore.” “Not true. You should see the margins of my student papers.” “Not the same as writing a book though, right?” “Almost identical. Both go largely unread.”
And he has the occasional keen observation, some of which are more relevant today than they were in 1997: “I can’t remember the last time anyone changed his mind as a result of reasoned discourse. Anyone who observed us would conclude the purpose of all academic discussion was to provide the grounds for becoming further entrenched in our original positions.”
And I think I know why Odenkirk wanted to play this character. This is his Jeffrey Lebowski. This is his, “The Dude.” Without question. William’s a lunkheaded but sweet doofus who just wants everyone to leave him alone.
But Zelman and Lieberstein should take note of why the character of Lebowski worked. Remember, characters who don’t want to do anything in life aren’t interesting in a vacuum. They’re only interesting when they are forced to do something that they don’t want to do. That conflict is what creates the humor: a guy who doesn’t want to do a damn thing is forced to do lots of things.
You get a little of that in Straight Man. Annoying professors keep bothering William. But you don’t have it like Lebowski had it. Lebowski was forced to go on this entire adventure in order to be reimbursed for his ruined rug. There was more of an ongoing resistance he had to deal with and the stakes were much higher in regards to that resistance. Here, every time William has to do something he doesn’t want to do, it’s a minor inconvenience – some annoying student he doesn’t want to talk to, for example.
I know that TV doesn’t need plot the same way features need plot. But I worry people are going to think this character is boring because he doesn’t pursue anything, doesn’t want anything, and is never engaged in anything. He’s (or She’s) like a pinball that keeps getting knocked around with no agency unto himself. Can that work? I guess we’ll see.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you don’t have a plot, make sure you have a ton of characters who are all up in your protagonist’s grill wanting different things. This will, at least, ensure that your character is always having to deal with something. This is what Straight Man did well. The second William was done talking to one character, another character called him, or another character wanted to talk to him, or he had a meeting across campus with another character. While this doesn’t supplant the fact that there’s no plot, it at least makes it less of an issue.
