Straight Man

Hank Devereaux, a fifty-year-old one-time novelist now serving as temporary chair of the English department, has more than a mid-life crisis to contend with when he learns that he must cull twenty per cent of his department to meet budget. Half in love with three women, linable to understand his younger daughter or come to terms with his father, he has a dangerous philosophy that life, even academic life, could be simpler.
Determined on the simplest explanation for observable phenomena, Hank faits to see the larger. consequences of his own actions or of the small-world politics that ebb and flow around him,' as his colleagues jostle for position and marriages fall apart and regroup. The despair of his wife, and the scourge of the campus geese, he is a man at odds with himself and principle.