That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo

My first Russo book was Straight Man, which included memorable scenes such as the protagonist's fall through the ceiling onto the conference table around which his colleagues are gathered for a tenure meeting. This week I finished That Old Cape Magic, also by Richard Russo, which is not as funny nor as engaging. However, it provides another visit with his stock characters, all of whom mean well and are doing their best to impress the rest of us, or maybe just themselves. The protagonist is another English professor who would rather be a writer, but somehow the writing just doesn't flow. The wife is tolerant, wise, waiting for the truth to set in with her husband. Our protagonist, named Jack Griffin but thinking of himself as simply "Griffin," is trying to avoid his parents' failures at work, home, and play. Instead, what he is so fiercely dreading is exactly what he most avidly expresses. His parents fought, had affairs, hated their jobs (English professors,) their home, and their lives. Griffin's most earnest ambition in life is to avoid becoming his parents...so, of course, that is exactly what he must do. As always in a Russo book, however, the dear wife accepts her husband with all his neuroses. She confronts him mildly, kicks him out or leaves him, and lives a better life without him. However, this is the protagonist's world, and Russo always wakes his anti-hero up before it's too late. Jonathan Franzen he's not, but Richard Russo effectivly and entertainingly engages my sympathy for his world-weary fellows. Maybe it's my middle-aged anti-hero husband I am really falling for, but Russo's protagonist always seems to be my kind of guy.