Hank: He's not thrilled with the "Q".
During their talk, Dickie has inadvertently suggested that the 25% cuts Dickie wants are to go to a shortfall in negotiations with the air fryer man. Hank and the English department are intent on protesting in front of TV cameras at the "Q" center opening. As the department's approach to the media flags, Hank, apart from the team, is suddenly attacked by a goose, and improvisationally fights it off with a umbrella -- to the media's delight. A media voice says:
Railton College, a fight broke out of a very unusual kind, but what started as a silly prank ended up being a serious challenge to the school brass. Now we are here at a groundbreaking for a building that has been paid for by cutting faculty!
Hank adds to the cameras: "...one of Railton's beloved geese... I will box a goose a day until I get my budget fully funded! Come on!"
The budget cut protest is a TV smash hit. The department of the tenured is happy-goosy. Ray!
Lucky Hank is based on Richard Russo's novel, Straight Man. In the prologue, Henry Devereaux tells us, "The kind of man I am, according to those who know me best, is exasperating." This pretty much sums up Hank to those around him. You can see his goodness, but he's not ready to feed you a steady diet of it. His father was a highbrow academic; his mother a distinguished teacher. He admired George Saunders, but has not established himself as a great writer.
By coincidence, I started out my English teacher training at a school in an old factory town. My mentor was a Richard Russo, who looked (RIP) a little like the great author, who drove a Volvo, who saw himself as writer the world passed over, who, as department head, exasperated his colleagues, who the students in his writing class hated for the abuses he called honesty, and who was a tormented soul (politics especially), but who had wonderful passion and who, aside from guiding young writers, was an excellent teacher. So, there is a personal attachment for me to this series.
Also, I wondered whether Lucky Hank was derived in some way from Kingsley Amis's novel Lucky Jim, a novel that follows the exploits of the eponymous James (Jim) Dixon, a reluctant lecturer at an unnamed provincial English university [wiki]. And which NYRB suggested back in 2019 was "Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century."
Mostly, Lucky Hank is emblematic of the times we live in, with value not of noble purpose somehow non animated as it should be. For instance, Hank's department is full of that multicultural explosion of light we lefties expected would open new horizons in education and in the greater culture, but we see little more than multifaceted nit-picking in the department and squabbles and false egos (quote tossers; self-published feminists who think they're white Angela Davises; passive aggressives). There is no unifying vision. Jesus, some say, it turns out democracy is for everybody! And everybody has a say (note twitter) that is of equal value. That's a lot to take in. And corruption of ideals, first by relativism, then by good old ancient greed. We really do seem to be in an age that is Beyond Good and Evil, or as the poet Jim Carroll sang, "Nothing is true. It's all permitted."
Lucky Hank operates in this malaise or milieu. No talk of AIs (although the school that Lily visits in NYC is data-driven, and it's remarked that the students all look happy for it), no talk of singularities, or multiverses, or the quantum processing of data ahead. The action here is all slow-poke human, making it funny, sometimes confronting, and giving a feel like home familiarity. We know these mediocrities, and know they're being held back from a fuller blooming by forces invisible and difficult to fathom or control -- politics, priorities, economics, class deterioration"Everything's broken, as the Bard from Duluth has it.
And absurd.
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