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Moo
Au milieu des champs de blé du Midwest américain, Moo University est dans un état de confusion : manque d'argent, intrigues et machinations, projets secrets, vaches folles... Jane Smiley a écrit une comédie de moeurs dans laquelle elle observe, avec une ironie désabusée, une communauté où les hommes et les femmes, les naïfs et les cyniques, les penseurs et les carriéristes vivent et travaillent ensemble dans un complet manque d'harmonie. Spirituelle et caustique, Jane Smiley se sert tendrement des personnages de ce microcosme pour critiquer la décennie 80-90, son manque de repères et son désir effréné de consommation.
482 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 21, 1995
315 people are currently reading
5,046 people want to read
About the author
Jane Smiley
127Ìýbooks2,565ÌýfollowersJane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained a A.B. at Vassar College, then earned a M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. While working towards her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. From 1981 to 1996, she taught at Iowa State University. Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980, and won a 1985 O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily", which was published in The Atlantic Monthly. Her best-selling A Thousand Acres, a story based on William Shakespeare's King Lear, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. It was adapted into a film of the same title in 1997. In 1995 she wrote her sole television script produced, for an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. Her novella The Age of Grief was made into the 2002 film The Secret Lives of Dentists.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005), is a non-fiction meditation on the history and the nature of the novel, somewhat in the tradition of E. M. Forster's seminal Aspects of the Novel, that roams from eleventh century Japan's Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji to twenty-first century Americans chick lit.
In 2001, Smiley was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained a A.B. at Vassar College, then earned a M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. While working towards her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. From 1981 to 1996, she taught at Iowa State University. Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980, and won a 1985 O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily", which was published in The Atlantic Monthly. Her best-selling A Thousand Acres, a story based on William Shakespeare's King Lear, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. It was adapted into a film of the same title in 1997. In 1995 she wrote her sole television script produced, for an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. Her novella The Age of Grief was made into the 2002 film The Secret Lives of Dentists.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005), is a non-fiction meditation on the history and the nature of the novel, somewhat in the tradition of E. M. Forster's seminal Aspects of the Novel, that roams from eleventh century Japan's Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji to twenty-first century Americans chick lit.
In 2001, Smiley was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 769 reviews
March 13, 2010
Wow, can I give less than 1 star? This is going in to that rare list of "books I cannot even get through." It makes me very sad that this woman can get published (and apparently won an award at some point in her life!) and I have friends who can actually WRITE who cannot. Imagine if the author of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" had written his 150 pages of character development, but hadn't actually been able to make you care about any of the characters. Or, in fact, been able to convince you read past the first 50 pages. And trust me, I was bored enough at work that night that I would have read ANYTHING, but it was pretty much sheer horror that got me that far in to the book. To be fair, it wasn't entirely Ms. Smiley's writing that made this book a complete dud. Her editor should be shot too. How do you not catch the run-on sentence that goes for NINE lines? Especially when it happens overandoverandoverandoverand... Seriously, what were they on to miss that? Oh, and to say nothing of the basic spelling errors all through the book...
Okay, I think I have made my point, no? On to bigger and better things.
Okay, I think I have made my point, no? On to bigger and better things.
April 21, 2008
Jane Smiley, a former academic, is pitch perfect in this subtle yet scathing account of academic life in a small Midwestern town. As a former graduate student who had more than his fill of graduate school, this book was both wonderful and horrifying to read. I recommend this book to anyone thinking of attending graduate school, or as a medicine for those still recovering from the absurdity of it.
April 25, 2014
Listen, Jane Smiley is a fucking straight-up genius, and MOO is a hilarious, intricate and brilliant send-up of academia. She effortlessly weaves together dozens of character viewpoints, all while keeping a sort of empathetic humor at a slow boil throughout all of it. It's really impressive.
It's also very interesting to me to see the very polarizing reviews of this book - on one hand, I can see how it's not that interesting to some people (it is, after all, set in an agricultural college in the early 1990s) but the author's voice and deftness seems irrefutable to me. Academia, capitalism, radical politics, love, fiction writing, farming, death - they're all tackled here with such precision and again, that pervasive, gentle humor. I loved this book much more than I was expecting.
It's also very interesting to me to see the very polarizing reviews of this book - on one hand, I can see how it's not that interesting to some people (it is, after all, set in an agricultural college in the early 1990s) but the author's voice and deftness seems irrefutable to me. Academia, capitalism, radical politics, love, fiction writing, farming, death - they're all tackled here with such precision and again, that pervasive, gentle humor. I loved this book much more than I was expecting.
November 19, 2007
Anyone who has worked or taught in a university will appreciate this satirical novel set in an unnamed land-grant university in a Midwestern state with a strong resemblance to Iowa. Smiley, who manages to find the entire world in the cornfields of her native region, gets the personalities, idiosyncracies and bizarre internal politics of American academe exactly right in this book.
January 28, 2019
These days I am working mainly on the group of print books that I picked out to reread while I was sorting through my library. Some I don't remember anything about, although I have read all of them in the past. I'm concentrating on them because I want the shelf space and I know some will be taking a short hike to the library donation bin.
I've read at least one other by Jane Smiley and I remember I bought this one because of how much I enjoyed the other. And name recognition, of course. That's important at a used book sale!
But I can't put up with this book this time around. Too many characters, too much going on and yet at the same time nothing happening just yet. I've puttered along for almost 100 pages and the third time I had to stop and think 'Wait, Who Are These People' was once too often.
I remember thinking it was pretty cool back about 20 years ago when I first read it, but obviously my tastes have changed since then. Off to the library it goes!
DNF around page 100.
I've read at least one other by Jane Smiley and I remember I bought this one because of how much I enjoyed the other. And name recognition, of course. That's important at a used book sale!
But I can't put up with this book this time around. Too many characters, too much going on and yet at the same time nothing happening just yet. I've puttered along for almost 100 pages and the third time I had to stop and think 'Wait, Who Are These People' was once too often.
I remember thinking it was pretty cool back about 20 years ago when I first read it, but obviously my tastes have changed since then. Off to the library it goes!
DNF around page 100.
February 23, 2008
I was just reminded of this book by my friend Susan. Now here was a hilarious read. Never was there a more true back picture of academia. They are all NUTS!!! Even the ones who aren't will agree they are a bit around the edges. Please read this, and laugh.
October 12, 2011
This book had a lot of potential. A great storyline; an interesting setting; a talented writer. But, it was entirely disappointing. The problem is with the characters: NO ONE IS INTERESTING. And yet, the book contains detail after detail about the characters. (There are a lot of them.) One could anticipate this from the book's jacket: "Never raising her voice, giving everybody his or her (or its) due, Jane Smiley lets no one escape..." That is an understatement. Each character is just as dull as the next and yet their flawed humanity is somehow supposed to be funny?! "Moo" is choppy and uninspiring.
January 2, 2011
My response to Smiley's novel was contradictory. On the one hand, I liked her ambitious attempt at depicting the entirety of a college campus, covering students, faculty, and administration. On the other hand, there were just too many characters for any of them to be sufficiently developed. I could never keep straight the four female students sharing the dorm, in part due to the cutesy rhyming-names thing, but mostly due to the fact that Smiley didn't do a great job of distinguishing them from one another. Similarly, several of the professors tended to blend together into a mishmash of motivations and relationships.
Similarly, I liked the farcical tone (similar to I Am Charlotte Simmons), but felt that Smiley didn't take it far enough. It seems like there can be no middle ground when dealing with farce, and Smiley tried to find one, grounding some situations is realism, while piling on ridiculous coincidence so as to get to the finale where everything comes together.
It's not as though this is a terrible book, and there were parts I enjoyed immensely. Smiley does a wonderful job of capturing certain snapshots of the college experience, and when she hits one of those moments, the book roars to life. But in between those moments, I had to struggle to remain interested and contextualized.
Similarly, I liked the farcical tone (similar to I Am Charlotte Simmons), but felt that Smiley didn't take it far enough. It seems like there can be no middle ground when dealing with farce, and Smiley tried to find one, grounding some situations is realism, while piling on ridiculous coincidence so as to get to the finale where everything comes together.
It's not as though this is a terrible book, and there were parts I enjoyed immensely. Smiley does a wonderful job of capturing certain snapshots of the college experience, and when she hits one of those moments, the book roars to life. But in between those moments, I had to struggle to remain interested and contextualized.
April 6, 2014
I actually abandoned the book. I've been trying to read it since early March or late February, and I'm barely past page 100. I just can't get interested. The first 50 or more pages seem to do little more than introduce character after character after character. By the time all the characters have been brought in, I can't remember who the first ones are, and at page 100, I still can't figure out if there's plot. I considered the possibility that the book is more of a collection of vignettes than an actual story with a plot, but I can't figure out the point of any of the individual little chapters either so (sigh), I'm giving up -- something I don't do often, by the way. I loved A Thousand Acres , by Smiley, by the way, but I just can't seem to bring myself to open this one back up.
June 30, 2017
A while back I went on Facebook and listed my three favorite novels set on a college campus -- Richard Russo's "Straight Man"( which made me laugh so hard I cracked a rib), Randall Jarrell's "Picures from an Institution" (which begins, "Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Mies van der Rohe . . ."), and Kingsley Amis' hilarious "Lucky Jim." I asked people to suggest other fiction set in universities.
I do this from time to time with different kinds of books to broaden my reading scope and always learn about wonderful books I haven't read -- but this thread set the all-time record. I was reminded of dozens of great books that had slipped my mind and learned about some amazing novels I'd never read. I bought nine of those, and the first of those I read was Jane Smiley's dazzling, immensely funny "Moo."
"Moo" is essentially Iowa State, where Smiley taught for decades, a modern university grown out of an agricultural school. (John Williams' brilliant "Stoner," which I somehow left off my list, is set at a similar school.) At the center of "Moo" is Old Meats, a now-disused building that was once a combined abbatoir and research facility that now houses a single tenant, a pig that's being experimentally grown to an almost mythical weight. The relationship between that pig and the student who cares for him was, for me, the first hint of a sweetness that flows through the novel, surfacing unexpectedly even in the most abrasive story lines.
The book follows four female students who could have been a book in themselves; a number of faculty members, ditto; and administrators who seem to have little idea how they got their jobs or what they should do to keep them. There are probably fifty main and major supporting characters, and each is a three-dimensional individual. I loved "Moo" so much it's launched me into a Jane Smiley jag, a good thing in itself.
The guy who served as my postgraduate thesis adviser once said "The reason academic arguments are so vicious is that there's so little at stake." The truth of that statement, so ironic considering the massive influence faculty can have on the lives of their students, is apparent in "Moo." as are a dozen other truths about the life of the university.
I do this from time to time with different kinds of books to broaden my reading scope and always learn about wonderful books I haven't read -- but this thread set the all-time record. I was reminded of dozens of great books that had slipped my mind and learned about some amazing novels I'd never read. I bought nine of those, and the first of those I read was Jane Smiley's dazzling, immensely funny "Moo."
"Moo" is essentially Iowa State, where Smiley taught for decades, a modern university grown out of an agricultural school. (John Williams' brilliant "Stoner," which I somehow left off my list, is set at a similar school.) At the center of "Moo" is Old Meats, a now-disused building that was once a combined abbatoir and research facility that now houses a single tenant, a pig that's being experimentally grown to an almost mythical weight. The relationship between that pig and the student who cares for him was, for me, the first hint of a sweetness that flows through the novel, surfacing unexpectedly even in the most abrasive story lines.
The book follows four female students who could have been a book in themselves; a number of faculty members, ditto; and administrators who seem to have little idea how they got their jobs or what they should do to keep them. There are probably fifty main and major supporting characters, and each is a three-dimensional individual. I loved "Moo" so much it's launched me into a Jane Smiley jag, a good thing in itself.
The guy who served as my postgraduate thesis adviser once said "The reason academic arguments are so vicious is that there's so little at stake." The truth of that statement, so ironic considering the massive influence faculty can have on the lives of their students, is apparent in "Moo." as are a dozen other truths about the life of the university.
July 3, 2016
Jane Smiley's farcical depiction of a Midwestern agricultural university is very funny at times. But there are too many characters to keep track of, certainly too many to care about. Many characters and two hundred pages could have been deleted from this novel. It was a chore to plow through (no pun).
Smiley was a college professor for 15 years at Iowa State and she utilizes her experience to construct a humorous and cynical book that pretty much skewers her brethren. Teachers at Moo University are portrayed, for the most part, as selfish schemers bleeding the system. Money talks-- salary, grants, free travel and $100 lunches (in the 1980's). In Moo we see little teaching and much fundraising. Moo U is a snake-pit rife with opportunists and career-climbers.
At the center of the novel is Earl Butz, an overweight hog who's "job" is to eat and eat and eat and to remain alive as long as possible. Since all hogs are eventually butchered, Earl will test that norm. This eat-fest is a secret academic study funded by taxpayers (Moo is a State school). Certainly this hog, forever at the trough, symbolizes Smiley's cynical view of Academia. That depresses me. So the book is funny, depressing and much too long.
Smiley was a college professor for 15 years at Iowa State and she utilizes her experience to construct a humorous and cynical book that pretty much skewers her brethren. Teachers at Moo University are portrayed, for the most part, as selfish schemers bleeding the system. Money talks-- salary, grants, free travel and $100 lunches (in the 1980's). In Moo we see little teaching and much fundraising. Moo U is a snake-pit rife with opportunists and career-climbers.
At the center of the novel is Earl Butz, an overweight hog who's "job" is to eat and eat and eat and to remain alive as long as possible. Since all hogs are eventually butchered, Earl will test that norm. This eat-fest is a secret academic study funded by taxpayers (Moo is a State school). Certainly this hog, forever at the trough, symbolizes Smiley's cynical view of Academia. That depresses me. So the book is funny, depressing and much too long.
February 22, 2009
After reading 'Straight Man' I was in the mood for another satire of academic life, so I can't help but compare Russo's book to Smiley's. Moo was funny enough, enjoyable enough but so inferior to 'Straight Man' I never could get into it. It's very satirical, above the fray, ironic--you just never come to care about any of the characters. Whereas 'Straight Man' has heart, as all good comedies should.
February 12, 2017
What a very funny book. Complicated and very lengthy cast of characters, so I did occasionally have to check back to see who was sleeping with whom, or trying to get tenure or whatever. But that is exactly what it is like in a university, so many people, so many committees, so many forms, so many who think they are in power and are not. So many who manage to get to the conferences in the nice places, to deliver papers that add nothing to the sum of human knowledge....all too true.
February 17, 2017
I laugh out loud every time I reread this book. Smiley is one of the great masters who writes about systems as much as about people. In Moo, each character’s point of view comes alive with an incredibly specific weltanschauung � economic, religious, zoological � and it's a joy to move around the kaleidoscope of these different sensibilities.
July 6, 2013
What a delightful read! Hilarious, poignant, great characters. This is a satire of Midwest American academia, written (and set) around the time of the fall of the Soviet empire.
November 1, 2009
The description "Dickensian" is often given to Smiley's books and in the case of MOO, I think it is merited. MOO is the abbreviated name of a Midwestern State University, where Animal Husbandry and Horticulture have equal status with Maths or Modern Languages. The book demands concentration as, chapter by chapter you are introduced to perhaps a hundred significant separate characters, with new ones appearing until you are a third of the way through - and such characters - idiosyncratic, opinionated, beautiful and bizarre. I wanted to say to Smiley by the end of chapter three. "OK stop now. These ones are more than enough. I want to know more about them, how things work out. Don't tell me about new people." However, if you stay with it, it all works out, the good are rewarded and the evil appropriately punished and it is all enormously satisfying. The version I read was from the library, but I think I will borrow it again in about six months and re-read it with great pleasure
July 12, 2018
How I love this book!
I have been meaning to read it since it was first published, but never got around to it until a few days ago when I saw in featured at my nearby branch library. I also remember when it came out: the uproar it caused (as I remember it.) I think even the Chronicle of Higher Education wrote a review or an article. Certain academics, it seems, were sure she was writing about them. I mean, who would want to admit being Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek? I worked at Ohio, State for 17 years, and the book certainly sounded liked the College of the Arts. (I think Elaine had moved on from Moo U to OSU at that point). I believe you may have had to have worked in academia to fully appreciate Moo! I'd love to hear Camille Paglia's take on it. Junk Bonds indeed!
I have been meaning to read it since it was first published, but never got around to it until a few days ago when I saw in featured at my nearby branch library. I also remember when it came out: the uproar it caused (as I remember it.) I think even the Chronicle of Higher Education wrote a review or an article. Certain academics, it seems, were sure she was writing about them. I mean, who would want to admit being Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek? I worked at Ohio, State for 17 years, and the book certainly sounded liked the College of the Arts. (I think Elaine had moved on from Moo U to OSU at that point). I believe you may have had to have worked in academia to fully appreciate Moo! I'd love to hear Camille Paglia's take on it. Junk Bonds indeed!
October 12, 2022
Moo is a long, sprawling, satirical novel about an agriculture college. Parts of it were certainly funny, but there were many different characters who seemed to have equal weight. Bouncing from character to character didn't allow me time to really care for any of them, and most were unlikable. It wasn't my cup of tea, but I'm sure many will appreciate the scathing look at higher education and the way they're run.
October 16, 2015
The only other Smiley I have read is 1000 Acres (and that back in the 90s when it came out...despite my husband lamenting the theft of the Lear story). I have had this on my list forever.. as a former grad student of UW and still resident of Madison WI as well as a graduate of Grinnell College (small college in small IA town) AND a high school grad from a small town in IL, I can claim some knowledge about the midwest, the rural farming communities, and academia.
Unfortunately, this is slightly better than 3 stars, but not much. Smiley tries to be funny and at times she evokes Russo's Straight Man and DFW's Infinite Jest (if only with all the corporate sponsorships), but overall the novel was just not satisfying.
I liked the variety and number of characters. Frequently I complain that books limit themselves to so few people that we get the impression that a novelist really thinks that there are only 5 people on campus. Smiley does not do that here, she presents biographical info for several students, lots of professors and administrators and their secretaries. She even touches on the animals (Earl was one of my favorite characters) as well as the townspeople. Others have complained that they were confused, but I think that all of the people were individuals (if a little stereotyped).
I also liked that Loren Stroop was really the only productive individual in the novel. Despite his paranoia, he did have a worth invention and he was important, while everyone else is just a ridiculous icon.
My biggest complaints were simply that Smiley addressed too many topics (environmentalism, feminism, capitalism, fall of communism) and too blatantly forced her agenda. This was not a character piece (or even a multi-character piece); it was not a plot driven story; it was a tirade against human intellectual masturbation and the theories that we blindly and unquestionably support. I was also disappointed that she had to wrap everything up nicely in the end..Cecelia and Tim are friends/dating; Beth and X get married; Ivar and Father move in together. It was all just too much Disney for me in the end.
That all said she did have a few moments of truth and humor:
“It was well know to all members of the campus population that other, unnamed groups reaped un imagined monetary advantages in comparison to the monetary disadvantages of one’s own group, and that if funds were distributed fairly, according to real merit, for once, some people would have another think coming.�
“faith is to a liberal education as critical thinking is to religion, irrelevant and even damaging.�
“There wasn’t a single man looking at her. Looking at her had turned them all into boys. This was an aspect of Barbie-hood that Mary had never given any thought to, that Barbie created Ken, anatomically incorrect to the very core of his brain, where he understood as well as he understood his own name that Barbie was inviolable.�
There are a few moments, but in general this 400ish page book felt 1000 pages and was probably more work than pleasure.
Unfortunately, this is slightly better than 3 stars, but not much. Smiley tries to be funny and at times she evokes Russo's Straight Man and DFW's Infinite Jest (if only with all the corporate sponsorships), but overall the novel was just not satisfying.
I liked the variety and number of characters. Frequently I complain that books limit themselves to so few people that we get the impression that a novelist really thinks that there are only 5 people on campus. Smiley does not do that here, she presents biographical info for several students, lots of professors and administrators and their secretaries. She even touches on the animals (Earl was one of my favorite characters) as well as the townspeople. Others have complained that they were confused, but I think that all of the people were individuals (if a little stereotyped).
I also liked that Loren Stroop was really the only productive individual in the novel. Despite his paranoia, he did have a worth invention and he was important, while everyone else is just a ridiculous icon.
My biggest complaints were simply that Smiley addressed too many topics (environmentalism, feminism, capitalism, fall of communism) and too blatantly forced her agenda. This was not a character piece (or even a multi-character piece); it was not a plot driven story; it was a tirade against human intellectual masturbation and the theories that we blindly and unquestionably support. I was also disappointed that she had to wrap everything up nicely in the end..Cecelia and Tim are friends/dating; Beth and X get married; Ivar and Father move in together. It was all just too much Disney for me in the end.
That all said she did have a few moments of truth and humor:
“It was well know to all members of the campus population that other, unnamed groups reaped un imagined monetary advantages in comparison to the monetary disadvantages of one’s own group, and that if funds were distributed fairly, according to real merit, for once, some people would have another think coming.�
“faith is to a liberal education as critical thinking is to religion, irrelevant and even damaging.�
“There wasn’t a single man looking at her. Looking at her had turned them all into boys. This was an aspect of Barbie-hood that Mary had never given any thought to, that Barbie created Ken, anatomically incorrect to the very core of his brain, where he understood as well as he understood his own name that Barbie was inviolable.�
There are a few moments, but in general this 400ish page book felt 1000 pages and was probably more work than pleasure.
June 8, 2017
Everyone keeps telling me I should read Jane Smiley and they’re probably right. With biting humor, sharp satire, a wealth of fascinating characters, and even some touches of tender affection for people, place and environment, Moo is a slowly rising storm of a Midwestern University vs. the world, and vs. itself. Readers are guided into the heads of professors, administrators, students (successful and otherwise, plus those still trying to figure what constitutes success), lecturers, secretaries (who of course wield all the power), farmers and even a pig. Every character feels real. Every situation feels close enough to real to be recognizable. And the blend of sharp comedy and poignant observation is perfectly balanced.
Moo is a long novel, reminding me in places of The Masters by C. P. Snow (one of my favorites), and warning me, perhaps, that I’m missing some of the points by not being a Midwesterner. (I’m a Cambridge girl—hence loving The Masters I guess.) It’s easy to read the novel in single chapters, each nicely numbered and titled, so a perfect bedtime book. And the ending is oddly satisfying after all the machinations that came before.
Real people. Curious situations. And caustic humor. A long, slow, thoroughly enjoyable read.
Disclosure: I borrowed it from a friend and I enjoyed it.
Moo is a long novel, reminding me in places of The Masters by C. P. Snow (one of my favorites), and warning me, perhaps, that I’m missing some of the points by not being a Midwesterner. (I’m a Cambridge girl—hence loving The Masters I guess.) It’s easy to read the novel in single chapters, each nicely numbered and titled, so a perfect bedtime book. And the ending is oddly satisfying after all the machinations that came before.
Real people. Curious situations. And caustic humor. A long, slow, thoroughly enjoyable read.
Disclosure: I borrowed it from a friend and I enjoyed it.
January 4, 2013
A deeply enjoyable diorama of a Midwestern university over a year. I very much enjoyed the wry humor which was suffused throughout with genuine affection and a honest reality that raises this book over other campus genre novels. A very fun read and highly recommended.
September 18, 2015
Jane Smiley is such a sharp student of human nature. This book is so hilarious and filled with so many wonderful characters, including a very lovable 700 pound hog named Earl Butz. Can't believe I had never read this book, which I picked up at a Library sale. Long live Libraries!
December 14, 2015
There are many little stories woven throughout, but none of them made me care what happened next. While the writing is very nice, I never mustered any interest in the characters or the university.
I only finished it because it was a book club selection.
I only finished it because it was a book club selection.
January 12, 2017
I love satires & satires about academic institutions are among my favorites so I wasn't surprised to find myself enjoying this one. However, perhaps my expectations were too high after reading the powerful A Thousand Acres last year -- this novel doesn't reach that same level.
September 30, 2024
spent the entire time flicking back trying to figure out who the hell these characters are
(sad bc i bought this from sweet pickle book shop in nyc which was the cutest secondhand bookshop but this was a FLOP)
(sad bc i bought this from sweet pickle book shop in nyc which was the cutest secondhand bookshop but this was a FLOP)
November 16, 2015
Such a fun book. It takes a while to get used to the shift in perspective:
April 26, 2023
Born in the age of irony, MOO, is an academic satire that hits a little close to home for those that play in the halls of higher education. Although written in the mid-90s, the sections on gender politics, Big Ag/Pharma, and tensions in the heartland still read as fresh and relevant today as I'm sure they did at publication. Although, perhaps now it's just more depressing than tongue and cheek.
Set during the academic year of 1989-1990, the term is not going well at "Moo U", a generic Midwestern agricultural school. Smiley introduces readers to an entire cast of characters - from faculty, to administration, to students, and a very well-kept hog - that orbit this insular aggie university. With extreme budget cuts set by the out-of-touch governor; McDonald's has taken over the meals for the school, faculty must clean their own offices, and the collegiate atmosphere of the campus is tested to the breaking point. Smiley hurls the reader into the petty squabbles and eccentricities of the microcosm of Moo U. With almost Dickensian levels of wit, everything from the names of the characters to the caricatures of their personas is dialed in to a specific time and place that will add layers of delight for those that are old enough to remember the 90s.
Told with the same sort of bizarre flourishes as The Hudsucker Proxy, MOO, is an experiment in societal commentary and inner reflection that often sticks the landing but misses just as many times. Like, the cringe-inducing moment when students are called "customers", that Old Meats - a crumbling building at the heart of campus - was a slaughterhouse, and when the practical economics of a farming community come up against the theoretical, the corporate, and the greedy. But that's the nature of comedic work, is it not? Or maybe we are due for a MOO 2.0.
Read with the University of Oklahoma Press staff bookclub.
Set during the academic year of 1989-1990, the term is not going well at "Moo U", a generic Midwestern agricultural school. Smiley introduces readers to an entire cast of characters - from faculty, to administration, to students, and a very well-kept hog - that orbit this insular aggie university. With extreme budget cuts set by the out-of-touch governor; McDonald's has taken over the meals for the school, faculty must clean their own offices, and the collegiate atmosphere of the campus is tested to the breaking point. Smiley hurls the reader into the petty squabbles and eccentricities of the microcosm of Moo U. With almost Dickensian levels of wit, everything from the names of the characters to the caricatures of their personas is dialed in to a specific time and place that will add layers of delight for those that are old enough to remember the 90s.
Told with the same sort of bizarre flourishes as The Hudsucker Proxy, MOO, is an experiment in societal commentary and inner reflection that often sticks the landing but misses just as many times. Like, the cringe-inducing moment when students are called "customers", that Old Meats - a crumbling building at the heart of campus - was a slaughterhouse, and when the practical economics of a farming community come up against the theoretical, the corporate, and the greedy. But that's the nature of comedic work, is it not? Or maybe we are due for a MOO 2.0.
Read with the University of Oklahoma Press staff bookclub.
April 13, 2020
Moo is a novel of academic satire set at a Midwestern agricultural university in the early 90s. It took me almost 200 pages to really get into the story, because there are so many characters it was a little bit of a challenge to remember their stories. Once I got into the book it was quite enjoyable and an accurate depiction of academia. The academic politics, regional politics, personal grudges, and manipulation felt realistic and were entertaining. The ending was also completely satisfying.
April 13, 2016
It's interesting reading this right after Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man. While Bradbury's novel bemoans the effect student activism in the 70s seemed to be having on the functions of the university, Moo takes place in the post-Reagan 90s, and focuses on how the college counterculture has gradually given way to the corporatization of education, and how the university has gone from "A limited promise extended to a limited group" to "a vast network of interlocking wishes, some of them modest, some of them impossible, many of them conflicting, many of them complementary." There is one character, Chairman X, who could be the main professor from The History Man 20 years down the road, apopleptic at the fall of Communism, the spread of globalization, and his own inability to do anything to turn back the tide. Another character, economics professor Lionel Gift, is his Reaganite opposite, a fanatic for the free market who calls his students "customers" and doesn't mean anything pejorative by it.
But where Bradbury makes a lean (starved, even), pinpoint satire of changing social norms, Jane Smiley makes Moo part of a larger picture, taking us into the lives of individual students, professors, administrators, teaching assistants, and support staff. As with almost any novel taking a large, Dickensian view of things, some of these characters and situations are more satisfying than others. The chapters that center on Mary, a black Chicago transplant in the oppressively white Midwestern university, are quite effective; the chapters focusing on her roommates Sherri, Keri, and Diane less so. The adventures of the elderly twin senior administrators are generally loony in a fun way, the psychodrama of a spiraling marriage between a geneticist and an animal husbandry specialist, while well-done, is too tonally jarring. Aside from Gift and X, the characters are almost too well-rounded for their own good, without the caricaturist's touch that can help small characters in a big book stick in the memory. But Smiley writes deftly, with an easygoing wit that never loses track of the ideas behind the jokes.
I liked these ideas, and in particular enjoyed Smiley's insight that the state university, in attempting to widen its functions and become a prestigious academy of higher learning, is giving short shrift to the unsexy vocational majors that actually make the university relevant to the majority of the taxpayers in the state. The professors and administrators want to make the university Ivy League Iowa, because it makes their positions more prestigious, but the state doesn't want to pay for that, so they cut funding, so the university looks to private industry to replace that funding in the short term, either unaware of what the consequences will be or too desperate to care. The needs of global corporations then push out the independent academics anyway, while making the pursuits of the university even less applicable to the daily lives of the people who still fund large portions of it with their taxes. Smiley's ability to show this vicious cycle of budget-cutting and privatization intruding into the stories of all the different characters is the most impressive thing about this book, and makes it worth reading. The comedy and characters, on the other hand, are what will make you want to keep reading.
I've already made this review too long, but I want to close with an appreciation of a character I know I will remember, one that makes me believe Jane Smiley (whose life is a mystery to me) has taught her share of creative writing courses. This character is Gary, who is taking a creative writing class, and has a crush on his roommate's girlfriend, and continues to write (and rewrite, and rewrite) a story of how the girl marries his roommate, regrets her life, and dies (hilariously and melodramatically each time). And as we see the story go through its endless, laborious drafts, we see that the writing gets better, the details less indulgent, the structure more interesting—and it’s all for nothing, because none of that changes the fact that the story, at its heart, is Gary writing about how this girl will never be happy because she'll never be with him.
As a former teacher, the sight of a student pursuing an idiotic thesis over multiple drafts, and being unable to see that it's the central concept that's the problem, is all too familiar. And as a student of creative writing classes, the student who is unable to stop inflicting his psychological and sexual hangups on his (almost always HIS) readers is equally recognizable, and there seems no way to inform him what an ass he's being without violating the generally-accepted boundaries of politeness. The world is stuck with Gary until he realizes what he's doing and learns to look outside himself, and the funniest and most cynical joke Smiley makes is showing how the modern American university, bastion of self-knowledge and cultivator of empathy, is utterly unequipped to help him out with this.
But where Bradbury makes a lean (starved, even), pinpoint satire of changing social norms, Jane Smiley makes Moo part of a larger picture, taking us into the lives of individual students, professors, administrators, teaching assistants, and support staff. As with almost any novel taking a large, Dickensian view of things, some of these characters and situations are more satisfying than others. The chapters that center on Mary, a black Chicago transplant in the oppressively white Midwestern university, are quite effective; the chapters focusing on her roommates Sherri, Keri, and Diane less so. The adventures of the elderly twin senior administrators are generally loony in a fun way, the psychodrama of a spiraling marriage between a geneticist and an animal husbandry specialist, while well-done, is too tonally jarring. Aside from Gift and X, the characters are almost too well-rounded for their own good, without the caricaturist's touch that can help small characters in a big book stick in the memory. But Smiley writes deftly, with an easygoing wit that never loses track of the ideas behind the jokes.
I liked these ideas, and in particular enjoyed Smiley's insight that the state university, in attempting to widen its functions and become a prestigious academy of higher learning, is giving short shrift to the unsexy vocational majors that actually make the university relevant to the majority of the taxpayers in the state. The professors and administrators want to make the university Ivy League Iowa, because it makes their positions more prestigious, but the state doesn't want to pay for that, so they cut funding, so the university looks to private industry to replace that funding in the short term, either unaware of what the consequences will be or too desperate to care. The needs of global corporations then push out the independent academics anyway, while making the pursuits of the university even less applicable to the daily lives of the people who still fund large portions of it with their taxes. Smiley's ability to show this vicious cycle of budget-cutting and privatization intruding into the stories of all the different characters is the most impressive thing about this book, and makes it worth reading. The comedy and characters, on the other hand, are what will make you want to keep reading.
I've already made this review too long, but I want to close with an appreciation of a character I know I will remember, one that makes me believe Jane Smiley (whose life is a mystery to me) has taught her share of creative writing courses. This character is Gary, who is taking a creative writing class, and has a crush on his roommate's girlfriend, and continues to write (and rewrite, and rewrite) a story of how the girl marries his roommate, regrets her life, and dies (hilariously and melodramatically each time). And as we see the story go through its endless, laborious drafts, we see that the writing gets better, the details less indulgent, the structure more interesting—and it’s all for nothing, because none of that changes the fact that the story, at its heart, is Gary writing about how this girl will never be happy because she'll never be with him.
As a former teacher, the sight of a student pursuing an idiotic thesis over multiple drafts, and being unable to see that it's the central concept that's the problem, is all too familiar. And as a student of creative writing classes, the student who is unable to stop inflicting his psychological and sexual hangups on his (almost always HIS) readers is equally recognizable, and there seems no way to inform him what an ass he's being without violating the generally-accepted boundaries of politeness. The world is stuck with Gary until he realizes what he's doing and learns to look outside himself, and the funniest and most cynical joke Smiley makes is showing how the modern American university, bastion of self-knowledge and cultivator of empathy, is utterly unequipped to help him out with this.
November 21, 2022
State university life on a small scale. Should have been entitled “Oink� given that the principal animal character is a hog. Unlikely faculty and hookups. Bizarre wedding against rational odds. Somewhat of a struggle to read to the end.
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