Smiley clearly likes some of her characters more than others, she has sympathy for them all. Help, has planted a remarkable garden next to Earl Butz's secret hideaway. Walker, an attractive and formidable lesbian who is part American Indian another is Chairman X, an eccentric former radical who, with his students' One is the secretary to the provost, Mrs.
But thereĪre forces on campus opposed to Lionel and Elaine. Rica, "under the hemisphere's last primeval cloud forest." Lionel is supported in this scheme by Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek, an associate vice president for development and nervous yes-woman to corporation executives. Gift is conspiring with Arlen Martin, a sinister jug-eared billionaire who wants to mine gold in Costa Whose "first principle was that all men, not excluding himself, had an insatiable desire for consumer goods." Before long, Dr.
Notable among them is Lionel Gift, distinguished professor of economics, To most of the faculty and students, Earl Butz occupies a pen in the basement of an abandoned building in the middle of the campus, where he eats voraciously all day and is tended by a work-study student named Bob.Īround this secret hog swirls a cast of odd characters, many of whom are, in their own way, as hungry as Earl Butz: hungry for power, for pleasure, for fame, for sex or high grades. Smiley puts it, "the secret hog at the center of the university." Unknown Smiley's landlocked Midwestern version of Moby Dick, an innocent embodiment of isolation, stupidity and greed. Its central figure, however, is not a human being but a 700-pound pure white hog who is "as big as a Volkswagen Beetle but much faster." This animal's name Like a Balzac novel, "Moo" has a broad canvas and dozens of characters. As a faculty member at Iowa State University, Jane Smiley knows this scene well. (as it is familiarly called), horticulture, animal science, biotechnology and engineering are the important majors, and the correct diet for chickensĬan become a big campus issue. Is set in a large Midwestern university famous for its agricultural college. Instead of concentrating on East and West Coast humanities departments, it But "Moo" is a different sort of academic novel. Surely the academy has already been sufficiently dissected, and by experts. Hearing that news, some readers may sigh. Smiley's new novel, "Moo," announces itself as not only comedy Her novel "A Thousand Acres," like Shakespeare's play, is a tragedy of pride and possession. ANE SMILEY, whose brilliant Iowa version of "King Lear" won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1992, is fast becoming the Balzac of the
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