Moo

By Jane Smiley

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes “an uproariously funny and at the same time hauntingly melancholy portrait of a college community in the Midwest" (The New York Times).

In this darkly satirical send-up of academia and the Midwest, we are introduced to Moo University, a distinguished institution devoted to the study of agriculture. Amid cow pastures and waving fields of grain, Moo’s campus churns with devious plots, mischievous intrigue, lusty liaisons, and academic one-upmanship, Chairman X of the Horticulture Department harbors a secret fantasy to kill the dean; Mrs. Walker, the provost's right hand and campus information queen, knows where all the bodies are buried; Timothy Monahan, associate professor of English, advocates eavesdropping for his creative writing assignments; and Bob Carlson, a sophomore, feeds and maintains his only friend: a hog named Earl Butz. Wonderfully written and masterfully plotted, Moo gives us a wickedly funny slice of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307805294

Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley is a novelist and essayist. Her novel A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992, and her novel The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton won the 1999 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1987. Her novel Horse Heaven was short-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002, and her novel, Private Life, was chosen as one of the best books of 2010 by The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post.

Reviews for Moo

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A lot of people haven't liked this offering from Jane Smiley. It's a satire of life at a midwestern agricultural university. There are dozens of characters. Most are stand-ins for particular campus types, and include students, professors, and administrative officials (including a super-human administrative aid who really runs the whole university). Even the lunch lady from the cafeteria has a part to play, as well as the owner of a big corporation who, with possible evil motives, is dangling the offer of research money to the cash-strapped university. All the characters are broadly-drawn and no one individual could be called a "main character." I had a hard time keeping track of who was who, which detracted from my enjoyment of the novel. There is also very little plot. It is more of a "slice of life" novel.Nevertheless, the novel is enjoyable if you go into it recognizing these limitations. Instead of focusing on and examining a specific aspect of academic life or a character or two, Smiley is covering Academia and its denizens with the broadest possible brush. It's not her best novel, but still worth a read.3 stars

[kaitanya64 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Smiley has a way of empathizing with the most ordinary, flawed people. This book, set at a state ag. university (I was at Iowa State when Smiley was, and the setting is unmistakable) does a nice job of portraying the compromises and moral dilemmas of ordinary people, self-centered but wishing to "do the right thing" whatever that is. An enjoyable read.

[artistlibrarian · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is my first read by Jane Smiley and it certainly won't be my last.Moo U. is the classic midwestern state university; with all its politics, flirtations, lies, and budget cuts.For anyone who has read Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons and fondly remembered (fuzzy and drug-hazed as they may be) their beginning student years of university, this is the administrator and facultyversion. If you've worked on any college campus, you'll recognize the intimidating power of the dean'ssecretary, the lame tenured faculty, and the corrupt money that runs the whole show.Smiley has one non-human campus character: Earl Butz, the hog. His story is so tenderly sweet andcompletely grotesque - a perfect blend of working in the higher education system.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[booksinthebelfrey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wickedly funny academic satire on a par with Richard Russo's Straight Man and the works of David Lodge, but not without a heart. I have an especially soft spot for it in my own heart because when it was first published I was working at an independent bookstore in western Massachusetts and had a grand time producing a window display featuring this book (the process involved felt, a glue gun, a sawhorse, a lot of hay borrowed from a neighbor's rabbit hutch, and much amusement on the part of my family and co-workers). Like all Smiley's novels, this one draws you into a particular world and turns it inside-out for your edification and delight.

[bkohl_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Academic satire is admittedly one of my favorite genres, so it's easy to call this book well-plotted with occasional feats of humor brilliance. Smiley has a stand-up comic's feel for repetition, leaning on a few phrases that become funnier and funnier every time they appear (only, of course, by permission of the CIA, the FBI and the big ag companies). She also has fun with character names, including Bartle the secretary and the three roommates Keri, Sherri and Mary.Moo has more of an edge on portraying the weird and circular feeling of racial/cultural isolation than other academic satires. Mary's journey through the last half of the book portrays perfectly both the poison of cruelty and indifference and a teenaged inability to get past current events and focus on long-term goals. Smiley's subject is The University, however, so each character demands only short-story-sized attention from the reader. Straight Man is much more personal, and therefore much more powerful.

[overgaard-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

funniest book about academe I've ever heard - on trip to and from Columbia Gorge

[rosalita_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I first read this book when it was released back in the 1990s, and I remember thinking it was hilarious. Although I had little experience on a college campus at that time, having dropped out after a lackadaisical year to work my dream job in the only profession I was ever going to pursue (ha!), my time growing up in a rural community helped me recognize the humorous aspects of a secret project to see just how huge a hog can get if it is allowed unlimited food and no physical exertion. That the hog was named Earl Butz after President Nixon's embattled Secretary of Agriculture was even funnier.Fast forward to 2017, and I'm re-reading [Moo] because I recommended it for our fledging book club at work. Given that I work at a large state university (although one that is not focused on agricultural sciences) I expected the satire to be even sharper than my original reading. And it was, but parts of it hit a little too close to the bone to be really funny — the mindless drive for private research grants where the size of a donor's bank account is more important than the content of their character, the endless promoting of administrators far beyond their capabilities, and especially the lack of support from the state government for its flagship of higher education — had me wincing more than guffawing.Smiley attended the University of Iowa's famed Writers' Workshop, and she taught for a number of years at Iowa State University, the real Moo U., and her insider knowledge shows on every page. She knows just where to stick the knife to skewer the university archetypes where it hurts, and I don't think any department is left unscathed. If I have one criticism, it's the sheer size of this novel — its girth gives ole Earl Butz a run for his money. And in her eagerness to leave no campus corner unridiculed, she created an enormous cast of characters who were sometimes hard to keep straight, especially since I read the book over the course of a month. But overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this look at the absurdities of life in higher education, and impressed that it didn't really feel dated at all.

[sheiladeeth_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[slpwhitehead · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Moo was one of those books that I was so sure I would enjoy that I was really looking forward to reading it. I thought that since I have been in the field of higher education as lecturer/professor for the last 17 years and before that as a college student and graduate student, I would find it insightful, funny, and entertaining.

I couldn't have been more wrong. I so could not wait to finish the book not because I was enjoying, but because I simply wanted to be done with it. Ironically, I didn't connect with any of the characters; they irritated me. And I found that there were so many characters that I often couldn't keep them straight, especially the four girls sharing a room that Smiley spent some time introducing us to and delving into their insecurities. It wasn't just those girls though; it was even the faculty members that I couldn't keep straight, so I found myself flipping back through the book and re-reading pages where the characters were introduced just to straighten them out. After doing that several times, I began writing the characters down to keep them straight. But even that didn't help!

Perhaps it was because some of the characters were so bland that they simply weren't memorable.

I was expecting quirky and neurotic characters; after all, many a mid-western college is filled with just those kinds of characters. I should know, I've been colleagues with enough of them. (I'm pretty sure I might have been labeled as quirky and perhaps even neurotic by some of my fellow colleagues, but that is another story altogether.)

I found myself wanted to simply quit reading, but I plowed on and FINALLY finished.

So, why doesn't the book have a lower star rating?

Well, frankly, the writing was good. Some of Smiley's descriptions of small-town college life were spot on, especially here laying out of the financial finagling that can occur with financing and budget cuts and trying to get grand monies. She also had some great descriptions of faculty meetings and the machinations that occur not only within the meetings but behind the scenes as everyone positions for power (i.e. tenure).

I just wish the book had been more engaging as a whole. If found myself wondering how I would write this review because as I sat down to write it, I found myself thinking "so, what exactly was that book really about" because not too much of it stuck with me in the end.

[equestrienne · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed reading this book. The vast panorama of characters is constantly giving us different points of view, keeping the story well-paced and interesting.

I liked Smiley's cynicism about the bureaucratic workings of a state university. Yes, higher education is a noble thing, but the purveyors of a higher education are often far less noble. In fact, they can be crass, vindictive and money-grubbing with few compunctions about throwing higher education under the bus in favor of the institution.

Smiley used two symbols that I loved. The first was the secret garden hidden in the very heart of campus which was destroyed. The second was poor old Earl Butz, the forgotten hog in the heart of campus, whose unforeseen and untimely appearance forced irrevocable changes to the university itself.

[bederson-208717 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I liked the concept - 1990 culture of a small liberal arts college. But the actual book was more about mediocre descriptions of relationships, and not enough about the college details. And the big pig - WTF?

[junipersun · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had read other novels by Smiley and thought, given the (again) political anti-university stance taken by WI governor, that it would be interesting to read this tale now. I understand that in a spoof of reality you want your characters to be characterizations and stereotypes, but I still do not enjoy reading novels with such superficial characters.

[keebrook · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

it felt like it desperately wanted to be A Confederacy of Dunces and hilarious (especially to academic types like myself) but just couldn't bring itself to be so. new character introductions never seemed to stop but that didn't stop me from stopping reading this book. it should have been titled Meh.

[mykl8s · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyable. A comic novel ending in some marriages. Many characters - thirty or so by the first 100 pages. Many story-lines, all related if only by place. Everything happens over an academic year at Moo U, a midwestern state college, in the early 1990s. -Jane Smiley, Moo, 1995, 414 pages

[lauriebrown54 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Moo U. is a land-grant university in one of the mid-Western states. The author presents us with a huge cast of characters: students, academics and bureaucrats. In this farcical send up of academia- albeit agricultural academia rather than the ivory tower sort- everyone is avid for something, be it sex, tenure, grades, money, power, food, or a way out of the life they have. The living metaphor of this greed sits at the very center of the campus, physically and symbolically: a huge hog named Earl Butz (this is set in the Reagan era, btw). He is an experiment, the focus of a study to see how large a pig can get if his needs are constantly met. His sole job is to eat, and he does it well. His existence is a secret from all but a few; no one suspects that inside the concrete walls of an old, unused building is an avid consumer, any more than the longings of the people are visible to their peers. Smiley takes on racism, sexism, and classism as well as the academic life. This is a gentle satire. Pretty much all of her myriad characters are treated as flawed humans rather than evil doers or other caricatures. It’s like these people are friends and family of the author and she looks on them with smiling indulgence. While not uproarious as the blurb on the cover said, it was amusing and engaging.

[librarycin · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Moo is about the goings-on at an agricultural college in Iowa. It took me about 6 months to get through this. There were way too many characters to remember, and most of the time, I just wasn't interested. With all the different characters, it was constantly switching focus from character to character. There were glimmers of interest, but as soon as something got interesting, we switched to follow a different character. I did like the hog, though. We did get Earl the hog's viewpoint a few times, which I enjoyed. Overall, though, not good. When I set it down, I had no interest in picking it up again. I finally told myself I just wanted to somehow fit it in before the end of this calendar year and finally get it done!

[adzebill · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A measured and dryly witty campus comedy, highlighting just how execrable Tom Wolfe's take on it is.

[jawalter · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[auntieclio · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I don't know what book other people are reading but this was truly awful. Poorly written, too many cardboard characters and too many plot lines. What a mess!

[lucybrown_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Awful!! I really disliked this book.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting and entertaining novel though, curiously, there was not one character with whom I felt any empathy.There is no extended narrative - the novel is episodic, flitting from one character to another, but it is so tightly plotted that it holds the reader's attention effortlessly.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Moo is a satire about university life, covering the course of one academic year and many scandals, large and small, at a Midwestern state university. The large cast of characters includes all the usual suspects: the self-interested creative writing teacher; the aging, angry idealist who can’t let go of the 60s; the matronly secretary who controls campus affairs with an iron fist. In fact, the cast is so large that it’s often difficult to keep straight who is who, much less figure out who we’re supposed to be rooting for or sympathizing with. Nevertheless, Moo is often funny, and even if many of the more sympathetic characters come to depressing self-realizations (the others aren’t capable), two chapters at the end — titled “Deus ex Machinas” and “Some Weddings” — signal that this is intended to be a comedy after all.

[librarianshannon_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is my first read by Jane Smiley and it certainly won't be my last.Moo U. is the classic midwestern state university; with all its politics, flirtations, lies, and budget cuts.For anyone who has read Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons and fondly remembered (fuzzy and drug-hazed as they may be) their beginning student years of university, this is the administrator and facultyversion. If you've worked on any college campus, you'll recognize the intimidating power of the dean'ssecretary, the lame tenured faculty, and the corrupt money that runs the whole show.Smiley has one non-human campus character: Earl Butz, the hog. His story is so tenderly sweet andcompletely grotesque - a perfect blend of working in the higher education system.

[gregory_gwen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Essential reading for anyone who works at an ag school. Fun for anyone who works in higher ed, too.

[ltfl_jmls · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Essential reading for anyone who works at an ag school. Fun for anyone who works in higher ed, too.

[wmelis_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

For everyone who is aspiring to a life in academia - a must read! Hilarious and yet a very accurate portrayal.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Moo is an agriculture university somewhere in the midwest (my guess would be Iowa). Characters range from four in-coming freshmen girls to administrative bigwigs and everyone in between. Moo is a satire that is incredibly silly in places. Superficial relationships collide and somehow become meaningful. What makes the story so interesting is the drama, the scandals, and mischief the campus seems to promote. Everyone has a secret. Everyone has someone they would either like to kill or screw. The word everyone uses to describe Moo is "wicked" and it fits.

[pferdina · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This novel was recommended to me as one that reflected true life on the campus of an American college campus. The novel was fine, but nothing about it really interested me.

[librisissimo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Substance: Humor in academia and the Midwest. Not sure what she intended satirically and what literally.Style: Literary narrative. Too many characters introduced too quickly, took 100 pages to get all of them differentiated and recognizable by name. Characters were interesting and she kept them distinct in their behavior and thoughts.NOTES: see book