Moo (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Jane Smiley
- First Published: 1995
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1989-1990
- Setting: A state university campus, nicknamed Moo U., in the rural Midwest
- Principal Characters: Lionel Gift, Chairman X, Beth, Mrs. Loraine Walker, Arlen Martin, Earl Butz, Bob Carlson, Ivar Harstad, Nils Harstad, Marly Hellmich, Loren Stroop, Cecilia Sanchez, Mary, Keri, Sherri, Diane, Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek, Orville T. Early, Timothy Monahan, Bo Jones
- Genres: Long fiction, Satire
- Subjects: Teaching or teachers, Communism or communists, Education or educators, Economics, Bankruptcy or financial crisis, Pigs, Personality, Money, Agriculture, Colleges or universities, Higher education, Governors
- Locales: Midwest (U.S.)
It is the fall of 1989, and while the Communist regimes of Europe are imploding, history repeats itself as farce at a large state university in the American Midwest. In Jane Smiley’s ninth book, her first since winning the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for A Thousand Acres, she turns from tragedy—King Lear transposed to contemporary Iowa—to travesty, in an academic satire as broad as the rump of the seven-hundred-pound pig who is a crucial figure in the novel’s action. Smiley, who lives in Ames, Iowa, and teaches at Iowa State University, avoids naming the institutional...
[The entire page is 1997 words long]
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