Word: moos
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Moo (Knopf; 414 pages; $24) is something of a runaway hog itself, a 10,000-acre comic novel set in what might almost be called Animal Farm State...
...Moo U. is a huge Midwestern agricultural college of 37,000 students, where professors are funded by "Mid-America Pork By-Products," conduct research on plant pathology and soils science and read papers on "The Use of Strain-Specific Monoclonal Antibodies to Model the Field Spread of Soybean Mosaic Virus...
...jaunty and straightforward as its title, Moo allows Smiley to turn literary and stylistic cartwheels all around the gym. She writes course-catalog entries, student-fiction papers and newspaper articles (even in Spanish). She masters billionaire talk, bovine-cloning monologues and the shrewd counsel of black elder sisters. In its easy virtuosity and wicked glee, Moo is rather like one of those comic novels in which John Updike gives himself a holiday from more draining work. And if Moo finally has more of a target than a point, it never allows us to forget that, in a certain context...
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley's campus satire (Knopf; 414 pages; $24) is centered on Moo U, a huge Midwestern agricultural college where professors are funded by "Mid-America Pork By-Products," an inventor moos after suffering a "brain attack" and secretaries sell Amway products by telephone. "As jaunty and straightforward as its title, 'Moo' allows Smiley to turn literary and stylistic cartwheels all around the gym," saysTIME critic Pico Iyer. "It is rather like one of those comic novels in which John Updike gives himself a holiday from more draining work...
Even the worst jokes, though, are carried off brilliantly by the cast. Several members are especially deserving of praise. Hasty Pudding Vice President Aaron Zelman '95, who plays Ms. Western, makes a convincing cow. He sings a stirring and hysterical medley of songs, ranging from "It had to be moo," through "Like a bovine, milked for the very first time," to "USDA" (the latter sung to the tune of the Village People's "YMCA...