Review
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“Delectably entertaining.... An uproariously funny and at the
same time hauntingly melancholy portrait of a college community
in the Midwest.”
—The New York Times
“Fast, hilarious, and heartbreaking...Not for a minute does Moo
lose its perfect satiric pitch or its pacing. . . . Don't skip a
page, don't skip a paragraph. It's going to be on the final.”
—People
“Smart, irreverent, and wickedly tender.... Moo suggests a mix of
Tom Wolfe's wit and John Updike's satiny reach.... Engaging.”
—The Boston Globe
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About the Author
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Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A
Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most
recently, Golden Age, the concluding volume of The Last Hundred
Years trilogy. She is also the author of five works of nonfiction
and a series of books for young adults. A member of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center
USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in
Northern California.
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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1Old MeatsFROM THE OUTSIDE it was clear that the
building known generally as "Old Meats" had eased under the
hegemony of the horticulture department. Its southern approach,
once a featureless slope of green lawn, was now an undulating
perennial border whose two arms embraced a small formal garden
defined by a carefully clipped and fragrant boxwood hedge. In
front of that, an expanse of annuals flowed down the hillside and
spilled across flat ground in a tide of August reds, golds, and
yellows. Here and there, discreetly placed experimentals tested
the climate. Right up against the long windowless southem wall of
Old Meats, someone, sometime, without benefit of application,
grant, permission from administration or grounds crew, without
even the passing back and forth of a memo, someone had ed,
then espaliered, a row of apricot and peach trees. In midsummer,
just at the end of summer session, they were seen to bear
fruit--heavy burnished apricots and big peaches swollen with
juice that later disappeared and never seemed to reappear on the
salad bars or the dessert bars in any of the dorms or fraternity
houses. Nor were they sold at any hort department fund-raising
sale, the way apples, Christmas trees, and bedding s were.
They just appeared and disappeared, unnoticed by most though
legendary to the few who had stolen fruit, who kept an eye on the
seed catalogues, wondering when these cultivars, the Moo U.
cultivars, might be introduced to the open market.In fact, though
it stood much in the way of foot traffic from the Bovine
Confinement Complex, the Business College, the Chemistry
building, the foreign travel office, and graduate student
housing, and though, as generations of freshman geographers had
found, it stood on the exact geographical center of the campus
(unless you included the recently constructed Vet School two
miles to the south, which threw everything off), and though it
was large and blocky, Old Meats had disappeared from the
perceptions of the university population at large. This was fine
with the horticulture department, for certain unnamed members and
their student cadres had just this summer laid out an extension
of the perennial border to the east, curving in wanton floral
revelry toward Old Meats' unused loading dock and Ames Road. So
much, said the Chairman in private meetings with the rest of his
faculty, for their assigned garden site, out by the physical
and the bus barn, on a dead-end road that no one travelled
unless lost. Guerrilla action, as he often remarked to the woman
everyone including their children thought was his wife and whom
he had met in SDS at the Chicago convention in 1969, was as
protean and changeable as the needs of the people.It was also
true, however, that Bob Carlson, sopre workstudy student, was
as invisible to the horticulturists, though he passed them every
day, as Old Meats was to the rest of the campus. No busy digger
or mulcher ever noticed him unlock the door beside the loading
dock and enter, though he did it openly and in full view, often
carrying bulky sacks. To them, Old Meats was a hillock in the
center of the campus, a field for covering with vines and
flowers; to Bob, it was a convenient job, an extension of his
life on the farm, but instead of helping his dad feed and care
for a thousand sows and their offspring, Bob tended to only one
hog, a Landrace boar named Earl Butz. Right on Earl's pen, Bob
had taped up a sign that read, "Get big or get out." Every time
Bob saw that sign it gave him a chuckle. It was just the sort of
joke his dad would appreciate, even though, of course, he had
agreed to tell no one, not even his dad, about Earl, Earl's
venue, a sparkling new, clean, air-conditioned, and profoundly
well-ventilated Ritz-Carlton of a room, or Earl's business, which
was eating, only eating, and forever eating.Just now, as Bob
entered, Earl Butz was at the trough, but he noted Bob's arrival,
acknowledging the young man with a flick of his ears and a switch
of his little tail. Earl Butz was a good worker, who applied
himself to his assigned task with both will and enjoyment.
Already today he had cleaned the back end of his trough, and now
he was working industriously toward the front, offering the
lowpitched hog noises that expressed his suitability to his lot
in life. Earl Butz had been eating for eighteen months, which was
just exactly how old he was. He was white, white as cream cheese
or sugar, and fastidious. Bob had noticed that every day, during
his breaks from eating, he liked to nose and kick clean straw
into a nice nest near the trough and far from the toileting area.
Earl Butz also liked a bath, and had no objection to the lifting
and cleaning of his trotters. He was an agreeable hog, and Bob
liked him. At Christmas, Bob had purchased some large, sturdy red
toys (a big ball, a hoop that hung from a ceiling beam, and a
blanket) from a kennel catalogue. They had been Earl Butz' first
toys, and he played with them when he could fit the time into his
work schedule.Bob filled his trough, emptied and refilled his
water reservoir, and scratched his back with a stick. He had been
tending Earl Butz since November. He visited him five times every
day, and Dr. Bo Jones, Earl's owner, said that he was the best
caretaker they'd found. Bob took the compliment for what it was,
a testament to the fact that he felt more comfortable with Earl
than he did with anyone else he had met since coming to the
university. He had his own reasons for not telling his dad about
Earl Butz, and they all revolved around the worry his family
would experience when they found out that although he was doing
fine in his classes, and eating and ing well, he had made no
friends among the twenty-four thousand other students on the
campus, and spent the time he should have spent at parties and
bars in his room writing letters to kids from his high school,
five letters to girls for every one to a guy, since girls liked
to get them and always wrote back, and guys, well, it was hard to
tell about guys. They all, at their jobs and colleges, seemed to
be partying hearty and getting lucky on a regular schedule.It was
this very knowledge, that all his old friends were having the
time of their lives, wherever they were, that had finally kept
Bob on the campus all summer. His dad, though he missed the help
with the farmwork, couldn't sneer at the money--more than Bob
would make at the A & W at home, and a real bite in the tuition
bill. And, of course, it had never occurred to Dr. Bo Jones that
Bob would even think of abandoning Earl Butz. The rapidity with
which the two had become associated, even twinned, in Dr. Bo
Jones' mind would have astounded him, had he thought about it.
But he was not in the habit of introspection."Hog," he said, "is
a mysterious creature, not much studied in the wild, owing to
viciousness and elusiveness. Can't get the papers, you know, to
take yourself to Uzbekistan, even if you had the funding. Never
been a hog that lived a natural lifespan. Never been an old hog.
Hog too useful. Hog too useful to be known on his own terms, you
know. What can I do with this hog, when can I eat it, what can I
make of this hog, how does this hog profiteth me, always
intervenes between man and hog. When I die, they're going to say
that Dr. Bo Jones found out something about hog."What the doctor
was busy finding out about Earl Butz was how big he might grow if
allowed to eat at will for all of his natural lifespan. To that
end, he was fed corn, alfalfa, middlings, wheat, peanuts,
soybeans, barley, a taste of molasses, and skim milk powder on a
schedule devised by Dr. Bo Jones and contained in a secret file
labelled "i6TONS.Doc" on his home computer. Its companion file,
into which he entered, late at night, the results of Earl Butz'
weigh-ins and other tests, was labelled "WHTYUGT. Doe." Bob had
never seen a printout of either file. He just received weekly
instructions and turned in weekly test scores. It was a job. Dr.
Bo Jones wasn't unlike some of the eccentric farmers you might
meet back home. Bob considered that reassuring.He spent about
half an hour with Earl Butz. This time of day, Earl was pretty
busy. Mornings he was more playful. By ten, when Bob always
returned for a last check, Earl would have turned in, ing
soundly, his mounded bulk rolled up against the orange metal
slats of his pen as if for comfort.Outside of Earl's pen, Old
Meats was dim and empty. The classes in slaughtering and meat
cutting that had once been held there were long removed to the
purview of the junior college forty miles away, along with hotel
cooking, barbering, auto mechanics, cosmetology, and everything
else that Bob's dad and uncles would have considered respectable
work. These days, no parade of animals marched to the holding pen
and then, one by one, to the slaughtering floor. The meat locker
was just a room now, its heavy door removed. The white enamel
demonstration tables, still bolted to the cement in the stage
area of the teaching amphitheater, canted dustily toward the
center drain. No water ran from either spigot at the back of the
area, nor from the faucets into the long, enamelled washing
basin, nor had any use been found around the university for this
equipment. Possibly it was not inventoried on any computer in any
office, and had, therefore, ceased to exist.Out in the twilight,
Bob saw that the horticulturists had retreated for the day.
Shadows lengthened across the lawns toward a warm August dusk.
Where a woman was walking alone from the Ames Road parking lot,
within days thousands of students and hundreds of faculty would
be traversing the paths and sidewalks. Bob was looking forward to
getting to know the new apartment-mates he had found in May, but
maybe he preferred this . The woman's dark, thick hair was
piled in a loose bun. She wore a vibrant orange and yellow skirt,
long and fluid, a crisp white sleeveless blouse with a sharply
pointed collar, and orange shoes tied around slender ankles. Her
summer tan stood out against the white of her blouse, and she
didn't look like any T-shirted undergraduate or crisply permed
sorority girl Bob had ever seen on the campus. He wondered if she
knew how she looked, if she had planned to look that way, or if,
as often happened to him, she might come upon a mirror or a plate
glass window and surprise herself with the way her dressing
effort for the day had turned out. At least she would be
pleasantly surprised. Bob's usual experience ran quite the other
way. She opened the door to Stillwater Hall, and disappeared
inside. 2More Than Seven ThousandNew Customers Every
AugustUNDERGRADUATE CATALOGUE, 1970-71: The experimental
dormitory, Dubuque House, offers freshman students new and
enlightening responsibilities for living, studying, and
socializing in an unusually well-integrated and modern living
situation. At Dubuque House, white students and Afro-American
students plan meals together, share housekeeping duties, and
largely govern themselves, free of the more customary
houseparents. Most importantly, these students learn to respect
each other, and to find common ground for lasting friendships.
Because students prepare their own meals and maintain their own
grounds and living quarters, the college is able to offer a 5
percent rebate on tuition and room and board
expenses.UNDERGRADUATE CATALOGUE, 1989-90: Unique to universities
of this size and type, Dubuque House offers undergraduate women
the rtunity to experience multicultural diversity on a daily
basis. Activities and house governance promote debate and
self-determination--no rules are imposed by the university
administration except basic rules of conformity to campus-wide
standards of upkeep. Originally a beautifully maintained and
elegant mansion that predates the university itself, Dubuque
House is a uniquely homey and noninstitutional place for
undergraduate women to live, but more importantly, it is a place
for women of all ethnicities and backgrounds to come together in
cooperation and respect. Physically challenged students will find
that Dubuque House is well suited to their special needs. Because
students prepare their own meals and maintain their own grounds
and living quarters, and because the university is deeply
committed to the ideals of multicultural diversity that Dubuque
House represents, a 20 percent rebate on tuition and room and
board is offered to Dubuque House students. Assignment is on a
first come, first served basis.IN SPITE OF the detailed Let's Get
to Know each Other booklet that the university had sent to each
student on the fifteenth of July, the only thing Mary Jackson
really knew about her roommates and the other Dubuque House
students was that they probably couldn't have afforded the
university if they didn't live in Dubuque House. Certainly, she
could not have. Living in Dubuque House lowered her expenses
below even what they would have been at the University of
Illinois, where she would have had in-state tuition, and so she
was here, sitting on her bunk with her suitcases, watching her
roommates arrive and smiling every time one of them or one of
their parents looked her way. Her bus from Chicago had gotten in
at seven a.m. but she tried hard not to show the effects of her
long night--four hours in the bus station because her sister had
to drop her off before going to work, then ten hours on the bus
next to a very small white man in dark blue Keds who stared at
the ceiling with his eyes open and kept his hands folded in his
lap the whole time, even when they stopped for a snack and a
rest-room break. His likeness to a corpse had been contradicted
only by his occasional giggles, unaccompanied by movement or
change of any kind, and toward the middle of the night, Mary had
be to wonder if he were some sort of a robot or mechanical man
being sent secretly from one lab to another, more chey on the
bus than by UPS Next Day Air.Without seeming to, disguised by
apparent perusal of the catalogue, Mary was glancing at Keri,
Sherri, and Diane, who bustled back and forth as if they owned
the place already, and knew each other already. In fact, Sherri's
mother unconsciously cled all three of them as her daughters,
because she called each of them "honey." To Mary, she had said,
"Oh, you're Mary. From Chicago. Hello, dear."
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