Moo

Perhaps because most of my jobs have been at colleges, I usually enjoy reading fiction about them. Moo (PS3569 .M39 M66 1995) is a very funny novel by Jane Smiley about a school that sounds a lot like the University of Iowa or Nebraska. Unlike Southwestern College in almost all ways, Moo U incorporates the state's agricultural school, which explains the secret presence of a hog, the victim of a rogue experiment, growing larger every day in a closed-up building called Old Meats. We get to see into the minds of about 100 different characters--including the pig's--and it's a testament to Jane Smiley's skill that we hardly ever get them mixed up.

Only a few of the characters are evil, but quite a few are eccentric, from the dean of the agricultural school (who plans to marry a cafeteria worker and get her pregnant through "artificially induced multiple births" that will "bring science into the service of the greater glory of god") to the paranoid farmer (who hangs around the dean's office wearing a bulletproof vest to protect himself from "the FBI, the CIA, and the big ag businesses, all of whom ... wanted to get him out of the way before he perfected and marketed his invention").

Although their courses are pretty different from what Southwestern students take, the Moo U. students' concerns are pretty similar: grades, finances, family, jobs, social lives, illness, psychological issues. Will the four roommates whose freshman year we follow return next September as sophomores? How will Moo U. react to the state's budget cuts? What will happen to the world's largest pig? Anyone with a sense of humor or an interest in academic life would probably enjoy finding out.