Animal Husbandry:

	"They were men of great strength and specific 
physical skills, who could fell an animal and bleed 
it and gut it and skin it, then show you the layers 
of fat and meat, the marbeling that distinguished 
Grade A from prime. All the time the blood was flowing,
 they'd be talking. What to look for in a slaughter 
animal, signs of disease, the effects of various 
feeding regimens, breeds and varieties, even cooking 
techniques for different cuts of meat. They had no 
illusions, those men, about the cost of human life--
it was high, and the fate of domesticated animals 
and plants was to pay for it."

What Smiley understands, and what so many in our society choose to overlook, is that there is a price to be paid for exacting such a toll, for living such a costly life. But when we look at the people who feed us, we see not the sacrifice, not the butchers of livestock and poisoners of soil, but those of the media: reticent farmers in flannel shirts and seed caps, ham-calved, egg-frying women all too eager to bring over a coffee cake. We love to typecast resident of the Plain states as salts-of-our-earth. If the East Coast is the USofA's thought center, and the West Coast its libido, then the area around Iowa is where we harbor our sentiment, our devotion to a handful of ideals that we don't want to acknowledge, but surreptitiously take comfort in its clean living and cleaner kitchens.

This heartland then, is the perfect milieu for Jane Smiley. In her Pulitzer-winning novel, 1000 Acres, she exposed the Elizabethan tragedy that lay beneath the typical American family. Perhaps depressed from writing that all-too-truthful book, she has followed it with a social satire of the highest - and most entertaining - order. But perhaps the bleak landscape of Iowa is too much ingrained in her writer's eye, for though the novel is full of smiles, chuckles and outright laughs, you'll reach its ending filled with a vague sense of depression, of having seen the true condition of being human: life as a state of constant contradiction. If satire's broadest goal is to point out hypocrisy, MOO's particular target is Americans' failure to accept our inherent contradictions, to pretend that what is not acknowledged does not exist, and that if we try hard enough, we will become the simple, unencumbered people we all believe farmers to be.

This is a good thing. Indeed, if Hollywood wants to know how to do a REAL happy ending, it would do well to study this book, and see that true happiness is not one-sided and shallow, but based in the contradictions and banalities and sufferings of real life - a life Smiley depicts with unnerving accuracy.

Moo is a Holstein of a book: big and beefy enough to cover a plethora of writing styles (including Creative Writing 101, Spanish, NewScript and all kinds of Press Release and Memoranda styles), as well as an in-depth knowledge of agriculture, hogs, politics, gastronomy (the latest de-rigeur in contemporary fiction), Beatles references, anatomy, horticulture, kinesthetic memory(!) and the male sexual psyche. But Ms. Smiley's strongest muscle is the one she uses to create characters, and here she flexes it with a rather long list.

Among them are Tim Monahan, an insecure novelist, and Chairman X, an unrepentant Maoist who, along with Lady X, has raised 4 children but has somehow forgotten to get married. There is Cecilia, the Spanish professor from L.A. with a cultural need for passion, and her antithesis, Dr. Lionel Gift, a man who teaches his students about Value without having a clue as to what it really means. Additionally, to name just a few of the other major characters, there is Lorraine Walker, ballsy secretary; Nils Harstaad, Conservative Christian; Bob, honest-hearted farmboy; Mary, fragile-but-she'll-make-it-anyway Black student; Loren Stroop, not-quite-as-crazy-as-he-seems local farmer. Some of the characters interact, some don't. Some sleep together, others eat together, some affect one another's lives, but in the truest sense of real life, the contacts are random, the consequences complex.

Other characters serve mainly as stage props, such as Arlen Martin, the "jug-eared Texas Billionaire," or his sound-alike cousin-in-fiction, the Governor, who warrants the whole episode when he begins to literally starve the University's cash cow.

A product of Iowa's writing program (where she now teaches) it is easy to see that Ms. Smiley has learned well one very basic tenet of fiction writing: It's the characters, dummy. Smiley flits from character to character, assuming a hundred points of view without effort. And what all these voices add up to is a resounding, singular response to the current fashion of monochrome answers to multi-hued problems, of bumper-sticker ideologies and anecdotal classifications of heritages, of cultures, of the complexities of human life. Through these characters she zings a long list of targets, some of whom, I suspect, are on the list for more personal reasons. Witness this passage:

	"Things aren't going as well for Tim, 
whose sex life is still compounded mostly of 
urges and, for all he has written about it, 
hasn't mutated into art yet. The trouble is 
that he has been consulting the wrong authorities--
male novelists from Eastern European and South 
American countries. He has been believing their 
stories about fifteen-year-old girls desiring 
eighty-year-old men and mistresses who are 
uncritically insatiable year after year. He 
also takes as a guide his own erotic dreams, 
which he assumes show the royal path to his 
real needs -- desires -- what's the difference?"

The movement of this cast of characters, from general descriptions of their circumstances to the specific quirks of their individuality, coincides with the movement of plot, revealing at first superficial ironies, then calling into question the specific underpinnings of our own morality. This overall view of the progression of life, perhaps stems from Ms. Smiley's close acquaintance with farming.

Like any farmer, Smiley knows the movements and needs of her herd better than perhaps she knows her own - and, as any good farmer, she never lets emotion get in the way of that understanding. The last thing any farmer wants to do is to empathize with his animals.

But at least within the confines of this text, Smiley reveals herself to be an unapologetic Liberal, with a special penchant for the Madison, Wisconsin variety, the one place in the book rendered as desirable. (My first thought was that she was merely a fan of Irwin Knoll and the Progressive, but after finishing this book, I'm just as likely to say she's bucking for a position with UW's English department...) Smiley's liberal sympathies bring out an odd, distant empathy for her characters.

	"As she hurried away, her high heels clapping 
the pavement like a smattering of applause, Elaine 
felt disappointed, lowered somehow, as if she would 
never find entrance, not only to the great white 
buildings in the distance, but to something else she 
couldn't identify. Perhaps it was the realm of self-
assurance, she thought. Whatever it was, there, she 
was sure, she would not look at herself as she did 
now, passing the ripply glass windows of the shops, 
awkward and broken into strangely vivid parts - a fat
white calf, a long shoe, glaring big hands clinging 
to her Fendi bag, a face appalled and naked. She paused
and summoned the remains of her dignity from the 
farthest reaches of her inner geography, then smiled 
at no one in particular and took her sunglasses from 
her bag."

If I have any qualms with this book, it is with this kind of emotionally-neutral characterizations, which I first encountered while reading her collection of short stories, The Age of Grief. Reading that book, I knew immediately I had encountered a superbly gifted writer, and yet the emotional distance between writer and subject was undeniable. (And I willingly entertain the notion that my uneasiness here may stem from the feeling of being so completely exposed under the microscope.) Because Smiley sees humans so completely, so fully, she understands the inherent contradictions, and makes no moral judgments. But if you don't take sides, you run the risk of being perceived as aloof.

If you are a reader of fiction, you should read something of Jane Smiley's - a truly Important American Writer, who, unlike certain other writers of recent and similar fame, has something interesting to say, instead of simply an interesting way of saying. And if you are not a reader of fiction, but a student, a farmer, a housewife, a governor, a Marxist or a neo-conservative, then you should read Moo, for there is plenty within this book to laugh about, to consider, and plenty of room to stare into the reflection of ourselves in the passing shop window.