Awhile ago I became obsessed with THE LAST HUNDRED YEARs, Jane Smiley's trilogy following an Iowa farm family from 1918 to 2018 — well-written, funny & exciting & sad, so many characters you had to keep going back to the family tree — and insights (increasingly dark) into us as a country. All day I looked forward to reading it (I only allow myself to read after dinner unless I am sick) and when I got to the end, I burst into tears, partly because the ending was surprising and sad.
Then I went back and read the whole thing again from start to finish, not hurrying the second time. I think I enjoyed it partly because of the large cast and multiple points of view — I like big, sprawling novels that (like life) aren't all one mood or one thing.
But then I was stuck in that horrible place of not having anything to read. As usual I reread old favorites until I could find something. Finally the library opened and I got everything by Jane Smiley they had.
I started with One Thousand Acres, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. The flap copy told the whole plot! As if that wasn't bad enough, it's based on King Lear. Not surprisingly, I guess, it seeemed pretty depressing. My interest waned after a few increasingly ominous chapters....and I think she found it depressing, too, because her next book, which I am reading right now, is MOO U and it's hilarious.
The title is an agricultural university's nickname, and the book is a really funny send up of academic life, complete with not just turf wars and insane egos but a hog whose secret pen (he's part of an experiment and grant) lies at the center of the campus. His thoughts are given, too — Jane Smiley is really good with animals, as I know from the first book of hers I read, HORSE HEAVEN.
In every room his wife had laid a Persian carpet of exceptional quality — his wife had an eye for quality in all things — and it seemed like every Persian carpet in every room every morning was adorned with tiny, dark tense turds deposited there by Eileen, the Jack Russell terrier....Rosalind, who sent her underwear to the cleaners and had the windows washed every two weeks and kept her oven spotless enough to sterilize surgical instruments, tried to take the position that the turds were small and harmless, and that the carpets could handle them, but really she just thought the dog was cute... [not the end of the sentence but you get the idea]
The characters, animal and human, in MOO U aren't as three-dimensional as those in Horse Heaven, which I also read twice, but it's even funnier, at least for anyone who has suffered through working in academia. It's satire: over the top situations and exaggerated characters that sent me to sleep in a good mood from laughing so much. And I woke up in a good mood, too — of how many books can one say that?
Full disclosure: I didn't start the book at the beginning (unusual for me) — I was just flipping through to see if I'd like it when something caught my eye and I kept reading.
Once in the early 1990s, my friend KC, who lives in New York and recommended HOG HEAVEN, and I were in a bookstore in Calistoga, CA. The store sold only books. A sign by the cash register — a long sign — said in big letters that the store reserved the right to refuse service to anyone and then in smaller letters explained.
KC said, polite but puzzled,
“Do some people take too many?” The cashier looked puzzled. “Do you sometimes have to cut people off?”
The cashier explained that people sometimes tried to pay with credit cards they didn't accept — and we all laughed as KC said, “No more for you, you've had enough!” like a bartender.
But I love KC's interpretation. I'm probably someone who reads too much— but some books make reading a lot of fun, so much fun that it cheered me up.
