Midwest Academic Fiction

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

Bill Millard recommends:
"Jane Smiley's                         
_Moo_.
 
Just finished the latter and liked it; it's light entertainment, but
less light than its annoying cow-college title implies.  Its lineup
of widely recognizable faculty types may border on stereotyping to
some degree, but some of the caricatures are dead-on and richly
deserved, especially the loathsome market-worshiping economics prof.
I'd be interested in what other people on the list think of it, if
anyone here's read it."


I've read it and found it hilarious.  Although we are not an Ag. School
(no pigs, for better or worse!), there were several chapters that prompted
the shock of recognition and had me rolling on the floor (especially the
chapters on "What everyone knows," tenure and promotion, and the creative
writer's first day in composition class).

I also recently read John Hassler's ROOKERY BLUES, set in an upper-Minnesota
state college (something like Bemidji State, apparently) in the 1960s.
Since our school has undergone radical transition from a "teacher's college"
to a "comprehensive" university in the last two decades, I've said that you
can tell how long a faculty member has been here by whether he or she would
say that Mankato is Moo U or Rookery State!
(The Hassler novel, though it has it's moments, isn't nearly as good, I think,
as the others you cited.)

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)