Jellinek's ex-wife, Elaine, has become the consummate university grant-finder, traveling the country to liaise with corporate donors like folksy Texas billionaire Arlen Martin, who's about to form a mutually beneficial relationship with Moo U.'s best-known, highest-paid professor, Dr. Dean Jellinek, is obsessed with cloning cows and inducing ''calf-free'' pregnancies in them. Bo Jones, who runs the hog project, is ready to drop it all when the opportunity arises for a new research grant to study wild boars in Uzbekistan. Earl is the subject of a secret university experiment designed to discover just how large a hog might grow if allowed to keep on eating whatever it wants without paying the usual price of being turned into pork chops before its time.īob Carlson, the student assigned to the animal's daily maintenance, is too embarrassed to tell his parents that Earl is probably the closest he's come to making a friend on the Midwestern campus familiarly known as ''Moo U.'' And, indeed, most of the other characters we meet - faculty, staff, administration, and students - are a lot less endearing than this innocent, well-meaning, overfed beast.ĭr.
THERE'S a lot to like about Jane Smiley's latest novel, ''Moo,'' starting with a good-natured, clean-living hog named Earl Butz.
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