SOURCE: “Very Flat, Iowa,” in Spectator, Vol. 274, May 27, 1995, p. 44.

In the following review, Carlson presents an unfavorable assessment of Smiley's Moo.

The hermetically sealed world of the university campus is a disproportionately rich source for novelists. The darker side of academe's supposedly rarefied atmosphere has lent itself to works that range from Barth's Giles Goat Boy to Porterhouse Blue.

Unfortunately, in Moo, Jane Smiley is more blunt than Sharpe. She avoids milking this rich source for anything more than a genteel smile and an obvious point. One senses that Smiley, who teaches at Iowa State University, must be woefully unhappy but fantastically comfortable in her own Midwestern situation, for there is much griping but little feeling in this book.

With so many writers in America employed as teachers, the campus novel provides a means for them to vent their frustration at being subservient to bureaucrats and responsible for...