'The other side of that thematic coin takes place at the university. 'A Thousand Acres' has a lot of sub-themes and motifs about how the world these people has lived in has been destroyed by such things as pesticides in the water supply and this giant machinery. It's a larger point about technology and agriculture. 'It's very similar in theme, I think, to 'A Thousand Acres.' My overall subject is not academia. 'In 'Moo,' I was writing about a specific point about a specific type of university,' she says. In fact, she notes, 'Moo' is linked to her last novel in ways that some might not expect. There's an enormous hog named Earl Butz whose sole purpose in life, it seems, is to eat as much as possible and become as huge as possible.īut it's not a complete send-up of academic life and, Ms. has self-aggrandizing professors, bumbling and self-protective administrators, and a generally lust-filled collection of faculty, students and staff.

'Light and ironic' would be a good way to describe 'Moo' as well. Smiley running the same kind of household. In her novella 'Ordinary Love,' the narrator, a middle-aged woman, characterizes her family this way: 'We try to maintain a light, ironic (though sometimes rueful) atmosphere around here. But it's an intrusion and not an invasion.' She talks with affection about her three children, and discusses her relatively recent literary fame with good-natured skepticism - 'I view a lot of the Pulitzer aftermath as an intrusion rather than an opportunity.

After she got her doctorate in Old Norse literature at the University of Iowa in the late 1970s, she told one interviewer, 'My plan was to go to England and then wander around the world, with my typewriter in one hand, my banjo in the other, and my backpack on my back.'īut she chose the domestic life instead - she's on her third marriage.

Louis and has lived most of the past two decades in Iowa - there is a free-spirit aspect to her personality. Smiley seems the soul of Midwestern reserve - she grew up in St. Yet, she allows, 'In some ways, this narrative is much closer to who I really am than say, the narrative of Ginny in 'A Thousand Acres.' I think the narrators in my novellas were probably close to me as well, but this is the side of me that emerges with friends.'Īlthough Ms.

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