BOOKS . . . "MOO"

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley's campus satire (Knopf; 414 pages; $24) is centered on Moo U, a huge Midwestern agricultural college where professors are funded by "Mid-America Pork By-Products," an inventor moos after suffering a "brain attack" and secretaries sell Amway products by telephone. "As jaunty and straightforward as its title, 'Moo' allows Smiley to turn literary and stylistic cartwheels all around the gym," saysTIME critic Pico Iyer. "It is rather like one of those comic novels in which John Updike gives himself a holiday from more draining work."