$9.98 PETCO GERBIL: Anne Tyler/Carol Shields/Jane Smiley -- Secretly considered "unseemly in a wholesome way somehow" by serious literary critics; "I don't know, is it okay to read these people?" by MFA students at Iowa Writers' Workshop; and "I really, really want to stay away from those people and their books" by people who like Thomas Pynchon a lot.