A hilarious debut novel that could only be described as a portrait of the designer as a young man. 'Show me something I've never seen before and will never be able to forget - if you can do that, you can do anything.' It's 1957, long before computers have replaced the trained eye and skilful hand. Our narrator at State University is determined to major in Art, and after several risible false starts, he accidentally ends up in a new class: 'Introduction to Graphic Design'. His teacher is the enigmatic Winter Sorbeck, equal parts genius, seducer and sadist. Sorbeck is a bitter yet fascinating man whose assignments hurl his charges through a gauntlet of humiliation and heartache, shame and triumph, ego-bashing and enlightenment. Along the way, friendships are made and undone, jealousies simmer, and the sexual tango weaves and dips. By the end of their 'Introduction to Graphic Design', Sorbeck's students will never see the world in the same way again. And, with Chip Kidd's insights into the secrets of graphic design, neither will you.
About the Author :
Chip Kidd, the associate art director of jackets and special projects at Knopf Publishing, has long been recognised as a leading pioneer in book-cover art. The recipient of numerous graphic design honours and awards, he lives in New York. This is his first novel.
Review :
David Rakoffauthor of "Fraud"
Chip Kidd has created in Winter Sorbeck and his vaunted course, Art 127, one of the most vivid, expert, hilarious, and strangely gripping accounts of what it means to learn how to see. If "The Cheese Monkeys" weren't so intelligent, rollicking, and downright entertaining, it would be chastening indeed to find that someone as visually gifted as Mr. Kidd also turned out to have considerable verbal plumage as well.
George Saundersauthor of "Pastoralia"
Kidd's gifts as a designer are also his gifts as a writer: wit, exquisite taste, high energy, and a mad love for the things of this world. A wild ride through a unique consciousness.
James Ellroyauthor of "L.A. Confidential"
Art school in the '50s -- for the first and probably definitive time. This wise, funny and ragingly shrewd first novel explodes all the myths of academia and brilliantly builds its own. The world's greatest book-jacket designer finds a second spellbinding artistic voice.
Lorrie Mooreauthor of "Birds of America"
The renowned graphic artist Chip Kidd has with "The Cheese Monkeys" shown us that there is nothing he cannot do. This, his bold first novel (and his readers will eagerly demand a second), is full of style and verve and nerve and spirit.
Laura Zigmanauthor of "Animal Husbandry"
Thanks to "The Cheese Monkeys," Chip Kidd's inimitable genius is no longer limited to visual art. Fans of his groundbreaking and highly inventive graphic designs will recognize the same wit, intelligence, and wry humor at work here in his fiction. Part coming-of-age story, part introduction to graphic design, this first novel is a wonderfully strange, deeply ironic, and always fascinating glimpse into the dark, secret workings of the creative mind and of the mysterious alchemy that sometimes spins the raw elements of talent, desire, astonishment, and desperation into gold.
