Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Blackstone Audiobooks, Inc. (2009), Edition: Unabridged, CD-ROM, 1 pages
Description
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.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member wunderkind
I picked this up on a whim at Powell's because I liked the title (which doesn't really mean anything, by the way). It's got mixed reviews here on LT, but I don't really understand why. [The Cheese Monkeys] is about a freshman at an unnamed state university in the late 1950s: "Majoring in Art at the
The third day. You're under the rainbow and the spotlight of the Divine Tragic Absurd shines its black light everywhere and helps you grow like a mushroom. You sharpen a pencil and it's just the saddest thing since the Creation. You verge on weeping--in silent isolation--for five minutes. Then the point snaps against your work top and it puts you into fits of hysteria. Wipe your eyes and proceed. You foolishly take a break and emerge to street level. Mars. Make it to the Caf, to refuel, and you're seeing it for the first time because you realize everyone acts as if they have no idea you've been awake for over seventy-two hours, but they've known all along and can barely contain their horror and admiration. You are fortified and ashamed. You have three helpings of mashed potatoes (so easy to chew!) and a half a glass of Coke. You take an apple and a banana for later, leave them on your tray, and toss them into the garbage as you leave.
When you realize this, halfway back to the VA building, you find the nearest curb and sit. Eyes moist. Innocent fruit--they deserved better.
So alone.
By the end, everybody has gone insane from the art and the stress and natural inclination to madness. If you like books like that, then you will like [The Cheese Monkeys] (I did, a lot). My only criticism is that even though the book is set in the late 1950s, the dialogue and characters seem more modern. The only reason I can think for setting it in the 50s is that a couple of scenes involve registering for classes by getting in long lines and signing up on pieces of paper; also, the students have to hitchhike for a class assignment at one point, which would be impossible now. Kidd probably should have set the book in the 1980s or early 1990s (did people hitchhike then? I'm so young.)
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state university appealed to me because I have always hated Art, and I had a hunch if any school would treat the subject with the proper disdain, it would be one that was run by the government." He meets another art major, a funny but unbalanced girl named Himillsy, and maybe falls a little in love with her, but she's pretty crazy so you know that's never going to work out. The book pokes a lot of fun at the art world, and at the art worlds of provincial universities in particular. And then it turns into some twisted version of "The Dead Poets Society" when they take a class on Graphic Design taught by another possibly crazy person named Winter Sorbeck, who alternately tortures and teaches his students. The last twenty pages are the most perfect rendering that I have ever encountered of a terrible finals week experience, and I almost want to type the whole thing...okay, I'll type part of it:The third day. You're under the rainbow and the spotlight of the Divine Tragic Absurd shines its black light everywhere and helps you grow like a mushroom. You sharpen a pencil and it's just the saddest thing since the Creation. You verge on weeping--in silent isolation--for five minutes. Then the point snaps against your work top and it puts you into fits of hysteria. Wipe your eyes and proceed. You foolishly take a break and emerge to street level. Mars. Make it to the Caf, to refuel, and you're seeing it for the first time because you realize everyone acts as if they have no idea you've been awake for over seventy-two hours, but they've known all along and can barely contain their horror and admiration. You are fortified and ashamed. You have three helpings of mashed potatoes (so easy to chew!) and a half a glass of Coke. You take an apple and a banana for later, leave them on your tray, and toss them into the garbage as you leave.
When you realize this, halfway back to the VA building, you find the nearest curb and sit. Eyes moist. Innocent fruit--they deserved better.
So alone.
By the end, everybody has gone insane from the art and the stress and natural inclination to madness. If you like books like that, then you will like [The Cheese Monkeys] (I did, a lot). My only criticism is that even though the book is set in the late 1950s, the dialogue and characters seem more modern. The only reason I can think for setting it in the 50s is that a couple of scenes involve registering for classes by getting in long lines and signing up on pieces of paper; also, the students have to hitchhike for a class assignment at one point, which would be impossible now. Kidd probably should have set the book in the 1980s or early 1990s (did people hitchhike then? I'm so young.)
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LibraryThing member trav
This book is worth owning if just for the book design itself. The author, Chip Kidd, is a bookcover designer with Knopf. This is his first book. And the secind book he designed cover to cover (the first being Watching the Body Burn).
The story tracks a fictional version of Kidd as he makes his way
Kidd threw in lots of his personal design philosophy in the book. So it's a great read if you're interested in what makes one of the greatest cover designers tick.
Kidd is as close to a celebrity as book designers get. He even got to play himself on a soap opera back in 2005.
Plus, I read someone has bought the options to make this into a movie sometime down the road.
I think anyone who has thought about books and their design will enjoy this book. If for no other reason, than to be introduced to Chip Kidd, as a professional.
The story tracks a fictional version of Kidd as he makes his way
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through design school. You can imagine the types of characters her runs into. the story is pretty good. But the story, tied in with this book's design is even better. i.e. the font changes as the main character changes.Kidd threw in lots of his personal design philosophy in the book. So it's a great read if you're interested in what makes one of the greatest cover designers tick.
Kidd is as close to a celebrity as book designers get. He even got to play himself on a soap opera back in 2005.
Plus, I read someone has bought the options to make this into a movie sometime down the road.
I think anyone who has thought about books and their design will enjoy this book. If for no other reason, than to be introduced to Chip Kidd, as a professional.
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LibraryThing member megamegpie
Kidd takes and time and captures it perfectly. He has put art school in a tiny time capsule for anybody to enjoy and appreciate. My all time favorite book.
LibraryThing member whitewavedarling
This book is surprising and entertaining. You find characters that are balancing that line of strangeness just enough so that they truly feel they have walked out of reality (especially out of a college), and you might even learn something or another about graphics and ideas as you read. If you're
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looking for something entertaining and off the wall, this is what you're looking for. Show Less
LibraryThing member Carlie
This book was nothing if not entertaining. Although this is a short review, it by no means indicates that there is not more to the story or that I did not enjoy every second. I just don't want to spoil the fun for everyone else. So my plot summary goes something like this. Boy goes to college. Boy
Complete with plot twists, dynamic characters, and a subtle comment on the social/artistic climate of the late 1950s' high brow versus middle brow versus low brow cultural debate. Oh, and some homoeroticism, too. All you need in a modern day novel.
Good is dead.
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meets crazy girl. Boy falls in love with crazy girl. Crazy girl falls in love with herself. Boy meets crazy teacher. Boy falls in love with crazy teacher. Crazy teacher falls in love with himself. Boy loses both crazy girl and crazy teacher.Complete with plot twists, dynamic characters, and a subtle comment on the social/artistic climate of the late 1950s' high brow versus middle brow versus low brow cultural debate. Oh, and some homoeroticism, too. All you need in a modern day novel.
Good is dead.
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LibraryThing member smartalecvt
This is a funny book that turns touching and a little tragic. The hero is a freshman at a state college who takes some very interesting art courses and meets the mentor of his life (a professor), and someone who may or may not be the love of his life (a fellow student).
Chip Kidd is a designer
Chip Kidd is a designer
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turned novelist, so his book, if you're interested in this sort of thing, is beautifully layed-out and typeset. Show Less
LibraryThing member Clanky
I have to say this book was outstanding. It's a recollection of the narrator's first year at art school. It is NOT Hollywood and took some very interesting and unforseen turns. The story is not predictable and I would highly recommend it.
LibraryThing member Jodimarie
Coming from an art school background I can really relate to this book. Reading it was like reliving some of my best moments in college. Hilarious. I recommend it to art students everywhere.
LibraryThing member debnance
I have this terrible fear that this review will be graded by the author. Consequently, I have, in my defense, nothing to say, except...read this book.
LibraryThing member rrriles
3 star prose 5 star design = 4 star book
LibraryThing member CBJames
If you read a novel or watch a movie about going to art school this is what you will find:
A fish-out-of-water protagonist who doesn't quite know what to make of the other students who are more creative/intense/interesting than the folks back home.
An attraction to a girl or boy who appears
A scene wherein above mentioned boy or girl trashes the work of a canonical artist such as Picasso.
A benevolently incompetent teacher of an introductory class the students view as a waste of time.
An abusive teacher who was once an enfant terrible but has had to settle on teaching in a second tier art school after failing to live up to early potential. This teacher will drive some students away in tears, but he will also inspire others to do their best work.
A revelation that the girl or boy the protagonist was attracted to has had an inappropriately intimate relationship with above mentioned abusive/genius teacher.
A series of events that will lead the protagonist to learn the personal history of the abusive/genius teacher.
The disappearance of the abusive/genius teacher prior to the end of the semester under a cloud of scandal.
This is what happens in the movie Art School Confidential, in the art school plot arc of Six Feet Under and in Chip Kidd's novel The Cheese Monkeys. I enjoyed all three, in spite of their strict adherence to the first year art school formula, but none of them have convinced me that what they have to say about art school is to be taken seriously at all.
Sorry, Mr. Kidd, I just don't buy it. Too many details just don't ring true. The novel's protagonist attends classes with under 20 students during his first year of college, one of them with well under 20. Even in 1958 I'm guessing classes were much larger at state universities. The abusive/genius teacher drives students away even though he doesn't have a tenured position. I doubt he'd keep his job past the second week. I speak as someone who once taught at a state university. All these college co-eds sleeping with their professors novel after novel has always struck me as more wish fulfillment than reality. It's such an over-used plot device than I wouldnt' believe it even if you backed it up with pages of documented research. Needless to say, it never happened to me.
Les Demoiselles d' Avignon by Pablo Picasso
Your attractive but damaged romantic interest attacks Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon as the work of a misogynist in her art history class. I hate the work of Picasso, really hate it, but even I can come up with a counter argument to this charge. Certainly an art professor could. By 1958 he must have heard this charge more than once. You portray him as flabbergasted by the suggestion. Try what my Yale professor says, are you reading the work of art or is it reading you? Or how about misogyny, like beauty, can be in the eye of the beholder. See, I just came up with two good comebacks and I'm not even an art professor.
I enjoyed the assignments your abusive/genius teacher gave his students. Those I can believe even if the critique scenes later were ridiculous. I was once a creative writing major, my spouse was once an art major, neither of us can recall a professor ever saying anything remotely as mean and derogatory about student work as your abusive/genius teacher does. In fact, I once saw a professor offer words of praise for a student who had assembled a jigsaw puzzle as her final project.
And then there's the faculty art exhibit. You abusive/genius teacher exhibits a sealed cooler full of feces knowing that someone will fail to resist the "DO NOT OPEN" sign thereby releasing an odoriferous comment on the entire exhibit. In a world where artists must get teaching jobs to make ends meet, not crapping where you eat is a good motto to live by. Even self-destructive types know a good meal ticket when they find one. I am afraid you are sacrificing truth for a cheap laugh. It's funny, but it's not real.
However, it turns out the use of human feces as an artistic medium in 1959 is a bit prescient. In 1960 Italian artist Piero Manzoni produced 90 tin cans said to be full of his own excrement. He wanted to sell them for their weight in gold. These cans have accrued in value since the artist's death in 1963. In 2008 Sootheby's sold one at auction for just over 97,000 pounds. However, it has been discovered that the cans were actually filled with plaster. That strikes me as a wonderful critique of modern art--even cans of human excrement are fakes.
A fish-out-of-water protagonist who doesn't quite know what to make of the other students who are more creative/intense/interesting than the folks back home.
An attraction to a girl or boy who appears
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creative, maybe even genius, but is actually damaged somehow.A scene wherein above mentioned boy or girl trashes the work of a canonical artist such as Picasso.
A benevolently incompetent teacher of an introductory class the students view as a waste of time.
An abusive teacher who was once an enfant terrible but has had to settle on teaching in a second tier art school after failing to live up to early potential. This teacher will drive some students away in tears, but he will also inspire others to do their best work.
A revelation that the girl or boy the protagonist was attracted to has had an inappropriately intimate relationship with above mentioned abusive/genius teacher.
A series of events that will lead the protagonist to learn the personal history of the abusive/genius teacher.
The disappearance of the abusive/genius teacher prior to the end of the semester under a cloud of scandal.
This is what happens in the movie Art School Confidential, in the art school plot arc of Six Feet Under and in Chip Kidd's novel The Cheese Monkeys. I enjoyed all three, in spite of their strict adherence to the first year art school formula, but none of them have convinced me that what they have to say about art school is to be taken seriously at all.
Sorry, Mr. Kidd, I just don't buy it. Too many details just don't ring true. The novel's protagonist attends classes with under 20 students during his first year of college, one of them with well under 20. Even in 1958 I'm guessing classes were much larger at state universities. The abusive/genius teacher drives students away even though he doesn't have a tenured position. I doubt he'd keep his job past the second week. I speak as someone who once taught at a state university. All these college co-eds sleeping with their professors novel after novel has always struck me as more wish fulfillment than reality. It's such an over-used plot device than I wouldnt' believe it even if you backed it up with pages of documented research. Needless to say, it never happened to me.
Les Demoiselles d' Avignon by Pablo Picasso
Your attractive but damaged romantic interest attacks Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon as the work of a misogynist in her art history class. I hate the work of Picasso, really hate it, but even I can come up with a counter argument to this charge. Certainly an art professor could. By 1958 he must have heard this charge more than once. You portray him as flabbergasted by the suggestion. Try what my Yale professor says, are you reading the work of art or is it reading you? Or how about misogyny, like beauty, can be in the eye of the beholder. See, I just came up with two good comebacks and I'm not even an art professor.
I enjoyed the assignments your abusive/genius teacher gave his students. Those I can believe even if the critique scenes later were ridiculous. I was once a creative writing major, my spouse was once an art major, neither of us can recall a professor ever saying anything remotely as mean and derogatory about student work as your abusive/genius teacher does. In fact, I once saw a professor offer words of praise for a student who had assembled a jigsaw puzzle as her final project.
And then there's the faculty art exhibit. You abusive/genius teacher exhibits a sealed cooler full of feces knowing that someone will fail to resist the "DO NOT OPEN" sign thereby releasing an odoriferous comment on the entire exhibit. In a world where artists must get teaching jobs to make ends meet, not crapping where you eat is a good motto to live by. Even self-destructive types know a good meal ticket when they find one. I am afraid you are sacrificing truth for a cheap laugh. It's funny, but it's not real.
However, it turns out the use of human feces as an artistic medium in 1959 is a bit prescient. In 1960 Italian artist Piero Manzoni produced 90 tin cans said to be full of his own excrement. He wanted to sell them for their weight in gold. These cans have accrued in value since the artist's death in 1963. In 2008 Sootheby's sold one at auction for just over 97,000 pounds. However, it has been discovered that the cans were actually filled with plaster. That strikes me as a wonderful critique of modern art--even cans of human excrement are fakes.
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LibraryThing member Ginerbia
Hilarious! I actually laughed out loud until I cried and my stomach hurt.
LibraryThing member Magus_Manders
I was excited just to see this book on the library shelf. The fantastic, intricate, unique cover was clearly 100% Kidd, and the story inside matched my excitement. The novel follows an unnamed freshman studying Art in the late '50s, and discovering Design. The characters were wildly, obsessively
Plus, totally an introduction to graphic design. Hit it up!
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charming, the humor biting, and the conclusion strangely upsetting. Loved it.Plus, totally an introduction to graphic design. Hit it up!
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LibraryThing member SqueakyChu
A college freshman moves out of state and takes a year of Art courses in college. He makes friends with two coeds, both of whom take the same Art courses as he does, but one of whom is way more interesting than the other. He is found trying to connect more with one (Himillsy) and avoid the other
I had such a hard time following the dialogues of this book that I found the story neither interesting nor entertaining. I certainly did not find it amusing. The character of Himillsy Dodd was so annoying in her attempts to one-up everyone else. It’s sad because I love retro stories, college courses, and artistic design. I don’t know where the disconnect occurred, but the book did not give me what I was expecting.
The book is oddly designed in a graphic arts sense. I thought my eyes were going bad until I realized that the second half of the book was set in a different type than the first half. I thought someone had damaged the outside cover until I realized that was part of the book design. It took me quite a while to find the copyright year.
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(Maybelle). During second semester (Graphic Arts), his professor is Winter Sorbeck who becomes more demeaning and outrageous as the semester progresses.I had such a hard time following the dialogues of this book that I found the story neither interesting nor entertaining. I certainly did not find it amusing. The character of Himillsy Dodd was so annoying in her attempts to one-up everyone else. It’s sad because I love retro stories, college courses, and artistic design. I don’t know where the disconnect occurred, but the book did not give me what I was expecting.
The book is oddly designed in a graphic arts sense. I thought my eyes were going bad until I realized that the second half of the book was set in a different type than the first half. I thought someone had damaged the outside cover until I realized that was part of the book design. It took me quite a while to find the copyright year.
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LibraryThing member juliechabon
Helpless, sheltered art student runs into reality on his first away from home and gets a real education.
A great cast includes a loony drawing teacher, a fragile southern deb, our main young man,
and his reckless rebellious girlfriend.
Best character is the pitiless, angry design teacher, humiliating
Set in 1957-1958, a great story of the politics of art and school, and very funny!
A great cast includes a loony drawing teacher, a fragile southern deb, our main young man,
and his reckless rebellious girlfriend.
Best character is the pitiless, angry design teacher, humiliating
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his students , teaching them lessons that I will never forget.Set in 1957-1958, a great story of the politics of art and school, and very funny!
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LibraryThing member caedocyon
This is a book I equate with the essence of the best parts if high school. It got passed all around (as a great book should be), and it felt like pretty much required reading for the teenage, slightly self-conscious art students we were.
I let a couple of English majors take a crack at it recently,
(Fair warning: there is one, infamous part that gets downright weird.)
I let a couple of English majors take a crack at it recently,
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and they brought up some good points about its flaws. Still a classic, and still worthy of reading if only for the gloriousness that is Winter Sorbeck.(Fair warning: there is one, infamous part that gets downright weird.)
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Subjects
Language
Original publication date
2001
Physical description
1 p.; 7.4 inches
ISBN
1433251515 / 9781433251511