|
|
"Cheese" imitates life
by Andy Rathbun
Senior Horizons Writer
A latex newborn named Laveen. A misanthropic professor. A teacher and two students, tangled up in love affairs as complicated as anything Freud could dream up. And, of course, college. These are just some of the issues that renowned graphic artist Chip Kidd (he designed the Jurassic Park logo) deals with in his first foray into writing. With "The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel In Two Semesters," Kidd locks our eyes again, this time to the written page.
The story opens with our unnamed narrator explaining his decision to major in art at a State University. He chooses that particular major simply because he hates it and figures if a college can "treat the subject with the proper disdain, it would be one run by the government."
As the title of the novel implies, we first watch our hero struggle through his first semester. His classes are dull and his apathy for the subject is apparent until he falls for a girl, Himillsy Dodd, an art fanatic who gets him excited about art, among other things. Kidd paints Himillsy as pompous, unlovable and irritating, all art-house chic and patent leather.
Unfortunately, the first semester is almost as boring as the main character's classes. Little happens and little is said. Kidd falters as he comes out of the gate, his prose at times coming across as slightly forced and predictably clever, jokes with punch lines that are all too expected.
But the story truly hits its stride after the students return from Christmas break. Spring semester is when we meet the mesmerizing character of professor Winter Sorbeck.
Winter Sorbeck is, as his name implies, old, icy and not without a certain bite. A misanthrope who seems to hate everyone and everything except for good art, he becomes the character's foil for the rest of the book, devising all manners of assignments, at times stereotypical and at other times completely original. The less inventive assignments are kept interesting by Sorbeck's scathing critiques of the students' work, in which he does everything from telling a fraternity boy to "get out.... rush on home, Stigma Guy," to having another student light his highly combustible piece of art on fire.
One of the more original assignments requires the students to design signs to get them picked up on the side of the road, a hitchhiker's advertisement of a sort. Each student is graded on whether the car actually picks him up; the student's grade falls a letter for each car that drives by. Of course we too learn something from Sorbeck - something from his bitter critiques that revolve around phrases like, "Good is dead."
Perhaps Kidd is trying to tell us that life should not be confined to a single page but needs to be a full story, something implicit as he stretches himself to fill a book with his written art. Or perhaps it is just that you have to be yourself, something our main character is forced to try and figure out how to do. Regardless of what is taken away, Kidd definitely offers more than one lesson in the space of a short time, just like any good teacher should. "The Cheese Monkeys" is a fairly solid debut: clever, insightful and engaging.
|
|
revised February 6, 2002 by
phoenix@luc.edu
URL: http://www.luc.edu/phoenix
|
|
|
|
