The Cheese Monkeys, by Chip Kidd

September 30th, 2011

by Meredith Nudo

Even though The Cheese Monkeys wasn't intentionally written as my life story, it's my life story. For I, too, once found myself ensconced in an art department so criminally underfunded, it could turn the Pope into an atheist and an atheist into Richard Dawkins. I, too, whittled away my precious time and energy in temporary buildings over 30 years old. I, too, majored in graphic design, despite knowing that "if any school would treat the subject with the proper disdain, it would be one that was run by the government" (3). I, too, was expected to learn drawing and painting from individuals with little expertise…while those possessing it ended up interred in courses where they…ummmm…held…little…expertise…?

Because if it makes any quark of sense, it ain't really art school.

Chip Kidd depressingly captures the agony and the ecstasy and the also more agony and by the way here's some extra  agony we had laying around the supply closet, could you take it home for us please? of the art-student-at-a-state-university lifestyle, though curiously sans the colorful and near-universal archetypes. But that's OK. Daniel Clowes already went there, and went there well. The plot pits alterna-Manic Pixie Dream Girl Himillsy Dodd against her only professor who actually knows a few things about graphic design, Winter Sorbek. And the war between aesthetic philosophies comes relayed through the eyes of a nameless protagonist slavishly lusting after the former while maybe learning a little something from the latter. The Cheese Monkeys pulls from Kidd's own personal experiences as a Penn State graphic design student, and the autobiographical element shows. His description of "The Difference" (167), for example. That special time in every young art major's life when he and/or she blossoms into a sharp-eyed critic "automatically dissect[ing]" (167) every example of "signage…typesetting, color schemes, and printed materials" (167) – a bizarre, confusing mélange of feelings and the realization that you may not really be better off blowing your tuition money on Sea Monkeys. Only ONE OF US! ONE OF US! could so chillingly bottle the phenomenon.

As well as the prideful ego wars often waged between smartass students who think themselves the epitome of philosophical and aesthetic edginess and the bitter, battle-scarred professors sometimes fanatically dedicated to ripping their perspectives apart. When Dodd and Sorbek entwine their differences into a head-cocking brew of mutually assured destruction and…ahhhh…satisfaction, paradoxically enough…it eerily mirrors the very same narratives unfolding across public art programs across the nation – if not world. Narratives where every utterance "'has a pin in it'" (192), even compliments and earnest critiques. One doesn't have to be a current or former graphic design major to fully understand this unique and exhausting alchemy, of course. But those who are might end up rocking back and forth in the fetal position, incomprehensibly muttering something about Comic Sans to him- and/or herself.

Oh. No. Wait. Most of us do that anyways.The proper reaction to persistent – and mutual…never forget mutual – verbal, mental and emotional passive-aggression is not-so-subtle creative pieces. Like empty columns titled something like, and this is purely hypothetical here, The Seventh Circle of the Cheese Monkeys' (20).

Considering the content and overall snarky, sometimes abrasive indie movie tone, some audiences might find the book on the precious, precocious, pretentious side. I'm so pretentious, I poop biodegradable copies of Gravity's Rainbow. Also? Three years of my life involved dark, horrendously-ventilated portable buildings, printers with color settings only mildly better than their dot matrix predecessors and spending "two dollars for a piece of charcoal that wouldn't grill a guinea pig" (23). And Papyrus. DEAR GOD. SO. MUCH. PAPYRUS. So for someone like me, it provides catharsis and camaraderie as much as it does entertainment. If I ran into Chip Kidd in public, it would require every iota of energy I possess to not offer to buy him a beer so we can cry together and also probably argue about Batman.

Bibliographic Information

Kidd, Chip. The Cheese Monkeys. New York: Perennial, 2001.

If you have any suggestions for future book reviews, feel free to contact me at mnudo (at) oedb (dot) org! I'm emphasizing reads about college and college life, so try to stick with those particular themes. Thanks!

One Response to “The Cheese Monkeys, by Chip Kidd”

Leave a Reply