Synopsis
The narrator of Kidd's comic novel, in college in the 1950s, falls in love with a wisecracking art major and encounters a collection of sublimely eccentric teachers. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2002-09-01 | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Length: | 288 pages | | Height: | 7.8 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 9.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
From People Who Liked It "It is rare for a book to produce uncontrollable laughter as loud as this one did. The narrator is at art college in the 1950s, and after failing to get the courses he wants, finds himself attending 'Introduction to Graphic Design,' taught by the inspiring, sadistic, and compelling Professor Winter Sorbeck. Through humiliation and excess he shows his naive young charges how to see the world through new eyes. This is a brilliantly entertaining debut -- intelligent, pitch-perfect, and enlightening."
-- The Times (London) This story about growing up and finding your calling is funny and, almost despite itself, moving. Here the big ideas -- about growing, working, loving -- are all inside."
-- New York Times Book Review An irresistible comic voice that sounds so modern, and so right, even as it re-creates the undergraduate life of the late 1950s."
-- Los Angeles Times Book Review "Channeling Holden Caulfield via David Sedaris, Kidd produces a stellar debut."
-- Publishers Weekly "A Joyride."
-- Miami Herald Not only is [The Cheese Monkeys] sharp and funny, it's also one of the year's most original American novels."
-- Toronto Globe and Mail From People Who Didn't "Retro kitsch. Thoroughly sophomoric."
-- Entertainment Weekly "The first section veers dangerously towards the predictable. Kidd has a way to go before his literary skills equal his artistic genius."
-- Time Out (New York)
Industry Reviews
"THE CHEESE MONKEYS...is...the book on graphic design that people have probably been urging Kidd to write. Rather than discourse on theory, Kidd has embedded his beliefs in the old, universally appealing stories of maturity, finding your calling in life and being inspired by, and loving, a demanding, serious and highly eccentric teacher....This story about growing up and finding your calling is funny and, almost despite itself, moving."
New York Times Book Review - Thomas Hine (10/14/2001)
"I spent the first 30 pages or so of THE CHEESE MONKEYS...wondering if I would ever come to care about Kidd's protagonist and his days as a student....However, it is a testament to Kidd's prodigious skills as a novelist that, by book's end, not only did I care deeply about his protagonist, but the growth and changes made by the protagonist seemed all the more dramatic, given his initial vagueness. THE CHEESE MONKEYS is a wonderfully witty book that trafficks in both well-observed commentary and outrageous shenanigans and antics; it does for art school what "M*A*S*H" did for the military."
Newsday (Long Island, N.Y.) - Henry Alford (10/15/2001)
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