The Cheese Monkeys

Graphic designer Chip Kidd's hilarious, art school based "novel in two semesters" isn't necessarily a literary masterpiece, but it's a page-turner. The satire is thick, no aspect of college-life (art kids, parents, crazy professors, etc.) is left unscathed.

"College? I was never too crazy about the idea in the first place, but not going didn't seem to be a choice--any more than going through puberty. And it looked to be about a tenth as fun. Actually, it wasn't hatred of Art that led me to State at all, it was hatred of responsibility. In the face of this distant but charging train of education, I just ran along the tracks and alit onto the platform at the nearest station."

"I kept pretending to read and bobbed my head, eager to avoid a conversation. If we started talking now, we'd have to think up things to say for what looked to be hours."

"Small talk is small in every way except when you try to get around it. Then it's enormous."

"I just didn't do things like that. I was too young."

"Several shadowy patrons in plaid flannel and worn denim lurked along the edges of the bar. They ignored us and went about the business of forgetting yesterday, today, and tomorrow."

"I promised God I'd never drink again if He'd just let me stop heaving, but He didn't get my call until late the next morning."

"She needed a worthy foe, always--someone to ricochet off of in order to keep up the momentum. And I would never, could never, be that."

"We are the Western world. We read, see, think. Left. To. Right. We can't help it."

"'Always remember: Limits are possibilities. That sounds like Orwell, I know. It's not--it's Patton. Formal restrictions, contrary to what you might think, free you up by allowing you to concentrate on purer ideas."

"No doubt--she was fatally sorry she'd spoken up. Sorry that God had ever put a tongue in her mouth."

"The first day, the hard realities are just the theory--the deadline is still abstract and you're not in a rush. You laugh, you're at ease, you work slowly--as if extra time can be delivered at some point, like a pizza. You stay calm. And later you will regret it, deeply."

"After ninety-six hours, it's not a pencil anymore, it's a yellow pointypointy that makes marks for you when you give it brain signals and frankly it's bored and wants a life of its own. Can you blame it? Of course you can. Someone made it. How did they get the hard blackyblack in there? Was it Space Beings? The pointypointy drops yellow to the floor. The floor is fifty feet down. You'll drown if you go after it. No more pointypointy."

"As your project nears completion, it is becoming more coherent and realized, while you are deteriorating."