THE CHEESE MONKEYS

Sheer charm most of the way in debut fiction by acclaimed book-cover artist Kidd, associate director of jackets at Knopf.

So, what are cheese monkeys? Back in 1957, Nameless the Narrator has little idea what college means and so chooses an art major as the path of least hardship. When State U beds him down three-to-a-room, he takes up sleeping on a mattress in the art room, where plump Dottie Spang teaches Introduction to Drawing. He soon falls for talented, outspoken, Salingeresque cutie-pie Himillsy H. Dodd, a whisky drinker who drops him with such exotica as “McGreet” and the “loove” and tells him Dottie Spang “couldn’t teach a piece of shit how to stink.” The Venus de Milo? “She’s a woman as men want her: a nice set of knockers and no fists or fingernails to defend them. You’re all pigs.” What does she think of the Dixie chick Maybelle Lee in their art class? “She’s a birthday cake with legs.” This trio’s intellectual explosion comes with Introduction to Commercial Art, which their teacher, Winter Sorbeck, instantly tells them is a misnomer: the class is Introduction to Graphic Design. “Commercial Art tries to make you buy things. Graphic Design gives you ideas.” Sorbeck blazes with staggeringly intense ideas—GOOD IS DEAD—that joyously burn up the page. He is worth any reader’s time, his sadism too wonderful to mangle here. How best can you thumb a ride with only a sheet of paper and a marker? Try: I AM NOT ARMED. That’s an idea Himmilsy comes up with when Sorbeck takes the whole class out and makes them put ideas into action on a stingingly cold winter day, the students one by one stopping cars with a graphic design held aloft. Some later scenes remain problematic. But, winterized, the students soon see everything everywhere in Graphic Design, as will you when you . . . .

. . . suck brains with a genius who really is a genius: that is, when you Read This Book.