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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1806786.The_Learners_A_Novel?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Learners: A Novel" border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/415lmVrW1WL._SL160_.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1806786.The_Learners_A_Novel?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Learners: A Novel</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16114.Chip_Kidd">Chip Kidd</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/16360862?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 1 of 5 stars Awful. 
 
 
 The Learners features the same eternally naive, lovable (?), ball-less and ostensible like thirteen-year-old protagonist as The Cheese Monkeys (it's even subtitled "The Book After The Cheese Monkeys"), Happy (read: Hapless), now out of art school and working for an ad agency. Only this time, not content with simply focusing on something he's familiar with (graphic design), Kidd throws in a second storyline, that of real-life psychologist Stanley Milgram and his 1960s experiment on human response to authority. The novel's title comes from this subplot, which is so incidental and poorly developed I had to go back and read it again, like I'd missed it. Apparently though it's like this life-altering experience for Happy (he describes Milgram as one of "his two great teachers," a man who "taught him who [he] really [is].") Really? Happy has nightmares and visions, and flips out on a business big-wig in an important meeting, all because of this experience, even though it's entirely forgettable as described in the novel.
 
 Stylistically, I guess I may simply be outside of the audience Kidd's writing for. Perhaps fans of comic books and genre fiction are who he's after, but phrases like "yowza" don't really float my boat, and when Happy spends a few pages describing (very much telling, versus showing) himself to the reader, then says, "OK. What else?" and continues, it not only doesn't float my boat, it sort of drops a large bomb on it and sinks it real fast. Different typefaces are used here and there, of course, though while it doesn't really add much, it's not that distracting or gratuitous.
 
 Also though, there're these little page-long italic interjections where Irony, Content, Form, Wit, etc. make little appearances and speak to the reader, first defining themselves (do we really need a midnovel definition of irony?), and then maybe providing little anecdotes that don't really apply to the story.
 
 The book is really nicely laid out, but you know Kidd wrote the thing in InDesign, meaning if there was a widow or some bad line-break or something, you can't help but assume he cut a word or two to make it all fit nicely (the aforementioned italic interjections are all exactly one page long, e.g.). Which is disappointing. Kidd is most definitely a designer first and a writer second, and this book makes it clear that that second is and should remain a very, very distant one. This is no Only Revolutions, Kidd has worlds more restraint and acumen than Danielewski, but still. The Learners is basically Michael Jordan deciding he wants to give baseball a try.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/787522?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Paul's review
rating:

Awful.

The Learners features the same eternally naive, lovable (?), ball-less and ostensible like thirteen-year-old protagonist as The Cheese Monkeys (it's even subtitled "The Book After The Cheese Monkeys"), Happy (read: Hapless), now out of art school and working for an ad agency. Only this time, not content with simply focusing on something he's familiar with (graphic design), Kidd throws in a second storyline, that of real-life psychologist Stanley Milgram and his 1960s experiment on human response to authority. The novel's title comes from this subplot, which is so incidental and poorly developed I had to go back and read it again, like I'd missed it. Apparently though it's like this life-altering experience for Happy (he describes Milgram as one of "his two great teachers," a man who "taught him who [he] really [is].") Really? Happy has nightmares and visions, and flips out on a business big-wig in an important meeting, all becaus...more Awful.

The Learners features the same eternally naive, lovable (?), ball-less and ostensible like thirteen-year-old protagonist as The Cheese Monkeys (it's even subtitled "The Book After The Cheese Monkeys"), Happy (read: Hapless), now out of art school and working for an ad agency. Only this time, not content with simply focusing on something he's familiar with (graphic design), Kidd throws in a second storyline, that of real-life psychologist Stanley Milgram and his 1960s experiment on human response to authority. The novel's title comes from this subplot, which is so incidental and poorly developed I had to go back and read it again, like I'd missed it. Apparently though it's like this life-altering experience for Happy (he describes Milgram as one of "his two great teachers," a man who "taught him who [he] really [is].") Really? Happy has nightmares and visions, and flips out on a business big-wig in an important meeting, all because of this experience, even though it's entirely forgettable as described in the novel.

Stylistically, I guess I may simply be outside of the audience Kidd's writing for. Perhaps fans of comic books and genre fiction are who he's after, but phrases like "yowza" don't really float my boat, and when Happy spends a few pages describing (very much telling, versus showing) himself to the reader, then says, "OK. What else?" and continues, it not only doesn't float my boat, it sort of drops a large bomb on it and sinks it real fast. Different typefaces are used here and there, of course, though while it doesn't really add much, it's not that distracting or gratuitous.

Also though, there're these little page-long italic interjections where Irony, Content, Form, Wit, etc. make little appearances and speak to the reader, first defining themselves (do we really need a midnovel definition of irony?), and then maybe providing little anecdotes that don't really apply to the story.

The book is really nicely laid out, but you know Kidd wrote the thing in InDesign, meaning if there was a widow or some bad line-break or something, you can't help but assume he cut a word or two to make it all fit nicely (the aforementioned italic interjections are all exactly one page long, e.g.). Which is disappointing. Kidd is most definitely a designer first and a writer second, and this book makes it clear that that second is and should remain a very, very distant one. This is no Only Revolutions, Kidd has worlds more restraint and acumen than Danielewski, but still. The Learners is basically Michael Jordan deciding he wants to give baseball a try....less

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message 1: by Casey

03/09/2008 10:39AM

What's funny about this is that I just read the review for "The Learners" in this morning's NY Times book review and thought, huh, I should really tell Paul about this book. The intersection between graphic design and literature, totally his ball of wax. But glad I didn't...yowza!