The Learners - by Chip Kidd (Paperback)

About the Book

From the famed graphic designer and author of "The Cheese Monkeys" comes a remarkable new novel that shows his writing is, once again, every bit as original, stunning, and memorable as his celebrated book jackets.

From the Back Cover

Fresh out of college in the summer of 1961, Happy lands his first job as a graphic designer (okay, art assistant) at a small Connecticut advertising agency populated by a cast of endearing eccentrics. Life for Happy seems to be -- well, happy. But when he's assigned to design a newspaper ad recruiting participants for an experiment in the Yale Psychology Department, Happy can't resist responding to the ad himself. Little does he know that the experience will devastate him, forcing a reexamination of his past, his soul, and the nature of human cruelty -- chiefly, his own. Written in sharp, witty prose and peppered with absorbing ruminations on graphic design, The Learners again shows that Chip Kidd's writing is every bit as original, stunning, and memorable as his celebrated book jackets.

Review Quotes

"Snappy....Kidd invents a banter-filled workplace worthy of Howard Hawks, gleefully tweaks the old-guard panic of the Mad Men-era ad world, and even throws in a few typographic bells and whistles...A-" - Entertainment Weekly
"Arresting and hip....captivating." - Christian Science Monitor
"The advertising business and the [Milgram psychology] experiment are linked in this swift, often funny and always intelligent book." - Hartford Courant
"Amusing and thought-provoking." - New York Newsday
"Iconic graphic designer Kidd coins a new genre--stylized sentimentalism (think AMC's Mad Men without the bile)--to tell this tale of a creative naif's aesthetic and emotional coming of age. . . . Grade: A" - Washington Post
"Kidd smoothly mixes the reality of Milgram's rather sinister work with the fiction of Happy's new life in advertising....Even more impressive than the blend of fiction and fact is the way that "The Learners" shifts from raucous ad office comedy to the tragic repercussions of the Yale experiments." - Connecticut Post Online
"Ingenious....The Learners seduces the reader through a deceptive manipulation of form and content: It's a matryoshka, or stacking doll, that hides a startling, dark content. By the time we get to the end of the first of its three parts, we are dropped into a creepy, disturbing, sociopolitical satire." - Philadelphia Inquirer
"The novel stays firmly comic: quick and droll and sly. And, like Kidd's previous novel, the most sparkling pages are when Happy and his colleagues discuss how to draw a straight line, or the ironically invisible power of typography." - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Kidd shares his deep knowledge of graphic design with his readers in inventive and generally delightful ways....His wit, astute observation, and compassion make The Learners that rarest of offerings--[an] immensely enjoyable novel." - Boston Globe
''The Learners is witty and well observed as an office comedy, as a meditation on art and as a story of self-discovery...the book is packed with sharp insights....Kidd ultimately is a brilliant, self-aware designer and a clever writer." - New York Times Book Review
"Kidd's novel is slyly funny as well as starkly emotional, and never overwritten or melodramatic. He has a Dickensian flair for giving his characters names that somehow suit them, and yet gives them a depth and poignancy that resonates long after the last page." - Wichita Eagle
"Always intriguing, this is a strange mixture of the frivolous and the disturbing." - Financial Times (London)
"[Chip Kidd's] fiction is just as smart and lively as the covers, typography and layout of the books he designs...swift, often funny and always intelligent." - Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
"[Chip Kidd's] fiction is just as smart and lively as the covers, typography and layout of the books he designs, which include this one." - Newport News Daily Press
"[The Learners] offers an enjoyable introduction to another world and a major writing talent....genuinely interesting...sympathetic characters, funny lines, a firm grasp of time and place, and a plot that makes surprising shifts without ever losing its way....[Chip Kidd is] an author to watch." - USA Today
"Chip Kidd, in his second novel, The Learners, repeats and evolves the typographical high jinks he gave us in The Cheese Monkeys....Kidd's quirky approach to life is endearingly recognizable in its expression." - Los Angeles Times
"Funny, insightful and even educational...quite witty." - The Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo)
"Required reading." - New York Post