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Title details for The Learners by Chip Kidd - Available

The Learners

by Chip Kidd
Bronson Pinchot
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
2 of 2 copies available

A young graphic designer fresh out of college in the summer of 1961, Happy has just landed his first job at a wacky advertising firm filled with eccentric creative artists. Everything is going great until Happy is 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, this stand-alone sequel to Chip Kidd’s previous novel, The Cheese Monkeys, again shows that Kidd's writing is every bit as original, stunning, and memorable as his celebrated book jackets.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    February 19, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781481551540
      • File size: 184850 KB
      • Duration: 06:25:06

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Chip Kidd's latest novel, a sequel to his previous work, THE CHEESE MONKEYS, is an inventively written story of a graphic designer in the early sixties. Narrator Bronson Pinchot, known for the TV show "Perfect Strangers," offers a fresh perspective and a perfectly played performance that captures the essence of Kidd's work. Pinchot assumes the personality of Happy, the story's protagonist, with such vigor that he seems the only possible choice to narrate the novel. His speech is clear and firm; his straightforward voice is as credible as it is relatable. A witty story told by an even wittier narrator is a perfect combination. L.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 24, 2007
      A sequel to book designer Kidd’s first novel, The Cheese Monkeys
      , this beautifully composed paean to pre-computer graphic design pitches recent graduate Happy (his nickname), now 21, into the mercantile halls of down-at-the-heels New Haven ad agency Spears, Rakoff and Ware. Kidd paints the agency with all the customary conventions of a mid-century office culture farce: lacquered secretaries, lunchtime scotches and broken-down businessmen. Happy wiles away his time in blissful drudgery until he fields a call for designing a tiny ad for a seemingly innocuous psychological study. The study is being run by (real-life psychologist) Stanley Milgram, and Happy is unable to resist volunteering; little surprise for readers that Happy finds himself a participant in Milgram’s notorious Obedience to Authority
      experiment, playing the role of “The Teacher” who is ordered to shock “The Learner” with near-lethal doses of electricity. Though character development is less the point than jokes about behaviorism and old school office culture’s last gasps, the experiment teaches Happy more than he ever hoped to know. The jokes are sometimes dippy, and some of the typographical pyrotechnics are on the twee side. But Kidd’s ebullience and generosity in unpacking the art and practice of graphic design carry the novel.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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