The Cheese Monkeys

In short, this book is about a boy's freshman year as an art student. It is broken down into Fall Semester and Spring Semester. In Fall Semester, Chip, the author and main character, includes his adventures during registration, Art 101 Introduction to Drawing, Art 101 Introduction to Drawing continued, and Winter Break. While this may seem like a boring story that would describe what he learned in the class, it's way more than that. Chip's thoughts are what makes the book so enjoyable.

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

Art 101 Introduction to Drawing is run by Mrs. Dorothy Spang, or Dottie, as she instructs her students to call her: "Reffering to a teacher by her first name is odd enough. A nickname seemed like nudity."

Art 101 (first drawing of a live model): "After everyone was seated, he threw off the robe to unveil at least two hundred pounds of flesh that looked like a pile of mud in a rainstorm. His hands were clumped into ham fists, and defiantly poked into either pillowy hip. As his head slanted upward, he gleamed with a puffy nobility-- Lord of the Fluffernutters."

First visit to a bar: "He took the match from his teeth, struck it against his left temple, and offered it to her: Me Greck-- girl take gift of fire."

Art 101: "I soon found there's nothing quite like a knapsack at your feet with a dead baby in it to cramp your drawing style; to say nothing of trying to put pleasing marks on paper with the suspiction that the person next to you is really a fiensidh shoul in the guise of the illegitimate offspring of Popeye and Betty Boop."

If Chip's thoughts weren't entertaining enough, the people he meets lead to very interesting situations. After noticing a girl named Himillsy for the first time, he finds her drunk in the art school one night. Her giggling interests him, so he returns later to see what she had done. Every student's live model drawing had been altered in some way by Himillsy, his own drawing now having two left feet-- in his own drawing style.

In the same drawing class, they must learn to draw gesture drawings. For this, Dottie brings in her cat, who she reptitively throws buckets of water on. This is described as "a noise like a baby being boiled alive."

Himillsy, Chip's friend, has a way of making him, and the reader, laugh. In one instance, Himillsy kicks a stroller with a very realistic doll in it as a woman is walking past her and responds, "Look honey, he's smiling!" Himillsy does this despite the woman's horrified look.

I realize this isn't very analytical, but hey, it's a funny book and this is what made me laugh.