FIRST FICTION

THE CHEESE MONKEYS

By Chip Kidd

Scribner: 274 pp., $25

Chip Kidd is to book design what Mr. Guy is to game-show hosts’ wardrobes; he’s the omnipresent, defining brand name. If occasionally twee, Kidd’s funhouse designs never fail to thrill. The same could be said of this unexpected, terrific novel by the designer himself: a tip of the pencil point to content from the form meister . It’s a pleasure to find that Kidd’s writing is as meticulous and energized as his book jackets; still more a pleasure to discover in Kidd an irresistible comic voice that sounds so modern, and so right, even as it re-creates the undergraduate life of the late 1950s.

The nameless white-bread narrator of this “novel in two semesters” is making the eye-opening transition from Upper Wissahicken High to the teeming red-brick halls of State. (Kidd is vague on geography, but there’s a strong sense that State is, in fact, Penn State.) We follow Kidd’s aspiring art major as he undergoes all the freshman rituals, from the parents’ station wagon shrinking on the horizon to the first collegiate crush--the volatile Himillsy Dodd, a fellow art major who’s equal parts Audrey Hepburn and Dorothy Parker. The two are tossed into a life-altering--couldn’t you guess?--graphic design course, taught by the magnetic Winter Sorbeck, whose withering sarcasm and ex cathedra pronouncements literally bump up the book’s font size a couple of notches when he enters. “The Cheese Monkeys” is, we realize, a manifesto for design itself. But it’s more, too, thanks to Kidd’s knack for disarmingly left-field observations. From a bus window: “the snow was coconut ice cream.” Dealing with homework: “I ... toured the brothel of my head for the right approach to show me some leg.” Like the provocative Sorbeck, Kidd, in this comic gem, teaches us a thing or two about how to look at the world.

*

GREAT AMERICAN PLAIN

By Gary Sernovitz

Henry Holt: 240 pp., $23

Leila Genet, community college dropout and convenience store clerk given to smoldering insecurity; Barry Steinke, a rail-thin wastoid pondering his short-lived career on the rockabilly circuit; and Ed Steinke, Barry’s chubby brother, an uptight salesman dedicated to unloading the albatross-like Bracket 180-X home organ on unsuspecting consumers: This is the modest cast of eccentrics that Gary Sernovitz brings together at a sprawling state fair in the Upper Midwest, that “great American plain” where “you were still part of the land that fed the cows that provided the milk that made the cream that filled the puffs that made you fat that made you dead and part of the land.” Part microscopic dissection of two hours in Leila’s, Barry’s and Ed’s lives and part rant, “Great American Plain” further explores the notion that people who live between Los Angeles and New York are vaguely lovable nincompoops. Unfortunately, there isn’t much to love about the stammering Leila, the “like, dude” Barry and, most of all, the odious Ed, who’s obsession with a book called “Classic Sales” puts him on the path toward losing it altogether. But if you can withstand a rhetorical pounding (generalizing is what Sernovitz does best), this book is notable for the way it pits these young brothers (they’re not even close to 30 yet) against one another: Ed, prematurely middle-aged yet youthfully insecure; and Barry, an eternal adolescent who’s as resigned as a senior citizen.

*

LEAVING DISNEYLAND

By Alexander Parsons

St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne:

266 pp., $23.95

The first half of Alexander Parsons’ hard-boiled debut reads like an update of Malcolm Braly’s “On the Yard.” Like Braly, whose out-of-print 1967 novel is the “In Cold Blood” of all prison books, Parsons has a flair for depicting life in the Big House: The prisoners’ potent argot, their hang-dog psychology and, most of all, the draconian laws of their insular society make for fascinating anthropology--and riveting storytelling. In this case, Parsons tells the story of Doc Kane, an aging con whose respect for “code”--a vague adherence to doing things the right way--might suggest that he’s a decent guy. But Doc is serving 16 years for murder, and even if his victim was a rotten egg, we understand that Doc is a formidable criminal. Though Doc plays the inmate game well, when prison officials move an insolent street punk into Doc’s cell shortly before he’s due for parole, it becomes clear that the rules are changing. The second half of “Leaving Disneyland” (the title alludes to the nickname of a Nevada prison) explores the daunting aftermath of this intergenerational encounter and of Doc’s perilous return to society. As an old pal tells Doc of life on the street: “This ain’t no place for no code. Ain’t no morality here.” Indeed, Parsons gives a convincing account of how sometimes freedom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.