Feature

Captain Kidd

Kidd not only is obsessed with comic books but also edits them for Pantheon -- which means, basically, that he has three careers going at a time when many people his age don't even have one. Not only was he the editor of Daniel Clowes's David Boring, but he also leapt to his defense after DC Comics killed one of Clowes's strips: "The people in the comics division -- they're living in a fantasy land. They think Superman is real," he says.

Nonetheless, Kidd takes comics rather seriously himself -- he certainly knows all the minutiae: "One year, Montgomery Ward had an exclusive offer where you could mail in and get Bruce Wayne's clothing for your Batman doll," he says, gesturing to a doll dressed in a business suit. Asked why superheroes have a tendency to wear Speedos, he replies, "It's really none of my business how they live their lives. I love all this stuff, but I get absolutely no sexual . . . I have sex with a partner."

The partner in question is J. D. McClatchy, the celebrated poet who has been the editor of The Yale Review since 1991. The two are as similar as cheese and chalk -- Kidd is 36, McClatchy 56; Kidd is obsessed with comic books, McClatchy with Walt Whitman. The two just got back from a weeklong trip to Seattle, which they visited specifically to see all eighteen hours of Wagner's Ring cycle. "It's like the Woodstock of operas!" Kidd says. McClatchy would no doubt grimace at the comparison.

"It was sublime," McClatchy says. "And to his own surprise, Chip stayed awake the whole time. Earlier, I'd tried to lure him by explaining the Ring was really just a superheroes story."

"Sometimes he needs to be reined in a little bit," Kidd says of McClatchy. "He can be Mr. Academe. It's really fun to be silly and vulgar around him, because he's like one of those women in The Three Stooges -- the wise society dowager who gets hit in the face with a cream pie."

"Wise dowagers develop a taste for cream pie," McClatchy says in his defense. "I have."

There is, of course, a mentor-student aspect to their relationship, and there are certainly echoes of that same dynamic in the central relationship of Kidd's novel. "Smart, classically oriented, no-bullshit" is how Chip describes McClatchy. "They don't make 'em like that anymore. He writes for the generation behind him.

"I thrive on mentors and people who know more than I do," he adds. "I thrive on negative reinforcement."

McClatchy, likewise, has gained a great deal from Chip: "Before I met him, my idea of rock music was Act Two of Die Walküre, and Superman a character in Nietzsche. Nowadays, I live more in the dizzying pinball machine of pop culture, trying to keep a precarious balance."

The two first met at a publishing party, and when Kidd introduced himself, McClatchy, startled, replied, "But I've dreamt about you. You're supposed to have curly hair and tortoiseshell glasses!" "I'd made such a stink about my jacket," McClatchy recalls of the book he was then publishing, "that the art department finally washed its hands of me." When the first copy arrived, the poet immediately "saw how ugly it was. A series of guilty dreams ensued, and the only designer at Knopf whose name I'd heard of was Chip's. So he was berating me nightly. And then, suddenly, eerily, we met -- and never looked back."

Although McClatchy (or Sandy, as Chip calls him, but you shouldn't) was very supportive while The Cheese Monkeys was being written, he was also exceedingly blunt. "I asked him," says Kidd, " 'If you didn't know me, and I submitted this to The Yale Review, would you be interested?' "

McClatchy's response? "No -- forget it."

"Sandy's not vengeful at all," Kidd says, "but every now and then he'll say, 'You have no idea how easy you've had it.' "

McClatchy is obviously proud of Kidd's work; in fact, to hear him say it, he couldn't be more so: "Chip's been persistent in finding, even in the midst of a high-pressure career, the quiet you need to write down a story. From the beginning, I've adored Chip's boundless energy, his innate sense of playfulness, his canny take on the world. All our years together have been marvelous."

Which leads to the question, will the two give up their separate homes and start a family? "I need my own space, so I can do with it exactly as I want," Kidd says. "The whole trend of gay couples adopting children, I don't have that gene. I think that's one of the advantages of being gay. God leaves you off the hook. Let the breeders do it! I sort of feel like I'm getting away with something."

Instead of using his design-genius fame to trade up to a bigger and more influential job, Kidd is obviously taking a big risk by jumping into the role of novelist. After all, it's safe to assume that his meteoric rise has earned him a fair share of resentment.

"The expectations one's work creates both stamp and stymie one," McClatchy says. "But Michelangelo wrote poems, and Francis Ford Coppola makes wine." And while those of us who aren't dating Kidd might hesitate to compare him to either artist, what McClatchy says rings true on some level: "It's natural that what you are trying to design eventually has designs on you. And when you think about it, isn't 'writing' a way to design language?"

Of course, the fact that Kidd is dating one of the nation's most celebrated living poets is further grist for the mill of his detractors. But regardless of how his novel is ultimately received, Kidd, to his credit, seemingly has no intention of doing anything but moving up. "Graphic design is divided into form and content," he says, "and it's only natural for me at some point to move from form to content. I have ideas for other books, and then what's next? Sound and movement."

And yes, he recently completed designing the opening credits for G, a retelling of The Great Gatsby that transports the action to the Hamptons, with rap stars taking the place of flappers.

"Chip's an imaginative and restless artist," McClatchy says. "I wouldn't be surprised if The Cheese Monkeys led not just to other novels but to movie versions of them -- directed by and starring you-know-who."

It's clear he's ambitious, but there's no question that Kidd is extremely brave to attempt this tightrope act. He must be -- after all, he's dared to put the word cheese in the title of his novel. So, given these circumstances, shouldn't he be a little bit worried about how people -- particularly those in publishing -- are going to respond to even the idea of his writing a novel, let alone the novel itself?

"Worried doesn't begin to describe how I feel," he says, taking a long sip of white wine. "I'm catatonic. You know, even I would eye this with suspicion -- the whole Ethan Hawke syndrome, you know."