I want to start with the end, as I think it gives you a bit of the moxy from the author that will filter up through the pages of Crooked Little Vein. Many times we read the back-interior flap of a book and the author bio that offers a personal touch, but for the most part is a standard listing of “work by” whose writer may have viewed Article Five in the Code of Conduct as a guide to what level of information to include. In what may seem a shock to some, Warren Ellis understates his accomplishments:
Warren Ellis is one of the most prolific, read, and admired graphic novelists in the world and the creator of such popular series as Transmetropolitan and The Authority.
Ellis–at his best–is a brilliant writer in that form and is capable of producing works that allow someone not to include the “in that form” part. At his worst, he merely successfully mines the ideas of great novelists in Speculative Fiction and puts them next to people who can draw pretty pictures. When discussing works like Planetary and Transmetropolitan, we are in fact talking about two of the great comic book runs ever. We are also talking about two of the great Science Fiction efforts of the last couple of decades, thus we are also talking about two of the noteworthy forays in fiction at the same time. While top-shelf Western comic writers often have greater readership than mid-list novelists, I just wanted to clarify that we are dealing with a writer who has you entering his debut novel with expectations, much in the way that Gaiman did.
Because none of my reviews are ever written in the order (structurally) they finally appear, I can already tell you now that I mention the name of Gaiman much too often, but the book that comes to mind when I read Crooked Little Vein is Gaiman’s American Gods. Now, don’t go reading this book thinking that you will find anything that resembles American Gods, excluding the superficial nature of my closed mind that kept thinking this little book was the uncensored, unfictionalized-non-fiction travel diary, bootleg, anti-epic of all the civility that Gaiman’s Shadow didn’t want to see put to paper. The scary shit that correlates to true horror because we find ourselves smiling; a mystery that deals with the idea that there is no mystery we won’t believe if you give us a minute and stream it. In a way, he captures what the wonderful Steve Aylett is able to do with none of the fancy, and plays with the knowledge that shock value doesn’t precede standard by too many seconds, clicks, or pages before sinking into a dangerous and tame novelty. Mike McGill has a case–he lives in a world of chaos, where those in power look backwards to move forward, where people have sexual fantasies about fictionalized animals, where saps would fund fortunes by paying to look at a girl in 2D rather than talk to one for free, where serial killers introduce themselves to you, and where subcultures of all sorts are sanctioned to sprout up in the name of freedom. Halloween is everyday–except to those who are against kids and candy; then everyday is not Halloween. In chapter 14 we even learn that those who do have nuts of righteous proportions can find them mighty inconvenient. In short, it’s a place in need of a thorough mass culling as long as we include those who administer it afterwards. This story takes place in the United States and in the words of George Carlin, “I’m not even against killing people.”
McGill is a PI commissioned by the Secretary of State to find a lost piece of literature, a piece authored by our founding fathers as a fail-safe in case–when–we lost our way. The message has been lost; it has changed too many hands on a trail long cold that rational, sensible, means have proven ineffective at following. McGill’s chief asset coveted by his employer is simply that he truly doesn’t give a damn, thus coming off as the most sensible person in the book world. With his partner Trix (found on the way), he will take a mini-tour of the U.S. in search of values no less or more hypocritical, biased, and self-serving as any cabal that has ever come to power. It is a romp that the author knows should be at least mildly disturbing but equally is sure it won’t be, making us the sick enlightened bastards and the actions themselves victimless victims. It’s fun, and one of the strengths for a debut novel is being exceptionally paced. Some episodes or chapters in McGill’s (and indeed our own) lives are substantial but can be expressed in few words. If a picture is worth a thousand words–what of words that paint pictures? Or, at least, stick figures that we hadn’t completed yet because we were busy getting the shit beat out of us?
We rarely remember participants or players, and Crooked Little Vein won’t add characters that you will cherish, challenge fictional barriers, or that have names you will even remember–the episodic nature corresponds to how I, at least, catalog my own life. There is no Jerry Cornelius here–but he may have shared a bar or light with McGill at one time, or fucked Trix one cold November night (or was it the other way around?), and the novel itself exists almost in the same manner:
“It is a small, handwritten volume reputedly bound in the skin of the extraterrestrial entity that plagued Benjamin Franklin’s ass over 6 nights in Paris during his European travels. Benjamin Franklin wasn’t some nancy-boy novelist who wrote sensitive books about aliens sticking things up his rectum, you know. On the seventh night he got right up and killed the little bastard with one punch…”
While many authors–and a shitload of reviewers–label whatever cool thing they can’t describe as “noir,” the attempted, sometimes successful, exploration of the bottom of the well of emotions through a stoic’s eye can take us on a taboo tour. Ellis doesn’t patronize our image; he starts us there and presents that as the status quo and leaves further depths to the unfathomable that will find itself.
One can find many examples of comic book writers who also write novels, but, in the search for excellence, that number is greatly reduced. While I think Gaiman’s most notable work still exists in the sequential art form, he with little doubt qualifies, as does Alan Moore for Voice of Fire, but my own finding suggests a chasm and extremes. They are either pieces of fiction notable for that year, or are forgettable for the sake of maintaining sanity. What I look for is more efforts and experimentation that fill that middle ground to allow the reader to fill in that gap–a true body of work and a funnel for talent in this direction, and while Crooked Little Vein is not a novel that achieves a status I’d associate with American Gods, the collection Smoke and Mirrors, or the aforementioned Voice of Fire, it does offer our first taste of a fresh, practiced, voice in a new format and goes about its business in the manner of those books. Which is to say that isn’t searching; it’s presenting.
I realize that presenting a comparison of Crooked Little Vein with those works above simply due to the writers’ all having crafted stories with pictures is both lazy and short-sighted, but in my recent efforts to acclimate myself to the current self-defined “mystery” genre, the experience has been disappointing. I find very little that exceeds what I consider classic material by Christie or Stout from writers who define themselves as mystery writers; instead I find the freshest works in the field coming from writers who have identities that surpass genre confines: Auster, Lethem, Ford, Chabon, Banneville, Kobo Abe, Moore, and Moorcock, including the more recent SF-centric work by Morgan, Liz Williams, and Matthew Hughes. Ellis was already somebody who was on this list for his work on Fell. Crooked Little Vein is a nice little debut, but it straddles that line of being substantial or just being diverting. Less than filling perhaps, but still tastes great. You do get this feeling that Ellis knows all the words, and he can sing, but he isn’t quite able to make his characters dance yet in-novel. I think for those who may be following Ellis into a novel who aren’t readers may find the work cutthroat and poignant while those of us who are products of recent speculative fiction may view Crooked Little Vein as a few years late in taking a stab at us (and/or older readers, as well). Ballard pretty much has us covered, but there is something here that is more than borrowed swagger, and though still more a stab than deft cut, Ellis recognizes when one is more appropriate or appropriately less appropriate, and has moments that are penetrating. His edge is laced with a mixture of mockery and revelry that ultimately appeals to our instinct. While familiar Ellis idiosyncrasies are present in this as in all his work–some which are grating and at times perhaps even overdone–what shouldn’t be lost in all the references is the charm of the modern love story:
“She’s not my friend. She’s somebody I was sleeping with until she slept with someone else.”
Crooked Little Vein is appallingly grounded and clearly written in a manner anybody could pick up and go with. While it may comfort me to think of myself as one who is more desensitized and open-minded due to travel, experiences, luck, education, Samuel Delany, and what have you, what comes across is that we are all mainstream. There is nothing fringe about Crooked Little Vein no matter what the moral minority may think, and we aren’t entering a brave new world and stopping to take it in. Most of us are already just trying to get by, a shot in the balls at a time.
* This review originally appeared at my old blog, the now-defunct Bodhisattva, in 2007. It and many of the reviews I did there have been and are going to be relocated to BSC. My personal blog has since moved to Vogue Immunity–a collecting blog. It’s presented unaltered, excluding being edited (believe me, it needs it) for clarity, and minus some intro material that now would no longer be applicable.
