Review: Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis

I want to start with the end as I think it gives you a bit of the moxy from the author that will filter through the pages of Crooked Little Vein. Many times we read the back-interior flap of a book and we read the author bio that at times has a personal touch to it but for the most part is a standard - yet often informative enough – work of that may have viewed Article Five in the Code of Conduct as a guide to what level of information contained within them. In what may seem a shock to some, he 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 may or could already allow someone not to include the “in that form” part. At his worst, he merely only 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 enters this novel does so with expectations, much in the way that a Gaiman did with an established, existing fanbase.

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 that author’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 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 there is no mystery we won’t believe if you gives 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, 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 rather paying to look at a girl in 2D than talk to one for free, where serial killers introduce themselves to you, where subcultures of all sorts are sanctioned to sprout up because that’s 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, the subject of changing hands on a trail long cold that rational, sensible, means have proven ineffective. McGill’s chief asset coveted by his employer is simply that he truly doesn’t give a damn and thus comes off as the most sensible person in the world. With him and his partner found on the way Trix 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 and the question of and distinction of freedom – what is actually practiced itself willingly and what is deemed acceptable or legal practices of harmless freedom. 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.

Remember that night with some vacationing Doll House ladies (true story that isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds) in that boat that wasn’t ours, but was for a night and we said it was when girl, the blonde one – no the other one with the dark eyes that she can make shake and cause your head to explode if you stare to long – had 3 of her fingers mulched on by what we are saying was a turtle only everybody was so far gone that no one noticed it until somebody called her on a renig in a spades game? Wait a minute, what are you doing playing cards in that situation? I don’t know – shit was crazy.

Everybody has stories like that – hell I have 100 more, yet if you catch me on another day I’m ordering a damn G.I. Joe figure accessory I need, watching JLU Unlimited, finding a comic with a sweet Matt Baker cover on it I have never seen, or trying to figure out how I can ascend like two Malazan coastal marines. So imagine what goes on with real weirdos? 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 and the episodic nature corresponds to at least how I 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 attempt, 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

In the comic community it has been as of late and for the last few years a rather vogue for successful writers in other mediums to be handed projects with varying degrees of success and failure. In the age of multi-media and access it actually makes a hell of a lot of sense – albeit with admittedly some major issues - to be able to cross market with cross creators in what is essentially a form of viral marketing imbedded in the creative process itself. One can find many examples of comic book writers who also write novels (much more the other way around now) but in the search of 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’s Voice of Fire but my own finding suggests a chasm and extremes. They are either worthy to be noted as pieces of fiction notable that year or are forgettable for the sake of maintaining sanity (for example see Claremont) and 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 and that is to say in a way that isn’t searching – it’s presenting. I realize that presenting a comparison of Crooked Little Vein with those works above – simply due to them (the writers) having crafted stories with pictures – is both lazy and short sighted but in my recent effort to acclimate myself to current writers who define themselves as ‘mystery writers’ to entertain and better educate myself and what I have found has been disappointing. I find very little that exceeds what I consider classic – or for the sake of Brian ‘more well known’ material by Christie or Stout from writers who define themselves as writers in this field, instead I find the freshest – and by fresh I don’t imply a more substantial via any of the ridiculous catch words like ‘grit’ or ‘dark’ often used by the establishment of uniformity as derogatory markers when referencing creators who don’t write the same book over and over or practice creative duplication in the name of tradition – works coming from writers who have identities that surpass genre confines: Auster, Lethem, Ford, Chabon, Banneville, Abe, Moore, and Moorcock including the more recent SFcentric work by Morgan, Liz Williams, a Matthew Hughes and Ellis is already somebody that was on this list for me with his work in the comic book Fell and Crooked Little Vein is a nice little debut but it straddles that line of being substantial or just being diverting but even if the letter there are times we all enjoyed a one-night stand. Less 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 that aren’t readers may find the work cutthroat and poignant more so than 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 older readers, well Ballard pretty much has us covered but there is something here that is more than borrowed swagger and while more of a stab than a deftly cut, Ellis recognizes when one is more appropriate or appropriately less appropriate and has moments that are penetrating and has an edge laced with a mixture of mockery and revelry that ultimately appeals to our instinct if not present honesty and while familiar Ellis idiosyncrasies are present 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”

It’s appallingly grounded and clearly written in a manner anybody could pick up and go with and while it may comfort me to think of myself as one of many that are more desensitized and open minded due to travel, experiences, luck, education, Samuel Delaney 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.

_{Brian did a review for Crooked Little Vein at Fantasybookspot.com - it’s a good read, so check that out as well.}

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