Author: Warren Ellis Title: Crooked Little Vein Genre: mystery
If you wanna break into fiction writing, these days it seems that there are three tried-and-true routes to the best-seller lists. Apparently you need:
to be someone famous, like all those actors writing children's books; or related to someone famous, like that Kellerman kid or Steve King's wife
to do everything in your power to scandalize 70% of the reading public, sort of like Dan Brown in that ...Code thing of his
to be incredibly talented
Warren Ellis apparently meets the first criterion, being famous in his own right (though for the life of me I can't understand why) as a creator of "graphic novels." With no hope of meeting the third criterion, however, he hedged his bets by also striving mightily to meet the second criterion as well. To do so, he filled his first "real" novel, Crooked Little Vein, to overflowing with shameless attempts to scandalize or perhaps repulse readers. And make no mistake, if you're not the kind of person who already fawns over his "graphic novels" (a code phrase to let people know that what looks like a comic book is actually X-rated for violence, misogyny, and noisome depictions), you will probably be scandalized. Then again, if you are a fan of literature, you might simply be disgusted.
Mike McGill, hard-boiled though strangely jazzless (and very young) private eye from the Big Apple, has the case of a lifetime: a verrrry high-ranking official at the White House has contracted with him to find an "alternate" copy of the U. S. Constitution, missing for more than a half century since Tricky Dick Nixon gave it to a blackmailing prostitute. For unknown reasons a man with control over the FBI, CIA, DHS, NSA, NCIS, FDC, CDC. NASA, USGS, and all that other alphabet soup finds it necessary to place a has-been private eye on the case; to the tune of half a million dollars and an unlimited expense account. Be that as it may... the first thing McGill does with his expense account is to make the acquaintance of Trix, graduate student in... in... apparently, deviant psychology, who decides to accompany him as he attempts to track the book from its last known location, in Columbus Ohio.
The search takes Mike and Trix to Columbus, San Antonio, Las Vegas, and finally LA (pretty much where one might expect it to terminate). The search also takes Mike and Trix through a secret theater for people who are aroused by films of giant lizards, a mold- and fungus-covered abandoned waterworks, a party where men inject their... "dangly bits"... with mass quantities of saline solution, and another party where transsexuals are injecting one of their number's glutes with silicone plumber's caulk in hopes of duplicating J-Lo's boxy booty; with a climactic moment at a party at which rich, disease-ridden hedonists gang-rape teenagers and take bets on which of them will develop the sexually-transmitted conditions.
Oh, yeah, and they also look for the book, which - apparently - will turn everyone who hears it read into a Puritan. Damned shame that Ellis hasn't had the pleasure, if you ask me...
Down through the years there has been great literature that shocked and scandalized. Lolita, perhaps. Kerouac's On the Road was pretty outrageous for the era, as was Richard Fariña's Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. They all depict the sexual and pharmacological proclivities of people who dwell at the edges of "polite" society. To survive beyond the end of the week, such books must be well-written and tackle pertinent questions of the day. In Crooked Little Vein, however, Ellis achieves his goal of scandalizing his readers while making a valiant attempt to prove his point - the point being that the US is a land led by deviants and hypocrites. What he miserably fails, however, is to write well. His characters are flatter than Debra Messing and he blithely sacrifices every single opportunity to write literature to an adolescent desire to revolt his readers.
Speaking of characters, with the exception of a few service personnel along the way, everyone the protagonists meet on their journey - a rancher who makes naked midnight runs to garrote cows and suckle their cooling udders; a serial killer; a "fellow" private eye who specializes in gruesome crimes of a decidedly sexual nature - every single person is sexually deviant, violent, drug-addicted, or all of the above. Quite the depiction of a host country, eh - you see, Warren Ellis is not even North American! He's a Brit!! whose sole exposure to the country he slanders is a book tour a few years ago! That explains, however, the idiotic dialog he inserts into his characters' mouths, for no self-respecting speaker of American English would refer to testicles as "dangly bits," to a penis as a "todger." Sodding arse! Instead, you ought to make fun of your Prince, the guy who dumped that stone fox Diana to make the beast with two backs with the likes of "Squidgy."
Ellis makes a couple of claims about Crooked Little Vein: the first is that the distasteful sex and violence he portrays all came from news items posted to his bulletin board and another, now-defunct site. That includes such unmitigated dross as the mention of a blind man arrested for the rape of his seeing-eye dog... which reminds me:
Two guys were out walking their dogs when one decided to stop in a local bar for a beer. "We can't go in there with these dogs," his friend said. "Sure we can: watch me!" The first guy put on dark sunglasses, pulled the leash up short, and fumbled his way through the door. When he didn't come out after a couple of minutes, the second guy put on his sunglasses, pulled the leash up short, and fumbled his way through the door. As he noticed his friend seated at a nearby table, the bartender shouted at him, "You can't bring that dog in here!" He replied, "But it's a seeing-eye dog." The bartender answered back, "No, it's not: seeing-eye dogs are German Shepherds - yours is a Chihuahua." He felt around in the air next to his knees for a moment, then said plaintively, "They gave me a Chihuahua?!"
Ba-dump-bump.
a monkey could write better shit than this
[LeaMaimone]
His second claim is that in response to haranguing by his editor he dashed off the first ten thousand words of his opus to shut her up. If a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, would that he had drawn ten pictures instead - doing so would have saved a lot of trees.
Well, I'm certain that I'll be lambasted by Ellis fans for panning his book. Tough. I've read vanity press books that are more literary and have more fully-developed characters and plot. And more to the point, I've read Phillip Roth and Tom Robbins: I know what absurdity is, and Crooked Little Vein isn't it. It's pure and simple drivel, the literary equivalent of monkeys flinging their feces at the bars of their cages.