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by erin thursby
scopes1925@msn.com
Crooked Little Vein might be one of the most intriguing books I’ve read in quite a while. It’s a journey through the mire of America’s sick psychosexual fetishes, ending in one man’s choice to save or damn humanity/America. In this case, whether he saves or damns America will depend on your opinion.
The book is the first prose novel by comic book writer and artist Warren Ellis. It isn’t surprising that he decided to update a classic genre like noir, since his talent in the comic business is revamping old characters from bygone eras and remaking them for the modern world, without losing all the things that made them great in the first place.
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Ellis definitely mines the tried-and-true mythos of the hero’s journey in this allegory of American culture, packaged as a detective noir story. It’s fitting that a genre that evokes thoughts of black and white film and a gritty underworld would be used as a vehicle for something so modern.
Mike McGill, a detective who lives in his squalid office, receives a commission from the president’s heroine-addict chief of staff. McGill is given half a million dollars to find a mythic book, containing a “Secret Constitution.” This document apparently has untold powers to reverse the depravity of a country more interested in surfing the web for porn than in serving the government.
Following the hero’s journey, McGill first consults (accidentally) with a modern Shaman, who listens to the sound of traffic in order to tell the future, much as Native American Shamans used to tell the future by listening to the sound of hoof beats.
Things get weird fast as far as Mike “the shit-magnet” McGill is concerned. When following his first lead, he ends up in a porno theatre full of people who get off on the idea of having sex with large lizards. If you’re easily shocked, this is not the book for you, but because McGill is so freaked by the situation, I was fairly comfortable reading it. It was more ridiculous than anything, plus, once they brought in the monitor lizards, McGill leaves as quickly as he can.
It’s at this porno theatre that he picks up one essential component for his journey: a girl named Trix. She is writing a thesis on the extremes of self-inflicted human experience and she’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of strange fetishes. She is his femme fatale traveling partner.
McGill travels the country on this quest, like a modern hero of myth, to which unbelievable things always happen. Each person he meets on his journey helps him to gain a deeper understanding of what finding the fabled book will mean and of the state of the country. He travels in a crooked little vein around the nation, echoing the early “Don’t Tread on Me” version of the flag with its twisted, segmented snake, an image which can also be found on the cover.
The thesis statement of the tale seems to be that what used to be underground simply isn’t anymore. As the serial killer on the airplane says to McGill: “Underground’ always connoted something hidden, something difficult to see or find…If it’s on the Internet…it cannot possibly be underground.”
Most people who pick up the book knowing the author’s background in comics will expect that he would constantly paint a vivid, visually oriented mental picture of everything, but he uses his powers sparingly, mostly on memorable-looking characters. Ellis’ characters are quick sketches, made all the more interesting by the fact that we have mostly only their physicality to tell us who they are. My favorite description was of a drug pusher named Muppet: “Hair like red yarn, red eyebrows that you’d need a whip and chair to put in their place, eyes that stood out of his face like someone had slipped boiled eggs into his sockets. Wearing a wifebeater so old and thin that you could practically see his heart behind his ribs. Jogging pants covered in tiny little burn holes and stinking of dope and shiny new running shoes.”
Much of the book is spent in the cesspool of America, and after treading through the muck, McGill naturally feels that this mythic Alternate Constitution should be used on the populace. But the document also takes away the ability to choose what you want, especially if what you want is anything other than the missionary position. McGill learns about the positives of our information laden no-underground society, just in time to use them to his own benefit. The ending of the book seems slightly implausible, but I accepted it because of the world McGill inhabits. It fits the world, so I bought it and was satisfied (for the most part) with the ending.
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
