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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis

00:31 / 25.07.07

So I bought this at Barnes & Noble today. The first sentence is promisingly profane indeed. Mostly hilarious and/or amusing blurbs on back from William Gibson, Joss Whedon, Kevin J. Anderson and Kinky Freidman (never seen the word SHIT in a blurb b4: well done Kinky).

Looks goode, will read it on the way to San Diego Comicon and post later. Is it out in the UK soon?

Essential Dazzler

09:54 / 25.07.07

Chapters One and Sixteen.

I currently have nothing more useful to say than "Shut Up, Ellis."

Sorry.

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

05:58 / 29.07.07

I loved it. A bit short for my tastes, but then again I read it for free, so I've no complaints there. Not a bad first novel by any means.

And I tend to think the theme is important, too. But that's me. Well, me and Ellis, for some reason.

Aha! I am Klarion

17:19 / 29.07.07

I thought it was top notch. Ellis's background as a comic writer shines though with the strong visual images and descriptions he produces-- in fact I prefer to read Ellis's work in prose because my imagining of the visuals is so much better than anything an artist can produce.

A flaw (and I hesitate to call it that) may be that he tends to write more caricatures than characters. But it works since the book isn't meant to be "realistic" but rather a nice big Fritz the Cat style cartoon with a little bit of emasculated romance mixed in (strong-willed, dominant woman paired with an aimless man) full of kinds of great grotesqueries and extremes. Think of it as Dick Tracy with Charlie Brown's world-weariness with some soiled dildos thrown in.

It was great.

Aha! I am Klarion

17:23 / 29.07.07

P.S. Why does everyone's criticism of Ellis on this thread amount to telling him to just "shut-up." Give us an explanation, an argument, or something to help us understand the hatred of the work.

ONLY NICE THINGS

18:15 / 29.07.07

Could you show where "hatred" of the work is demonstrated, old chum? I can't identify any such thing myself, but perhaps I lack close reading skills.

Aha! I am Klarion

01:27 / 30.07.07

The above line saying: "Shut Up, Ellis" sounds rather hateful to me, esp. when bereft of anymore specific criticism.

Aha! I am Klarion

01:44 / 30.07.07

I read the "shut up" comment as "stop writing...this is awful." Might have been compliment...but I didn't read it that way...either way it is still lacking any reasonably articulated criticism.

02:05 / 30.07.07

Out of interest, who published this?

Otherwise though, TC, I suppose your esteemed fellow board members are asking Ellis, kindly, to shut up because his book reads as if it took him all of a short, strange month, during which he was plastered from breakfast onwards, to write.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. It's just that Ellis has complained often, in the past, about how frustrated he feels writing superhero comics aimed at overweight, ageing fanboys with inappropriate beards. About how he'd like to get away from all that, and write serious, literary fiction instead, but that attempting to impregnate any number of the Suicide Girls via e-mail is not cheap, plus, he has to pay the mortgage.

Well, fair enough. And yet here he is with what's presumably a proper, grown-up book deal, and what does he do? I mean it's hardly Tolstoy, is it? It's barely even Burchill.

ONLY NICE THINGS

05:15 / 30.07.07

It's not Tolstoy. It's more complicated than that.

I read the "shut up" comment as "stop writing...this is awful." Might have been compliment...but I didn't read it that way...either way it is still lacking any reasonably articulated criticism.

Right then, my ellipsis-heavy comrade. So, the "hatred" thing. Can we agree that you made that up? Once we have agreed that, and perhaps agreed that it isn't very wise to make things up (unless, of course, you are writing a totally awesome novel), we can move on.

Aha! I am Klarion

05:57 / 30.07.07

Alright, sorry about that then. But I still want more articulated criticism.

Please...thank...you...very...much...thanks...again...

Janean Patience

06:53 / 30.07.07

Perhaps after a hundred or so pages it turns into Tolstoy.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:09 / 30.07.07

With pleasure. First up, a historical note. "Shut up, (name)" has its origins in Barbelith with "Shut up, Gaiman". This was inspired by Gaiman's imagining of what a mooted remake of Winnie the Pooh, in which Christopher Robin was to be replaced by an African-American girl, might be like.

I can absolutely understand Eliis' apparent frustration at, ultimately, not getting the kind of critical appreciation he may feel he deserves - and, oddly, I think his better comics work deserves much more and much more able critical attention than they receive.

Mark.E - It's published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins in the US, which is ultimately owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

lord nuneaton savage

09:32 / 30.07.07

"So, in this case "Shut up, Ellis" can be read as "Oh, dear. Ellis is in the comfort zone, and is probably going to get a lot of unfortunate reinforcement to remain there"."

Should have said that then, shouldn't you?

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:45 / 30.07.07

If only I had attended your 2pm spoonfeeding workshop at last year's Barbecon, LNS, I would have known better.

lord nuneaton savage

12:06 / 30.07.07

Yes you would.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:40 / 30.07.07

Now, here's quite a good example. I thought at first that LNS was indulging in a bit of light joshing here, but it seems that there may be a bit more edge to it - he is, after all, apparently not here to talk about the book, which to his credit Transylvanian Casanova did, so I am not sure of his intentions. Now, since at this point I don't quite know what his objective is, it may be best to proceed with a polite and considerate mindset.

So, LNS. Might I ask what outcome you are seeking from this interaction?

lord nuneaton savage

13:27 / 30.07.07

Um, a good example of what, may I ask?

It's okay as a wee bit of gumshoe pastiche goes, but I can't help feeling that someone like Steve Aylett would have been able to knock it out of the park, simply 'cos his prose is a lot more readable. It's not helped by the fact that I visualised the whole thing as being drawn by Darick Robertson, which made it very difficult to seperate it from Transmet.

There: constructive appraisal.

lord nuneaton savage

13:35 / 30.07.07

Although, of course, it's always a pleasure to give thinking space to the work of Darick Robertson.

Aha! I am Klarion

21:25 / 30.07.07

Thanks for the history lesson.

I am shocked at the ridiculous lengths of silly that Gaiman was reaching for in the pastiche of Winnie.

I am not much of a follower of Ellis comic work. I have a couple of trades. And I follow very little of his essay work outside of the introduction or postscript in a collection.

So ultimately it didn't feel as trite and tired as it may have to others who follow his commentaries and his writing more.

I agree that the writing was choppy in sections and sometimes read like the work of a teenager in a fiction work-shop. But it didn't brother me too much as the book only took a little over two hours to read. So it wasn't unpleasant.

It was like reading a Hunter S. Thompson fiction piece:
Lazy in spots, over-the-top, poorly researched (but it isn't about "realism"), twitchy, and almost frighteningly self-righteous.

I enjoyed it but I am not likely to read it again.

04:14 / 01.08.07

Still have not read the book, but saw Ellis' Q&A @ SDCC and thought he was fucking hilarious.

04:15 / 01.08.07

Must work "otious" into conversation ASAP.

Essential Dazzler

12:51 / 02.08.07

From tiny snarks do mighty... somethings grow.

Sorry about that, what I really should have said was that being a Warren Ellis fan, I've read far more Ellis comics/columns/bad-signal mails/journal/etc. than is advisable, and it's really obvious when he just reverts to type and churns out hundreds of pages of monolouging from drunken detectives/journalists with an burning sense of moral rightness, while terrible things happen to peoples genitals.

I did intend to read it in Waterstones last week so I could be slightly better informed and atone for my throwaway one-liner sins, but it doesn't come out here till September apparntly, c'est la vie.

Jared Louderback

20:41 / 06.08.07

Ugun. This thread got really, really ugly, really fast.

The Ellis checklist:

An angry, set in his ways expert in some field who has fallen on hard times as the main character? Check!

Weird sexual situations? Oh, check and check!

A sexual relashonship between the uglyish (but very rich in personality!) main character and a beautiful, would be suicide-girl college student? Check, check, and check!

The inevitable "terrible old man/dirk anger" archtype (The Chief of Staff): Check-o-reeno!

When it comes down to it, this book can be catagorized the same way just about everything else Ellis writes is: If you like Warren Ellis's work, you will probably like this book. I enjoyed it. No, it wasn't Tolstoy, it wasn't Dostoyevsky, but I'm alright with that. It was a fun little nights read, it had some funny points, it had some dramatic, thriller-y points, and it was done. I sorta thought the ending was phoned in, but other than that I liked it. However, if you don't like the average Ellis comic, obviously, this isn't for you. I don't see the point in having this thread turn into some internet pissing contest, jesus.

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:28 / 06.08.07

Thank you for your thoughts on the book, Jared. It's a shame you didn't get the reference in the running joke about Tolstoy, which comes from a discussion between Will Self and Richard Littlejohn on Littlejohn's novel, but c'est la vie. Somebody should probably have explained it. "Not Tolstoy" was not, I think, ever being offered as a serious point of criticism.

As it happens, I do like the average Warren Ellis comic - or at least, there are Warren Ellis comics that I like - but I find that his sensibilities don't transfer to unillustrated prose very well. So, I would disagree with your apparent position that the medium makes no difference, and that one either likes or doe

Looking at the thread, I can't actually see where Jesus got involved, or tried to turn it into a pissing contest, but then people change their names quite a lot around here, and it's easy to lose track.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

07:17 / 07.08.07

Crooked Little Vein competition. It would presumably help if you are an HOTT GRL and have attached it to one of your breasticles.

03:54 / 08.08.07

I'm enjoying it thus far. The pump party was screechingly horrid in a good way. Cheif of Staff is getting better each time he shows up.

Ellis has a second novel lined up, based on some bits and bobs he sent out via Bad Signal. IIRC, it's still filled with massive amounts of heiniosity but more SciFi in subject matter.

Overall, I like the guy's writing. I think he's smart and savage and funny and don't mind the character types he likes to utilize.

05:43 / 08.08.07

On the Not Tolstoy tip - the transcript of the Will Self, Richard LittleJohn radio interview is here.

The most relevant lines are probably these

LITTLEJOHN: No it doesn't turn into Tolstoy. I don't set out to be Tolstoy. It is a much more complex book than that.

07:10 / 08.08.07

I'm not the only one who finds the preview chapters a bit Dostoyevskian, though, right? The politics, the sadistic schadenfreudian miserableness, the bowels fixation?

17:38 / 08.08.07

In regards to a reading of the first chapter PDF...

Although I didn't find the refrenced paragraph nearly as annoying as others, I did find a few other clumsy phrasings, weak or passive language that couldn't be just explained as endemic of the psychology of the narrator. Crediblity becomes strained at trying to consider this destitute detective as actually being able to pay New York rent for an office, whether or not he lives there. Not to mention the passivity of said character to the events and case presented before him. Ellis might not be trying to write Great Literature, but he's written better characters before this, and better set-ups.

Some have said that credibility isn't a flaw here; Ellis isn't trying to write a realistic book. I would say that though I don't expect realism, credibility is a different thing. I actually don't mind the Spider Jersusalem styled descriptions so much, but when I simply don't buy the choices being made by the characters before me, they begin to be puppets of the plot rather than an individual you can follow. Why should we care about a puppet?

I might pick it up when it goes to paperback. Or from the library

21:12 / 10.08.07

So far I'm enjoying this. I like Ellis' work, his crazed cartoon stuff and his more structured work (like newuniversal for example). I kind of like the prose. It's funny and there's a few lines that remind me of Chandler, in the nonsensical exaggeration sense. I don't know if I'm terribly into the plot yet, but so far so good.

00:19 / 12.08.07

Finished today and enjoyed it from beginning to end. Very amusing and Ellisonian (wait, that's Harlan's word!). Not the world's most earth-shattering novelistic debut, but I don't think it was ever intended as such. It's a romp and it is, at times, wonderfully obscene and shocking (if you do not already know about various hideous practices).

I had an extra copy, which I gave to a UK emigre with a dark sense of humor.

12:32 / 18.08.07

I finished this a couple days ago and I have to say that I enjoyed it a lot. I thought it was really funny and somewhat often had something intelligent to say about the state of affairs in America (from the girl's POV, not the narrator's). I wish there had been more of a climax, or a mystery, but I don't think that was the point.

I liked Ellis' little touches, like when they were at the airport and a drunk stewardess hands them something funny (I can't remember what and I can't be bothered to hunt for it). It's those little jokes that I liked, rather than the big ones, say of saline in the testicle. Which I didn't find that funny, frankly.

I wasn't sure what the point was, quite often, but I enjoyed the ride. I look forward to more from Ellis in terms of prose, and I hope that his future novels are more than simply prose versions of "Transmetropolitan". I'd like to see a novel in the vein of "Ocean" or "newuniversal".

06:26 / 20.08.07

At the B&N where I bought the book, which is on one of their front-of-store manin new release tables, it's down to three copies out of ten (I purhased two). Not bad: Ellis' comics audience may be crossing over and buying him in another format.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

16:24 / 12.09.07

I'm at about chapter eighteen. It's okay. The plot feels like a fairly distant second to the dialogue which is fine by me although it sort of feels like nothing of real consequence is ever happening. I'm not entirely sure I believe that sexual chemistry but I'm very glad that Ellis opted out from having an actual sex scene. It feels like it's bits that didn't make it into Desolation Jones and I totally agree that I'd rather see Ellis trying to do prose science-fiction, hard stuff like Ocean, rather than a Transmet-redux of noir. It feels like a first novel in a very tangible way.