“Can’t Get No” by Rick Veitch

I am slightly hesitant to make this comparison, but I think I just read the "Howl" of the 9/11
generation.  Generation is probably an incorrect word, as several generations have been affected by 9/11, but I think it’s fair to say that the book I just finished, "Can’t Get No", by Rick Veitch is by far the most insightful treatments of modern culture after 9/11 that I’m likely to ever come across.

When I first flipped through the book, it read like a comic and so I bought it without thinking.  When I got it home I realized that Rick Veitch had intertwined an epic poem about modern culture and the death and rebirth of our souls after 9/11 with a graphical tale of one man’s journey through the same.  The graphic story and the poem are both linked and separate, and can be read one at a time as well as simultaneously.  I found it all too much to take in at once, and read it for the graphics the first time, and then returned to the story.

There’s a lot here.  The roller coaster of emotions we’ve all felt during and after 9/11, a modern treatment of the spiritual void of consumer culture, the disconnectedness of modern techn-fetishism, and many other angst-ridden elements of our modern life are all treated beautifully.

This will most certainly be the book that defines my adult life for the decade without being so much 9/11 nostalgia.  I recommend you pick it up.