Pigs are actually pretty clean. But some of the corporations that process them wallow in a moral sty. The trouble starts, as it so often does, when the animals are crowded together. Consider, for instance, that 100,000 hogs on a large factory farm produce 12 million pounds of excrement every week. It's hard to smell the bacon over that. Indeed, the toxic gases that emanate from these manure "lagoons" poison the water table and make living nearby impossible.

Environmentalists and animal protection activists can build strong arguments with material like this. But novelists who insist on these points end up huffing and puffing at straw-man arguments. Rob Levandoski got away with it this summer in his attack on the chicken industry partly because his "Fresh Eggs" was satiric and partly because he hasn't won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, or a PEN/Faulkner Award, burdens that Annie Proulx must carry since "The Shipping News" established her as a major writer of literary fiction.

Her new novel, "That Old Ace in the Hole," squeals on the horrors of corporate hog farming with all the subtlety of a stuck pig. Her old-fashioned country folks are quirky characters who love the land and treat their animals with respect. The officers of the Global Pork Rind corporation, meanwhile, are conniving liars who speak of "pork units" and live in Asia. The story is continually entertaining, but thematically boarish.

Bob Dollar, the devalued hero of this new novel, has a lot in common with Quoyle, the hapless protagonist of "The Shipping News." At 25, Bob still suffers the effects of being abandoned by his parents when he was a child. He's grown up with a kind uncle, who owns a secondhand shop that specializes in plastic jewelry. Thinking of himself as unwanted and living among (and wearing!) unwanted objects, Bob knows he has some self-worth issues.

In a burst of rare enthusiasm, he gets a job with the Global Pork Rind Co. as a scout for new hog farms. His sleazy boss, Mr. Ribeye Cluke, explains the tricks of the trade: how to dress like a cowboy, get the lowdown on the communities, and root out old, depressed farmers who will sign over land that's been passed down for generations. "Whenever you find a property that looks right," Mr. Cluke wheezes, "you let me know and I'll send our Money Offer Person down. We've set up a subsidiary company to buy the parcels and then deed them over to Global. The residents do not know a hog farm is coming in until the bulldozers start constructing the waste lagoon."

Bob finds this espionage assignment - like the cowboy boots - an uncomfortable fit. But "he wanted to aim at a high mark on a distant wall. He wanted direction and reward," and deceiving retired farmers in the Texas-Oklahoma panhandle seems his only option.

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