Skagboys (Irvine Welsh)

Regular readers of this blog will know that Irvine Welsh is one of my favourite contemporary writers, so I was extremely excited when the publication date for 'Skagboys', the oft discussed prequel to 'Trainspotting', was finally set for late April. The thought of delving into the rich backstories of Welsh's greatest creations was a stimulating one, for sure.

But here's the thing: prequels are tricky beasts. Ask anyone that saw 'The Phantom Menace'. Once the initial rush of seeing much loved characters as their younger selves wears off, any slightness in the plot will be ruthlessly exposed. 'Skagboys' manages to avoid this fate, but I have to admit that it may be one for the fanboys (of which I am one) and not necessarily a masterpiece...and here's why...

The genius of 'Trainspotting' is that it was effortless and visceral social commentary that exposed all of the ills and evils of Thacherite Britain. Welsh never needed to erect an enormous sign saying "SOCIALISM GOOD, CAPITALISM BAD" or to create scenes specifically to let us know that working class Scotland was hung out to dry during the 80s. All of this became apparent through the episodic structure of the novel, the small moments, the anecdotes, the seamless pop culture referencing. 'Skagboys' seems to fall into the trap of jumping up and down shouting "IT'S ALL THATCHER'S FAULT!" in rather a clumsy way. If the intention of the book is to correlate Conservative government with unemployment and drug abuse, then it's certainly successful, but there's no finesse about the way this is achieved and it's all too simplified and contrived to truly convince. Where 'Trainspotting' told a story that happened to have enormous cultural and political significance, 'Skagboys' seems to strain so hard that it becomes a political tract that just happens to have a plot. 'Trainspotting' had an episodic structure that was almost kaleidoscopic. There was no real sense of time: ten years could have passed, or one. It was disorienting and beautiful. 'Skagboys' aims at the same kind of multi-voiced, episodic narrative, but sticks to a much tighter and more linear chronology, and is probably less of a compelling book for it.

There are other issues, too. The characters don't seem to adequately grow (in the sense that by the novel's end the characters don't seem 'Trainspotting' ready), and though their speech and mannerisms are right, their narratives often seem to reflect the voices of the narrators from teen novels in their naiveté. There seem to be contradictions too, and some of the characters' actions seem to be parodies of how Welsh thinks we want them to act (a scene where Begbie batters two rivals with an iron bar, Sickboy attempting to break into the pimping game, Renton's philosophising about junk). Worst of all, it turns out that Renton's reason for trying heroin in the first place is not, as we'd been led to believe, his disabled brother or his general dissaisfaction with life, the universe and everything, but...wait for it...peer pressure. Yes, in a scene set in a party held after a Northern Soul all-nighter, Renton refuses the offer to chase the dragon and then feels like a coward, ending up tracking down Swanney soon afterwards. I thought that was pretty anti-cimactic. Of further concern is that many of the events we experience directly here, we already knew about, because they were frequently mentioned as backstory to 'Trainspotting'. Renton's brother? What more could we learn about him that we didn't already know from the original novel? Renton's time at Aberdeen University? Yep, we knew about that too. Renton's stint on the Hook of Holland ferry run? Covered in 'Trainspotting'.

I was struggling to explain why all of this was the case until I read around the interviews Welsh did around the publication date. Turns out that most of 'Skagboys' was in fact retrieved from a stack of floppy disks Welsh had begun writing 'Trainspotting' on back in the late 80s. Never having written a novel before, Welsh just started writing, and then kept writing. At a certain, fairly arbitrary point, he made a cut, and he began to polish the latter half, which would become 'Trainspotting'. Welsh did not think about the material he had left out too much until a few years ago, when he sent the disks off to be restored. What came back became the basis of 'Skagboys'. I think that Welsh perhaps did not edit the piece as much as he could have done. It feels like what it probably is: lively but unpolished juvenalia.

However (and this is a big however)...I still loved the book, for all its flaws. Because the fact is that Welsh is a writer who knows how to weave a story that keeps a reader hooked in. It's a page turner. You want to read about the rogues, the ne'er do wells, the innocents caught up in the brutality of 1980s social deprivation. The glorious rendition of the Leith dialect is as vital and thrilling as ever, and there are enough laughs, loves and shocks to keep you invested throughout. Of particular interest were the small sections woven through the narrative entitled 'Notes On An Epidemic', which detail the way that first, Scottish independence was eroded, then Scottish industry was decimated, leading to an increase in intravenous drug use, and finally, tragically to HIV/AIDS taking a horrific death grip over Edinburgh. Added to the 'Junk Dilemmas' sections familiar from 'Trainspotting', these chunks of text help to give the novel some gravitas. Renton's Rehab Journal is an interesting insight into his character that you don't necessarily get elsewhere in this book, while Spud is for me the undisputed star, funny, self-deprecating and oddly practical. There are also some truly memorable and fascinating moments to cherish, but I won't spoil those for you.

What an odd reading experience 'Skagboys' is. It took me only a week to read, I wanted to read it as often as I could, and it was a real blast spending time with all of those characters I knew and loved again, but all the time I was reading, I knew that it was flawed in a way 'Trainspotting' most definitely was not. Perhaps if the social commentary aspect of the novel was less heavy handed, if the editing had been tighter (this is a much longer book than 'Trainspotting'), 'Skagboys' would've been an unqualified success. As it is, it reads like a talented writer reshaping an old manuscript and relying on the power of his characters and iconic setting to see him through. 'Skagboys' is enjoyable and eminently readable, but lacking the power of the seminal novel it "sets up".

Damned (Chuck Palahniuk)

You have to hand it to Chuck Palahniuk, he's certainly never short of ideas. Since his mind melting transgressive debut 'Fight Club' he's written about the politics of identity ('Invisible Monsters') coma patients ('Diary'), scam merchants ('Choke'), and a Chinese spy undercover as an exchange student ('Pygmy'). He's tackled multiple literary forms too: horror ('Haunted'), oral history ('Rant'), and an ensemble cast narrating porn ('Snuff'). Despite his consistently interesting ideas though, I've often found that Palahniuk's books are often less effective than the innovative ideas that drive them. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that only 'Fight Club', out of his published oeuvre, has a truly satisfying narrative arc. His books are always enjoyable, but can sometimes feel throwaway and lightweight, as if the idea itself is more important than the story.

Despite my reservations about Palahniuk, he is always an engaging read, so when I read about 'Damned' before it was published this winter, I was keen to get hold of it as soon as I could. Out of all of his recent concept driven novels, this one promised the most. The narrator is thirteen-year-old Madison Spencer, daughter of a Hollywood producer and a famous actress. At the beginning of the novel, she finds herself in Hell, and proceeds to tell the reader, in scabrously witty fashion, how the underworld really works. The structure of 'Damned' is based on the works of Judy Blume, with each chapter beginning "Are you there Satan, it's me, Madison..." and then going on to relate either an episode that shows us our narrator getting used to hell, or a reflection on her earthly life. Madison's closest cell mates are a jock, a freak, a brain and a prom queen, riffing on the idea of the high school stereotypes being thrown together as they are in classic Brat Pack films from the 80s. Once we get to see outside of the cells, it becomes clear that much of the book's humour is based around the fact that Hell doesn't seem to be too bad a place: most of the inhabitants are employed as telemarketers, ringing up the living to ask them pointless questions about chewing gum flavours. Yes, it turns out that all telemarketing calls come straight from Hell and that if you have an unlisted number, you are more likely to be called. Madison turns out to be very adept at her job, even making some friends among the living, notably a Canadian girl with AIDS who our heroine assures that Hell is not bad at all, and that when she inevitably dies, she should look her up. It also turns out that demons are wage slaves too, with one memorable scene having a bored and nonchalant demon conducting a polygraph test on Madison to see if she was damned mistakenly. Customer service in hell is apparently particularly bad and often dependent on bribing various demons with chocolate bars. Figures.

The landscape of Hell has all of the gross-out landmarks you might expect Palahniuk to come up with- an ocean of semen, a mountain of toenail clippings, landfill of partial abortions- and most of the asides about life in Hell are amusing and bring a smirk to the lips, if not necessarily a hearty chuckle. Madison is very keen to inform us that dying with a sturdy pair of shoes on is very important, as there'll be a lot of wading through detritus in the underworld. The misadventures of Madison and her motley crew are definitely engaging, but I think the kind of bildungsroman structure that Palahniuk adopts doesn't really suit the satire he thinks he's making, so that all of the things incidental to the plot are very well done, but the actual plot itself- Madison building up self-confidence, making friends with fellow dead teens, finding out why she was damned and building herself into Hell's most poular inhabitant- is rather slight. Like characters in Judy Blume novels, Madison was unpopular with her peers and had parental issues, and  therefore works through these issues one at a time, only in a fashion more cynical and cuss ridden than Judy would favour. The language that Maddie uses is quite distinctive and her voice stays relatively fresh throughout, but the events don't. After a while the narrative gets repetitive and that's quite a feat, because this is a short book. Then, there's suddenly a plot twist involving the long awaited appearance of Satan at the end that I found nothing short of silly, and un-necessary to boot. The author even leaves the door open for a sequel, and indeed, that seems appropriate, as the entire book seems to be shouting for Hollywood to film it, bearing such similarities as it does to John Hughes' seminal work 'The Breakfast Club', though I find the possibility of a film unlikely, given how much Middle America would react against the content of the plot.

I have mixed feelings about 'Damned'. As a throwaway comic novel, I really enjoyed it, other than the last couple of chapters, where a dumb plot twist irked me. The problem is that I don't think Palahniuk intended for this to be a throwaway comic novel, I think he thought he was writing a mordant satire on modern life, but the targets he picks- celebrities, health freaks, bureaucracy, famous villains from history- have been satirised so many times that it's a little like shooting fish in a barrel. What I'll probably remember most about the book is that Hell is full of telemarketers. That, at least, was a humorous concept worthy of a man of Palahniuk's twisted imagination.