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".

Trainspotting (Irvine Welsh)

Anyone that knows me well knows that I am a chronic re-reader. I am one of those readers who knows their favourite books intimately; I can turn to a favoured passage at will, I'm able to quote a killer line to an assembled throng in the pub or staff room in the blink of an eye. Every time you approach a work of literature anew, you find something different to love or to think about, and this, I think, is the primary reason I so often peruse my bookshelves and choose an old friend to read. Sometimes these repeat reads are motivated by a reminder of those books that pops up on television or by a memory of a choice scene that suddenly springs to mind. Sometimes I just don't fancy making the effort to read something new. As my teaching career has gone on, the latter reason has come into play more and more. It's a mentally exhausting and insanely busy profession, and I don't have the time I used to have. In fact, part of the reason for starting this book review blog was to force myself to read books I hadn't read before. I suppose I've done quite well, five previous entries, all on books I was reading for the first time. This is my first re-read review since I started No Trick Dispels. So I guess that with the preamble over I should get on with the review proper.

I wanted to re-read 'Trainspotting' because I'd recently read two other Welsh books, one good ('Filth') and one disappointing ('Ecstasy') so it felt logical to revisit his masterpiece to see what makes it tick. There's been so much written about this book (and the attendant, box-office busting film adaptation) that in a way it's difficult to add anything, other than my own observations. I worried about this for all of thirty seconds, but then I remembered that that's the point of a blog anyway, and I stopped worrying.

It's important to point out, of course, that 'Trainspotting' the novel is a very different beast from the film that made it so famous. While the film is a linear narrative focused around Renton, the novel is narrated by many characters, as well as a filtered third person voice from time to time. There are many characters in the novel, who, sadly, did not end up in the film, including Rab "Second Prize" McLaughlin, Begbie's wife June, escapee Stevie who has managed to successfully get out of Leith, and teenage goth Nina. The character of Matty got fused with Tommy for the purposes of the film (although Tommy gets HIV in the novel, he is still alive in his council flat by the time the books ends- it is Matty who is the victim of Toxoplasmosis). Renton is a considerably less attractive figure, completely alienated from any kind of emotion beyond disgust (one particularly infamous moment that didn't make the film has him screw his pregnant, recently-widowed sister-in-law in the toilets of a hotel after the funeral of his brother). The genius of the fractured narrative is that it forms a kaleidoscopic, dissonant choir of dysfunction. Sometimes the individual stories seem to bear little relation to each other, but each one contributes something to our knowledge of life in Leith. What Welsh was able to do, which nobody had been able to do previously, was give a voice to the disenfranchised of Leith, a generation of working class youth who were offered nothing and responded with self-destruction. The anger and resentment at the chattering middle classes of Edinburgh and the swathes of tourists in town for the festival seeps through the narrative like a weeping sore. This isn't exploitative or pornographic literature, it's social realism that feels almost Dickensian at times.

It's a common misonception that 'Trainspotting' is "about" heroin. In fact, it encompasses so many aspects of the human condition, from births to deaths, from joy to despair, from comedy to tragedy. Heroin use is certainly a key plot marker and structural device (the novel's parts are entitled Kicking, Relapsing, Kicking Again, Blowing It, Exile, Home and Exit) and in a kind of homage to William Burroughs, there are short sections called Junk Dilemmas (#63 to #67) describing some of the realities of heroin use. There's also the fact that the final act of the novel sees the gang selling drugs rather than buying them. Renton's final betrayal of his friends is expertly done, much better than the film, which I felt overdramatised this part. It's Renton's understated opportunism that nakes that section work so well.

Another tired cliché about this book is that the dialect sections are "difficult" to follow. Only if you're a moron. The rhythms of Leith-speak are beautifully rendered and add another layer to Welsh's portrayal of the everyday realities of life amongst what the Victorians called the "submerged tenth" of society. Reading the novel again, I think it's the dialect that truly makes the book the punch to the solar plexus it is. In particular, Renton's observation about Begbie gets me every time: "He really is a cunt ay the first order. Nae doubt about that. The problem is, he's a mate an aw. What kin ye dae?" The characters' idiosyncracies are beautifully observed throughout, with Mark's pseudo-philosophising and anti-Scotland diatribes, Spud's describing himself and everyone else as "cats", Sick Boy's imagined conversations with an approving Sean Connery and Stevie's discomfort at returning home all rendered with a sure and memorable touch.

Welsh has often been hailed as the writer who best transferred to page the spirit of the punk generation, and this is evident in Renton's contempt for those who invent a positive national identity, with his famous observation that Scotland is the lowest of the low because it is "colonised by wankers". The cultural and historical references are spot on here, in a way that they aren't in his later works: they are seamlessly worked into the fabric of the plot rather than shoved in your face. An Iggy Pop gig attended by Tommy, Hibs and Hearts struggling against the Old Firm throughout the 1980s, Thatcher's criminally anti-working class policies, the yuppie boom in London, Edinburgh's transformation to respectable tourist destination, all are flawlessly observed. This novel is a seriously important historical document, in a similar way to Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' or Waugh's 'Vile Bodies'.

In concluding this review, I would like to recommend that everybody re-reads a favourite book from time to time. I've often taken this habit to extremes, but it's well worth the effort when a book is this good. It took me only two days to re-read this book, and my respect for it has only increased as a result. 'Trainspotting' is one of the best books of the Twentieth Century, of this I have no doubt. If you've only ever seen the film, you seriously need to read the book. The parts you remember from the film are rendered in stunning, visceral prose and the parts that didn't make the film are hidden gems. Throughout the three hundred and fifty or so pages, there's not a single bum note played. With all this considered, it's perhaps not surprising that Welsh has found it hard to match this towering achievement of a debut novel. Classics never get old. I'm certain I'll be re-reading this again before very long.