Welsh, Irvine 1958-

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WELSH, Irvine 1958-

PERSONAL: Born 1958, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Education: Heriot-Watt University, M.B.A.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., 500 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10110-0017.

CAREER: Writer, 1993–. Worked at various jobs, including television repairman, musician, and software consultant.

WRITINGS:

Past Tense: Four Stories from a Novel, Clocktower Press (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1992, revised and expanded as Trainspotting, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1993, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1996.

Headstate (play; produced in Tramway, Scotland, 1994), published with Trainspotting, Minerva (London, England), 1996.

The Acid House (stories), J. Cape (London, England), 1994, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1995.

Marabou Stork Nightmares: A Novel, J. Cape (London, England), 1995, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1996.

Trainspotting [and] Headstate, Minerva (London, England), 1996.

Ecstasy: Three Chemical Romances, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1996.

The Irvine Welsh Omnibus (includes Trainspotting, The Acid House, and Marabou Stork Nightmares), J. Cape (London, England), 1997.

Filth: A Novel, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1998.

You'll Have Had Your Hole (play; produced in Leeds, 1998), Methuen Drama (London, England), 1998.

Glue, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 2001.

(With Harry Gibson) Blackpool (play), music by Vic Godard, produced in Edinburgh, Scotland, 2002.

Porno (sequel to Trainspotting), W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to Weddings, Parties, Anything, by Nick Waplington, Aperture (New York, NY), 1996, and Intoxication: An Anthology of Stimulant-Based Writing, Serpent's Tail (New York, NY), 1998; author of screenplay for British television movie Dockers, 1999; wrote and directed the film Soul Crew, 2003.

ADAPTATIONS: The Acid House was adapted for film as The Acid House: A Screenplay, script by Welsh, Channel Four Films, London, England, 1999; Trainspotting was adapted for stage by Harry Gibson, and film, Miramax, 1996 screenplay by Welsh and John Hodge, directed by Danny Boyle, starring Ewan McGregor.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A history and profile of Edinburgh, Scotland, with recipes.

SIDELIGHTS: Irvine Welsh is a Scottish author whose books have been reprinted and released in the United States. Welsh was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and grew up in a housing project in Muirhouse. He dropped out of school at sixteen to work as a television repairman and at other odd jobs, and in the late 1970s, he moved to London to join the punk scene. New Statesman reviewer Brian Morton called Welsh's first book, Trainspotting, "a tense, urgent chronicle of addiction." The setting is 1980s Edinburgh. "The novel perches neatly on a stack of scare-sociologies identifying the Festival City as the skag and HIV capital of Britain, a circle of hell reserved for politely spoken needle-sharers," wrote Morton. "Denied more robust political and socioeconomic supports, the Scots have always been uniquely dependent on language as an emotional bulwark and a primitive act of self-definition. We bombard reality with an obscenely irradiated stream of words in the hope that reality will magically glow with signification. And that is what Welsh does with his shifting group of users. Theirs is a kind of Burroughs-like junk language, grossly and intimately performative."

The title comes from the British practice of writing down and collecting engine numbers as locomotives pull into the train station. Jennifer Howard wrote in the Washington Post Book World that it's "like bird-watching with trains, and it's not a bad metaphor for doing drugs—or for most of the ways people kill their allotted time on the planet." The main character is Mark Renton, or Rents, whose mates include Sick Boy, Spud (who Howard described as "a loveable meathead, kind of an Edinburgh equivalent of a valley girl"), Begbie, Diane, and Tommy. Rents tries steady work and studying at the university, but drops out after blowing his grant money on prostitutes and alcohol during one term. He lives in London, where he fraudulently receives welfare benefits, or at home in Leith with friends who, like himself, are heroin users. Rents narrates some of the stories, while others are told by his friends. "They go through an ever-repeating cycle of shooting up, crashing, kicking the habit for awhile before heading back to the solace of the needle, engaging in crime now and again—shoplifting, dole fraud—to get the cash for a fix," wrote Howard, who added that "other people drift in, have their say, drift out again." Howard said much of the book's "exuberance" comes from the Edinburgh dialect. A glossary defines unfamiliar words like "skint" (broke) and "shag" (to have sex with). Times Literary Supplement reviewer Sean O'Brien called Trainspotting "impressive," and said it "remains extremely readable, in part because of Welsh's comic talent, which ranges from the Connollyesque (a corpse seems not to be dead because an electric blanket is making it sweat) to the vengefully sadistic. The dialogue is frequently hilarious."

In what London Review of Books reviewer Jenny Turner called a "particularly gross episode," Rents inserts an opium suppository into his rectum in an effort to kick his habit. When his body rejects and expels it, he roots around in the toilet trying to retrieve it. "This episode is very funny in its grossness, a sort of realist version of William Burroughs's talking arsehole routine," wrote Turner. "But it is also … much more than merely funny…. One of the most exciting things about Welsh's book is the way it draws you right inside a community of people living in a close and tangled proximity to one another. Because these folk are often as not drunk or stoned or worse, things like excrement, urine, vomit, semen, smegma, menses, and vaginal discharge are forever getting spilled out and displayed." Renton works toward giving up heroin, feeling his habit requires too much effort. "Not even in his stonedest moments does Renton ever claim that there is anything particularly noble about what he is trying to do," Turner explained. "In spite of his junky pride, Renton cannot help but expose himself to being secretly a fighter who is going to end up choosing Life."

Reviewing Welsh's Acid House in the New Statesman, Shaun Whiteside wrote, "Another season in hell with Irvine Welsh, and God it's invigorating…. The collection as a whole is sick, horrific, occasionally moving, and very funny." "Welsh's gift for ventriloquism is again apparent," wrote Nicholas Clee in the Times Literary Supplement. "The constant is Mr. Welsh's surehanded, incendiary use of language and his ability to develop characters through conversation," commented Sarah Ferguson in the New York Times Book Review.

In Welsh's Marabou Stork Nightmares: A Novel, the narrator, Roy Strang, is involved in a gang rape and subsequently attempts suicide. He resists efforts to be brought back from the comatose state which has given him insight into his life and past actions and fantasizes about a metaphorical killing of the Marabou Stork, a predatory African bird that lives on flamingo eggs and young, as well as the adult birds. James Polk wrote in the New York Times Book Review that this "is an ugly vicious novel about predatory young men who prey on women (in particular), devouring not only their humanity and identity but sometimes even their lives…. This complex and painful novel, with its casual ferocity and with the raw energy of its Scottish dialect, is a powerful investigation of a life gone bad, written in a demanding and insistent prose that gives no quarter." Times Literary Supplement reviewer Nick Hornby wrote that Welsh "may become one of the most significant writers in Britain. He writes with style, imagination, wit and force, and in a voice which those alienated by much current fiction clearly want to hear." Guy Mannes-Abbott wrote in the New Statesman that "Welsh's gifts as a writer are too capacious for cultishness. Similarly, while his writing has very fine edges, it is a full-bodied substantial thing too. Marabou Stork Nightmares is a wonderful success: a funny, cleverly composed, genuinely exciting and assured leap of a novel."

In reviewing Ecstasy: Three Chemical Romances in New Statesman, Pat Kane commented that "the grand guignol spattered throughout this book … is Welsh's ultimate shock-tactic." "For Welsh," Kane stated, "the carnival of rave culture contains the only possible resistance to a post-industrial society that compels us to exploit and manage our hearts—that is the unmanageable heart, both killer and caresser, body and soul, organ and spirit. It's chemical Romanticism, without a doubt." A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted Welsh's "pitch-perfect slang, black humor, and surreal imagination … an exhilarating, mutable style like the written equivalent of techno music, cutting right through to his characters' lives."

A Publishers Weekly reviewer dubbed Welsh's Filth: A Novel "another scabrous, lurid, blackly comic novel from America's favorite Scottish enfant terrible." Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, an Edinburgh cop, has been assigned to catch the killer of the son of the Ghanaian ambassador, but the racist, boorish, alcoholic is distracted from the case by his pursuit of sex and drugs. Bruce has a philosophical tapeworm that, at times, actually takes over the narration. A Kirkus Reviews writer called Welsh "Scotland's answer to William Burroughs, Hubert Selby Jr., and, arguably, Howard Stern." The reviewer felt Filth contained "some marvelous writing, but little of substance that Welsh hasn't already done better." Booklist reviewer Kevin Grandfield felt that "those who make it through Bruce's gruesome abuses … will be left with something to think about."

Glue is a big novel that spans four decades in the lives of four friends, from their days growing up in the projects to midlife at the turn of the century. Welsh writes in Scots dialect for about two thirds of the book, and the Library Journal's Bob Lunn noted that when he changes to standard English, writing in the third person, "the lads' similarities to slackers from Long Island to Fresno is even more apparent." The four protagonists are Carl Ewart, Billy Birrell, Andrew Galloway, and Terry "Juice" Lawson. Terry becomes the leader of the group, based on his sexual prowess and the fact that he has quit school to work on the juice lorries, trucks that bring produce to families outside the city. Billy is athletic and prone to violence and petty crime. Billy, a musician, and Gally, are, at fifteen, still virgins. In the 1990s, when they are twenty-five, they are still friends, although their families and lives have taken them each in a different direction. They travel to Munich to a World Soccer Cup competition, which gives each a chance to ponder his future.

Spectator reviewer C.R. Cecil noted that Terry "ranks number one for rankness…. He joins Begbie of Trainspotting and Bruce Robertson of Filth as one of Welsh's fictional monsters." Cecil noted that in spite of the fact that Terry lacks either physical or moral attributes, he is at the center of most of the sex scenes and is present during the dog-torture scene. Cecil wrote that Welsh "has the ability to make the disgusting attractive. Fascinated by the beast in man, his most exciting creations are the coarsest and scummiest." References to Trainspotting are included, as are cameo appearances by Renton, Begbie, and Spud. Although fighting, drugging, drinking, and shagging are prominent in this story, it is tempered by the fact that two of the characters, Carl and Billy, come from stable homes and have caring parents. Nation reviewer Linda Gardiner wrote that "though no doubt Irvine Welsh would sneer at the very idea, on the evidence of Glue, he is working-class Scotland's greatest living ethnographer."

Porno is Welsh's sequel to Trainspotting. At the conclusion of the first book, the characters were fighting over their most recent drug scam, with Renton exiting with a suitcase full of cash. Porno is set nearly ten years in the future, and finds Renton in Amsterdam, drug free with a new girlfriend, and bodybuilding at a gym. Begbie has completed a prison term for manslaughter, and Spud is researching a history of the Leith area. The central character for this book is Sick Boy, here called by his given name, Simon, who, as the story begins, has switched from heroin to crack and has decided to return to Edinburgh to take over his aunt's pub. Simon uses the floor above the pub to make porn movies that star himself, the well-endowed Terry of Glue, and film student Nikki Fuller-Smith, and convinces Renton to return to join him in the venture. A new character, Curtis, becomes part of the group when Simon spies his extraordinary member in a public toilet. A Kirkus Reviews critic called Nikki, "a fascinating figure in that, unlike the rest of these random elements, Welsh actually seems to have taken the time to try to figure out what makes this damaged and self-hating person tick."

New York Times Book Review contributor Tom Shone wrote that the porn scene "turns out to be just like the drug scenes, only with less clothing: the same users and abusers, linked in writhing combat, only where once they sought merely to get out of their own heads, now they also seek entry into one another's bodies. Old habits die hard." Sam Phipps commented in the Spectator that "there are indeed scenes of stomach-churning cruelty and nastiness to be found, as if Welsh were determined to outdo himself. But it's also impossible to ignore the wit, the scathing commentary, and brilliant dialogue. These, as much as the subject matter, were some of the things that made Trainspotting such a sensation."

The former Trainspotting crew have entered the scene, with Begbie aching to settle the score with Renton for ripping them off. Salon.com reviewer Laura Miller wrote that "Welsh's characters are a pack of solipsistic misfits, screw-ups, and scammers, forever in pursuit of daft projects and concocting improbable rackets, the intricacies of which Welsh weaves together to hilarious effect. The Trainspotting gang may be in their thirties now, but they're reluctant to grow up even as they bang their shins against life's limitations and disappointments. Basically, much of Porno is Seinfeld in Scotland and on hard drugs—and often it's just as funny." Miller noted the heartbreaking scene in which Spud tries to comfort a neighbor, a single mother who is at the end of her rope, by offering to do her dishes, the only, and probably most perfect, thing he can think of. But Spud continues to struggle with his addictions and considers that if he can push the homicidal Begbie far enough, his wife and children will be able to collect on his life insurance. Miller noted the instance when lowlife Begbie is abusing a woman he has picked up in a pub, that Welsh "pulls out all the stops in this scene, a real tour de force of degradation and disgust." Miller concluded by saying that "it's amusing to see Sick Boy's coke-fueled delusions of grandeur run aground on his own selfishness, but it's the tragedy of Spud that sticks with you. It's also what makes Welsh more than a bitter satirist—and certainly more than just another bad boy made good."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Novelists, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 271: British and Irish Novelists since 1960, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2002, pp. 350-358.

Gibson, Harry, Four-Play (based on the novels and novellas of Welsh), introduction by Irvine Welsh, Vintage (London, England), 2000.

PERIODICALS

Book, November-December, 2002, Kevin Greenberg, review of Porno, p. 83.

Booklist, April 15, 1995, p. 1478; January 1, 1996, p. 793; October 15, 1996, p. 387; August 19, 1998; May 15, 2001, Ray Olson, review of Glue, p. 1734.

BookWatch, April 14, 1996, p. 6; September 8, 1996, p. 1.

Entertainment Weekly, January 19, 1996, p. 49; July 19, 1996, p. 56; September 6, 1996, p. 70; October 2, 1998.

Guardian Weekly, December 19, 1993, p. 29.

Insight on the News, September 16, 1996, p. 34.

Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 1995, p. 181; July 1, 1998; August 15, 2002, review of Porno, p. 1172.

Library Journal, January, 1996, p. 146; April 1, 2001, Bob Lunn, review of Glue, p. 135; September 1, 2002, Bob Lunn, review of Porno, p. 217.

London Review of Books, December 2, 1993, p. 10.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 18, 1996, p. 1.

Maclean's, August 5, 1996, p. 50.

Nation, August 20, 2001, Linda Gardiner, review of Glue, p. 25.

New Republic, August 19, 1996, p. 38; September 2, 1996, p. 31.

New Statesman, August 6, 1993, p. 37; April 1, 1994, p. 46; May 27, 1994, p. 35; April 28, 1995, p. 47; March 1, 1996, p. 37; June 7, 1996, p. 37; May 7, 2001, Steven Poole, review of Glue, p. 53; September 2, 2002, John King, review of Porno, p. 36.

Newsweek International, July 16, 2001, "Saying Yes to Drugs" (interview), p. 70.

New York, August 12, 1996, p. 42; June 9, 1997, p. 20.

New Yorker, July 15, 1996, p. 25; July 22, 1996, p. 78.

New York Times (magazine), March 31, 1996, p. 42.

New York Times Book Review, April 16, 1995, p. 16; February 11, 1996, p. 10; July 28, 1996, p. 19; September 27, 1998, Courtney Weaver, review of Filth, p. 12; September 29, 2002, Tom Shone, review of Porno, p. 17.

Observer, August 15, 1993, p. 47; March 20, 1994, p. 22; April 23, 1995, p. 20; June 2, 1996, p. 14.

Publishers Weekly, March 6, 1995, p. 67; December 11, 1995, p. 58; May 13, 1996, p. 28; August 19, 1996, p. 62; January 27, 1997, p. 103; June 29, 1998, p. 35; March 26, 2001, review of Glue, p. 59; October 7, 2002, review of Porno, pp. 54-55.

Spectator, May 25, 1996, p. 28; May 5, 2001, C. R. Cecil, review of Glue, p. 38; September 7, 2002, Sam Phipps, review of Porno, p. 34.

Times Literary Supplement, October 1, 1993, p. 20; March 18, 1994, p. 12; April 28, 1995, p. 23; July 7, 1996, p. 23; November 29, 1996, p. 13.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), November-December, 2002, Kevin Greenberg, review of Porno, p. 83.

Village Voice, July 23, 1996, p. 74; January 7, 1997, p. 43.

Virginia Quarterly Review, summer, 1996, p. 92.

Vogue, July, 1996, p. 58.

Voice Literary Supplement, winter, 1996, p. 12.

Washington Post Book World, September 8, 1996, p. 1; June 24, 2001, review of Glue, p. 6.