Irvine Welsh is a Scottish novelist, director, and playwright. He is perhaps best known for his novel Trainspotting and the film of the same name that it inspired. Welsh is known as the quintessential voice of The Chemical Generation, the youth of the 1990s coping with the world’s rapid technological advancement in pharmaceuticals and street drugs. Often compared to the Beat Generation, young people at the time were plagued by senses of nihilism and addiction (sound familiar?). In his Trainspotting trilogy, Welsh attempted to put Scotland’s opiate epidemic on the global map through fictitious storytelling blended with hints of autobiography. Welsh’s writing of these novels can best be described as a warning to the rest of the world; If heroin can reach the small country of Scotland, its consequences can be felt anywhere in the world. Furthermore, Welsh tried to reach his peers and the young adults around him and solidified that they weren’t alone in their debauchery or their pain.
The film Trainspotting, the creative processes of which Welsh supervised, opens with these lines:
“Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a f*ing big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers… Choose DIY and wondering who the f*k you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away in the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, f*’d up brats you spawned to replace yourself, choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that?”
In the first 90 seconds of the film that this speech takes up, we’re introduced to the mindset of the drug-addicted protagonist, Mark Renton. Welsh wrote this speech to reflect his own mindset when he was battling opiate dependency in his early 20’s. The postmodernist writers such as Hunter S. Thompson who preceded Welsh left the world (and therefore literature) in a complete state of purposelessness. Novels like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas arguably praise the adventurous side of drug addiction without truly denoting the consequences (that’s a whole other conversation). Welsh’s novel, from the very beginning, responds to this. The life of a drug addict isn’t something to be admired. While yes, Renton sees past -and escapes- the more mundane realities of the late 20th century, he’s wasting his life all the same. With these lines alone, Welsh depicts a nihilistic, antipathetic, and bitter outlook on life. Mark’s opening speech is his first response to the postmodernists; if we live in a world where we’ve halted all enjoyment of mundane, menial purposes and replaced a sense of belonging with self-destructive habits, we will ultimately leave the world an uglier place than we found it.
Arguably more important than retorting to the postmodernists, Irvine Welsh lent his eye to the public by creating a cast of troubled, horrible addicts -and then redeeming them. Tragedy befalls every single one of the characters of Trainspotting to the point where even completely inexperienced and reluctant audiences are made to sympathize with the characters and their world. Welsh never paints an argument that their world is better, but rather, it simply exists. Mark Renton, “Sick Boy”, Spud, and Tommy are perhaps some of the most well-written characters of the past few decades simply because any reader must root for them.
In this twisted take on a coming-of-age novel, we see into the minds of every character, knowing all of their flaws and motivations. Mark is our main protagonist who turned to drugs because he’d been outcast from his family. “Sick Boy” is eccentric, intelligent, and the perceived best friend of Mark who first gets addicted to heroin for the style. Spud, as his name suggests, is a dolt with a pure heart who doesn’t know anything other than how to follow his friends. Finally, Tommy is an outsider to his friends and for the better part of the novel, he’s stone-cold sober and highly against drug use. Tragedies which I won’t spoil here befall our cast, ultimately changing all of their outlooks on life. What makes them an incredible cast and what makes Welsh such a genius is that every character represents the grittier, perhaps hidden, aspects of all of us; we’re all outcasts in some way, we all want to be stylish to an extent, we all want to fit in, and we all have a voice of reason. In a time when troubled youths felt especially alone, left to ponder the purpose of their lives in a rapidly changing world, Welsh reached out to let everyone know they weren’t alone.
The film and the novel were both met with more outrage than praise, especially from older generations. What the consensus is about the novel and the movie is that they glorify the lives of drug addicts, ultimately influencing young people towards lives of squalor. Welsh himself has never denied the fact that he portrays the lives of drug addicts as exciting through his stories of love and camaraderie. However, what Welsh does deny is the glorification of achieving an exciting lifestyle through dark avenues. While yes, our characters seem to live in the moment and use every ounce of their youth, they also face unspeakably horrible consequences of their actions. Welsh equally displays the exhilaration of addiction with the degradation and hopelessness that comes with it.
Through his writing, Irvine Welsh continues to reach out to those who feel overlooked by society. By delving into the worlds of drug addicts, amateur adult movie stars, and murderers (just to name a few groups visited in his works), he ensures they don’t remain overlooked. In a postmodern society that would cast out purpose or meaning to all walks of life, Welsh continues to give public calls to return to reality. We all live in the same world and we can’t pretend to ignore each other.
Perhaps the greatest lines in the film are the very last ones, mirroring Mark’s thoughts at the beginning:
“The truth is that I’m a bad person. But, that’s gonna change – I’m going to change. This is the last of that sort of thing. Now I’m cleaning up and I’m moving on, going straight and choosing life. I’m looking forward to it already. I’m gonna be just like you. The job, the family, the f*ing big television. The washing machine, the car, the compact disc and electric tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure wear, luggage, three piece suite, DIY, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family Christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption, clearing gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die.”
With these lines, Irvine Welsh single-handedly answered the postmodernist’s question of “what’s the point” while delivering a message of hope to drug addicts, nihilists, and young people alike- the “point” is to keep going, the “point” is to live. Why live in squalor when you can choose life.
-Samuel McFerron, Blog Editor.
Sam McFerron – Blog Editor, Asst. Prose & Asst. Poetry Editor: Sam is a Sophomore at Lewis University. They are an English Major with a concentration in literature and hopes to procure a minor in Philosophy. They aspire to become a professor of literature and spend most of their free time reading and writing music. They hope to improve upon their writing skills as well as their literary analysis skills during their time here at Lewis and are seeking publication within this time frame. Some authors they recommend are David Foster Wallace, MIlan Kundera, William S. Burroughs, and Kate Chopin.