Irvine Welsh is the working class hero of modern British fiction. The former heroin junky and punk musician shot to fame with his gritty debut novel, Trainspotting, in 1993. Since then he has published a further ten novels, four books of short stories, nine screenplays and two theatre pieces, without ever losing his tough realism and anti establishment viewpoint, prompting critic Robert Morace to describe him as ‘a cultural phenomenon’.
Despite being born into a relatively poor household, being dyslexic and developing a serious heroin addiction, Irvine Welsh rose to prominence, becoming the voice of an angry generation.
Welsh was born in the Leith area of Edinburgh in 1958 to a dock worker father and waitress mother. Much of his childhood was spent in the social housing schemes of Muirhouse. After completing a City and Guilds course in electrical engineering, Welsh worked as a tv repairman by day and played guitar for punk bands, Pubic Lice and Stairway 13, by night. It was during this period that he became addicted to heroin.
“People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid.” - Trainspotting
After getting clean and married, Welsh took a job as a training officer for Edinburgh City Councils Housing Department. He used his position as head of training to pay himself to do an MBA at Heriot Watt University. In between working for the council and studying in the University Library, Welsh wrote what would become the cult classic Trainspotting.
Set in mid 1980s Edinburgh, Trainspotting follows the lives of numerous characters through interconnected first person narrative short stories. The main characters are Mark Renton, Simon ‘Sick Boy’ Williamson and Spud Murphy, three heroin junkies; Davie Mitchell, a straight acting everyman capable of holding down a job while circulating through the same murky depths as his friends; and the psychotically iconic Franco Begbie. Dealing with heroin addiction, lack of employment and opportunities for younger people and loss of cultural and national identity, Trainspotting is an absolute classic, made even more memorable due to Danny Boyles 1996 movie adaptation.
It was released to shock and outrage in some circles and great acclaim in others; Time Out called it "funny, unflinchingly abrasive, authentic and inventive", Rebel Inc said “Deserves to sell more copies than the bible”and The Sunday Times called Welsh "the best thing that has happened to British writing for decades".
Responding to criticism of the radical nature of the narrative, Welsh said, ‘I don’t have any literary heroes at all […] I don’t take references from other writers, but from lyrics, from videos and soap operas and stuff. I try and keep as far away from “the classics” […] as possible.’
Welsh would return directly to the characters of Trainspotting in three further novels, Porno (2002), Skagboys (2012) and The Blade Artist (2016). It can be argued that all of Welshs books and stories are based in one universe, with characters regularly appearing as bit players in other novels. ‘The Acid House’ and ‘Ecstasy’ are based around hard drug lifestyles in the estates of Edinburgh that Welsh described in Trainspotting. ‘Marabou Stork Nightmares’ features an appearance from Francis Begbie while Juice Terry, who would later star in Porno, made his debut in ‘Glue’.
In 1998, Welsh published ‘Filth’ which was his first foray into crime fiction, be it only really a framing device for a much darker story. Once again we are in Trainspottings universe as Begbie, Sickboy and Spud are all mentioned during the course of the novel. Filth saw the creation of one of Welshs darkest characters, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, a scheming cruel misanthropist who is willing to do anything to win his games. It also introduced a brilliant literary device in the form of an articulate tapeworm.
One of Filths secondary characters, Ray Lennox, would star in the 2005 ‘Crime’ which may have been Welshs attempt at testing the waters of thriller writing and moving into Ian Rankin territory. The novel was set in Florida, a location Welsh would return to in the 2014 ‘The Sex lives of Siamese Twins.’ The 2015 novel, A Decent Ride, returned to Edinburgh through the familiar eyes of Juice Terry, now a taxi driver.
Welsh is known for having his characters speak in Edinburgh dialect transcribing sentences phonetically, a break away from other Scottish authors at the time. This can make the books difficult for new readers but the intense storytelling, grand humour and fully drawn characters make sure you hold in there.
“Even as I'm shoveling up my hooter, I realize the sad truth. Coke bores me, It bores us all. We're jaded cunts, in a scene we hate, a city we hate, pretending that we're at the center of the universe, trashing ourselves with crap drugs to stave off the feeling that real life is happening somewhere else, aware that all we're doing is feeding that paranoia and disenchantment, yet somehow we're too apathetic to stop. Cause, sadly, there's nothing else of interest to stop for.” Porno
Welsh has created some of the most disturbing and multi layered characters in modern literature. Mark Renton, the sensitive and intelligent junky. Franco Begbie, a damaged psychopath haunted by his petty criminal ancestors. Boab, a lazy young man who gets sacked from his job, thrown out of his house, dumped by his girlfriend, dropped by his football team and turned into a fly by a vengeful god in a single day.
His characters are part of the post Thatcher working class, redundant of employment, opportunities or long-term goals. They spend their abundant spare time involved in schemes, toxic relationships and hardcore drugs. Irvine Welshs universe is a nihilistic dystopia which accurately reflects life for millions of young people in the post recession world, making him perhaps even more relevant today than when he burst onto the scene in 1993.
“We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. We develop all those long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality of our lives in different ways, without really extending our body of worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up our lives with shite, things like careers and relationships to delude ourselves that it isn’t all totally pointless.”
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