Irvine Welsh

Irvine Welsh (born Leith, Edinburgh, September 27 1958) is a Scottish novelist.

Early life

Irvine Welsh was born in Leith and moved with his family to Muirhouse, in Edinburgh, when he was four. He left Ainslie Park Secondary School when he was sixteen and then completed a City and Guilds course in electrical engineering. He became an apprentice TV repairman until an electric shock persuaded him to move on to a series of other jobs. He left Edinburgh for the London punk scene in 1978, where he played guitar and sang in The Pubic Lice and Stairway 13. He worked for Hackney Council in London and studied computing with the support of the Manpower Services Commission. After working in the London property boom of the 1980s, Welsh returned to Edinburgh where he worked for the city council in the housing department. He went on to study for an MBA at Heriot Watt University, writing his thesis on creating equal opportunities for women.^*

Work

Welsh's first novel, Trainspotting, was published in 1993. Set in the mid-1980s, it uses a series of loosely-connected short stories to tell the story of a group of characters tied together by decaying friendships, heroin addiction and stabs at escape from the oppressive boredom and brutality of their lives in the housing schemes. It was released to shock and outrage in some circles and massive acclaim in others; Time Out called it "funny, unflinchingly abrasive, authentic and inventive", and The Sunday Times called Welsh "the best thing that has happened to British writing for decades". One critic went so far as to say that Trainspotting "deserves to sell more copies than The Bible." It was adapted as a play, and a film adaptation, directed by Danny Boyle and written by John Hodge, was released in 1996. Welsh himself appeared in the film as Mikey Forrester, a minor character. The film was also a massive worldwide success. U.S. Sen. Bob Dole decried its moral depravity and glorification of drug use during the 1996 presidential campaign, although he admitted that he had not actually seen the film (or, presumably, read the book).

Next, Welsh released The Acid House, a collection of short stories from Rebel Inc., New Writing Scotland and other sources. Many of the stories take place in and around the housing schemes from Trainspotting, and employ many of the same themes; however, a touch of fantasy is apparent in stories such as The Acid House, where the minds of a baby and a drug user swap bodies, or The Granton Star Cause, where God transforms a man into a fly as punishment for wasting his life. Welsh himself adapted three of the stories for a later film, which he also appeared in.

Welsh's third book (and second novel), Marabou Stork Nightmares, alternates between a typically grim tale of thugs and schemes in sub-working class Scotland and a hallucinatory adventure tale set in South Africa. Gradually, common themes begin to emerge between the two stories, culminating in a shocking ending.

His next book, Three Tales of Chemical Romance (1996) became his most high-profile work since Trainspotting, released in the wave of publicity surrounding the film. It consists of three unconnected novellas: the first, Lorraine Goes To Livingston, is a bawdy satire of classic British romance novels, the second, Fortune's Always Hiding, is a revenge story involving thalidomide, and the third, The Undefeated is a sly, subtle romance between a young woman dissatisfied with the confines of her suburban life and an aging clubgoer. Most critics dismissed the first two as relatively minor affairs and focused their praise on The Undefeated. Welsh's narration imbued both characters with surprising warmth, and the story avoided easy, pro-ecstasy conclusions. Following adaptation into a stage play, a film version of the third novella is in production. The film Ecstasy is shooting in 2006, directed by Rob Heydon with Richard E Grant, Billy Boyd, Michael Wincott, Greg Hemphill and Elize Du Toit featuring among the principal characters.

A corrupt police officer and his tapeworm served as the narrators for his third novel, Filth (1998). Welsh had never avoided flawed characters, but the main character of Filth was a brutally vicious sociopathic policeman. His tapeworm was perhaps the most sympathetic character, a classic Welsh inversion.

Glue (2001) was a return to the locations, themes and episodic form of Trainspotting, telling the stories of four characters spanning several decades in their lives and the bonds that held them together. Having revisited some of them in passing in Glue, Welsh brought most of the Trainspotting characters back for a sequel, Porno, in 2002.

His most recent project is a screenplay based on the 19th century West Port murders. Provisionally titled The Meat Trade, the film is scheduled to feature Robert Carlyle and Colin Firth under the direction of Antonia Bird and will be shot on location, in Edinburgh, during 2006. Despite the historical source material, Welsh has set the story in the familiar confines of present day Edinburgh, with Burke and Hare depicted as brothers who steal human organs to meet the demands of the global transplant market.

Welsh has made several reading tours around the world, and has been involved with his beloved house music as a DJ, promoter and producer. Like many of his characters, he supports Hibs.

Most recently, Welsh has made a foray into directing, having produced a short film to accompany the track "Atlantic" from Keane's upcoming album Under the Iron Sea.

Themes

Welsh is often pigeonholed as a writer whose work concentrates on recreational drug use. However, most of his fiction and non-fiction is dominated by the question of working class and Scottish identity in the period spanning the 1960s to the present day. Within this, he explores the rise and fall of the council housing scheme, denial of opportunity, sectarianism, football, hooliganism, sex, suppressed homosexuality, dance clubs, low paid work, freemasonry, Irish republicanism, sodomy, class divisions, emigration, and perhaps most of all, the humour, prejudices and axioms of the Scottish.

Style

His novels share a number of characters, giving the feel of a "shared universe" within his writing. For example, characters from Trainspotting make cameo appearances in The Acid House and Marabou Stork Nightmares, and slightly larger appearances in Glue, whose characters then appear in Porno.

Irvine Welsh is known for writing in his native Edinburgh Scots dialect. He generally transcribes dialects phonetically, ignoring the traditional orthographic practices of written Scots. Although many authors (for example James Kelman and Iain Banks) have previously depicted urban working class Scottish vernacular, Welsh is considered by many to be the master. Non-Scottish readers may have difficulty deciphering the language, and may miss some of the impact and references to football, sectarianism and Scottish everyday life in his work. For that reason, some international editions of his books have included brief glossaries at the end.

Welsh is also, like Alasdair Gray before him, inventive with typography. A notable example is the book Filth where the tapeworm's internal monologue is imposed over the top of the protagonist's own internal monologue (the worm's host), visibly depicting the tapeworm's voracious appetite.

Bibliography

Trainspotting (1993)
The Acid House (1994)
Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995)
Three Tales of Chemical Romance (1996)
Filth (1998)
Glue (2001)
Porno (2002)
The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (forthcoming, August2006)

You'll Have Had Your Hole (drama)
"Dose" (half Hour BBC drama written with Dean Cavanagh)
The Acid House (screenplay)

External links