~ ~ The title for this opinion came to me as I was sitting in my ‘joe maxi’ (taxi) at a red light, and the song “The Boys Are Back In Town” by the old Belfast band Thin Lizzie came on the radio.
I’ve been planning a review of the Irvine Welsh novel “Porno”, where for the first time Welsh re-unites all of the seedy characters from his first (and only) blockbuster novel “Trainspotting” (1993) and brings them all together again in their old stomping ground of Leith in Edinburgh. And the title seemed very apt, considering the liking of the Thin Lizzie lead singer, the late, great Phil Lynott, for illicit pharmaceuticals of every description.
~ ~ I thoroughly enjoyed the novel Trainspotting, (but NOT the movie) and have read all of Welsh’s subsequent five novels, none of which reached the dizzying heights of success that he achieved with Trainspotting. We had a brief coming together of some of the Trainspotting characters in Welsh’s last novel “Glue”, which followed the changing fortunes of four of the characters from a sink housing estate in Edinburgh’s port of Leith over four decades. But in Porno, Welsh brings together all the old drug addled Trainspotting crew some ten years after they all went their separate ways, when Mark Renton (Rents) relieved his erstwhile buddies of their ill-gotten gains from a dubious drug deal in London.
~ ~ Rents has been running a dance club and turning a shilling in the drug capital of Europe, Amsterdam, while his old drinking and injecting pal Simon Williamson, “Sick Boy”, has been head of security at a seedy strip-joint in London.
Begbie, the psychopath with a penchant for random and extreme violence, is languishing in Saughton Prison in his hometown of Edinburgh, where he is nearing the end of a long sentence for murder, and harbouring thoughts of sadistic revenge on his old pal Renton. In the meantime, Sick Boy has been amusing himself by sending Begbie anonymous parcels of gay porn magazines to the nick, which obviously hasn’t been received at all well by the erstwhile nutcase.
“Spud”, the fourth member of the old quartet, has never moved from his old haunts in Leith, and still suffers from a love/hate relationship with heroin, attending a drug rehabilitation programme and planning to write a definitive history of his beloved Leith, while at the same time still spasmodically partaking of drugs of both a hard and soft nature, and trying to keep together his relationship with his long-term partner and young son. (mostly unsuccessfully)
Terry Lawson, “Juice Terry”, the ex-soft drink salesman (off the back of a lorry) with an insatiable appetite for the ladies, is still on the scene. Fatter and no longer selling “juice”, but still dutifully chasing the fairer sex, ducking and diving to make a living, and still as fond as ever of the booze and illegal chemicals.
~ ~ Sick Boy is asked to take over the running of a seedy public house in Leith by his old aunt, who plans to retire to the sun in Spain with her young toy-boy lover, and immediately upon his return to Leith spots the potential to make some handy profit from the city’s blossoming sex industry.
Using the pub as a respectable cover, he plans to make the definitive pornographic movie, and inveigles all his old mates into both helping and starring in the upcoming blockbuster.
He has taken up with a student called Nikki Fuller-Smith, a student at a local college studying film making, and who is so sexually voracious that she works part-time in a local massage parlour. Naturally enough, she is soon up to her neck (and down with her knickers!) in the production of the skin flick.
Drugs and the drug culture still play a large part in this novel, but the lads have now mostly moved away from the heroin scene, and are now more into more ‘socially acceptable’ pharmaceuticals like cocaine. (of which they all partake very liberally!)
Various scams are set up in order to raise the required capital to finance the porno project, one of which involves relieving hundreds of Glasgow Ranger’s football fans of the balances of their bank accounts, by illicitly obtaining details of their bank details and cash point pin numbers. (It’s both ingenious and totally hilarious!)
Eventually the movie is completed, and is entered for a porno Film Festival, (in France) and the lads set off for sunnier climes in order to market their masterpiece.
~ ~ This is the best Irvine Welsh novel I have read since Trainspotting, although I have to admit I also thoroughly enjoyed his fourth novel, “Filth”, which chronicled the goings-on of a corrupt Edinburgh detective. (it wasn’t well received by the critics, however)
Welsh returns once more to his favourite theme; the striking differences between working class and middle/upper class society in his native city.
He laments the “gentrification” of his native Leith, where many of the old tenements have now been upgraded and revamped into havens for the city’s yuppies, and where many of the old working class pubs and clubs are now modern plastic pleasure palaces.
He delights in casting aspersions on middle class morals and values at every opportunity, and uses his not inconsiderable skill as a writer to almost glorify and beatify the new drug culture of the “underclass”.
He does so very successfully, and it has to be said entertains and amuses his readers immensely in the process, but whether it is a true reflection of society either in Edinburgh (or any other major city in the country) is highly dubious, as it is far too simplistic to categorise people in this fashion.
I recently listened to Welsh giving a radio interview here on Irish radio at the time of the yearly Edinburgh Festival, where he lambasted the Festival as a celebration of middle class culture, attended by lads and lasses from the Home Counties of England and the “better” Universities and Colleges, and with little or no relevance to the native inhabitants of Edinburgh.
He choose to ignore the fact (pointedly made to him by the interviewer) that the available statistics didn’t uphold his claims, and that the yearly Festival is unquestionably an outstanding success story for Edinburgh, bringing countless thousands of home and overseas visitors to the Scottish capital each year, and attended in droves by the native population.
He went down considerably in my personal estimation as a result of his somewhat blinkered attitudes, although, it has to be said, not enough to stop me buying and avidly reading his novels.
And I also read a recent report in the Scottish “Daily Record” (a Scottish tabloid that I occasionally purchase) that stated that the major star of the movie Trainspotting, the Scottish actor Ewen McGregor, has been making favourable noises about starring in a new film sequel based on “Porno”.
Being the somewhat cynical ‘mad cabbie’ that I am, I immediately suspected that somewhere in the background the “filthy lucre” had been waved in Mr. Welsh’s face, in order to get him to write “Porno” in the first place, a novel that he often stated would not be written. (a straight sequel to Trainspotting)
~ ~ Anyhow, be that as it may, I have to admit that I DID thoroughly enjoy the book, although like all of Welsh’s novels it may prove fairly heavy going for any readers not thoroughly conversant in Edinburgh slang. He uses the vernacular Scottish dialect throughout, and perhaps a glossary at the back of the book would have been in order for his non-Scottish readers.
Having been born in Leith (well, Newhaven actually) I could identify and relate to much of the book, and this obviously added considerably to my enjoyment of it. But don’t let any of my criticism actually put you off reading this novel. It’s entertaining, and exceptionally well written, and spins a bloody good yarn.
Let’s hope that the upcoming (and almost sure to happen) movie is equally as good.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Paperback
483 pages (22 August, 2002)
Published by Jonathan Cape
ISBN: 022406181X
£5 at Amazon UK
Hardcover
496 pages (22 August, 2002)
Published by Jonathan Cape
ISBN: 0224062964
£13.59 at Amazon UK
The Trainspotting lads are back, ten years farther down the line, as they tap into one last great scam: directing and producing a porn film.More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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