Edinburgh International Book Festival: Irvine Welsh
When Doug Johnstone opened Irvine Welsh's talk he acknowledged the difficulty of introducing an author that needs no introduction. And he doesn't - while most authors are welcomed to the stage amid a warm round of applause, the audience at Welsh's sell-out event cheered and whistled. Welsh was there to talk about Skagboys, which went straight to number one in the hardback fiction chart when it was published in April this year. Before any discussion of the novel began, Welsh read an extract where Renton is working in a factory. He did the different voices of the characters and acted bits out. So when Renton squatted over the Daily Record and shuffled forward as he took a shit, Welsh squatted and shuffled, though luckily that’s as far as the impression went.
The scene he read was mostly day-to-day chit-chat between workmates, teasing each other, flirting with the canteen girls, getting one over on the bosses, and it was incredibly funny. So much critique of Welsh's work focuses on his portrayal of drug abuse, that one of his greatest skills as an author is often overlooked - his ability to write genuine, funny banter between friends. He speaks the dialect easily - his time living in America hasn't dulled his accent - but admits that it doesn't flow onto the page easily. In fact he writes in standard English before beginning what he described as a “long and painful journey” to transform it into how the characters would actually think and speak.
When questioned why he chose to return to his original cast of characters, Welsh joked that he doesn't have the will power to leave them alone. He already had a lot of old material that never made it in into Trainspotting to avoid a lengthy build up and plunge straight into full blown addiction. Writing a prequel allowed Welsh to explore eighties Scotland, specifically the influx of heroin into society. Developing the back story of Trainspotting into Skagboys meant he could portray the circumstances and relationships that led the individual characters to heroin: Alison’s bereavement, Sick Boy's family situation, Renton's friendships.
He was also keen to make Renton a more sympathetic character, what with the enduring memory of him being a betrayer of his closest friends, stealing their money and fleeing to Amsterdam. Skagboys offers the reasons behind that betrayal, and explains why he needed to escape their friendship and Scotland, both of which were keeping him in the cycle of addiction. Later this year the film adaptation of Welsh's 1998 novel Filth will be released, but as yet there aren't plans to adapt Skagboys for the big screen. Personally I'd like to hear of plans for him to record his novels as audio books. Hearing Welsh reading from Skagboys highlighted how skilfully the novel is written, and more than any speech or essay could, it demonstrated why Welsh truly is an icon of Scottish literature. [Rowena McIntosh]