Enjoying a wild, Scottish ride
Author Irvine Welsh’s characters keep up their addictive behaviour
The Scottish writer Irvine Welsh has been writing about the denizens of the underbelly for a long time; from junkies to a rapist to a brutal cop and other assorted layabouts. What is the appeal?
“What I like to do is to get characters that don’t really have a lot in terms of material resources but are very single-minded and narcissistic and then I set up all sorts of traps for them,” says the author, most famously of Trainspotting.
“I think when somebody’s really sure who they are and what they are about and then you challenge that, you force them to confront something different and it makes for really entertaining drama.”
The protagonist in Welsh’s latest book, A Decent Ride, is Terry Lawson, who was a character in his 2001 novel Glue. Terry is a charming cab driver and sex addict and the character on the cover looks somewhat like the shock jock Howard Stern.
This book is a ride through contemporary Scotland but not the tourist spots. “The book is about getting older. It’s about trying to maintain a kind of life. We live in a very narcissistic culture in the West and we have a sense of entitlement to keep on doing what we like doing all the time. Terry is in that position and he is being tested by that.
“It’s also about me being away from Scotland and being semi-detached, not being right up to speed.
“I hadn’t written about it properly for awhile. Of my last three books, one was a historical novel, set in the 1980s, and the other two were set in Miami, so it’s me trying to reconnect with Edinburgh again and using Terry as a tour guide. He represented the old Scotland because he is very set in his ways, but he’s also open to change. Metaphorically speaking he’s not a solid yes or no for independence. He’s one of the guys in the middle like most people in Scotland. He just wants to see what is going down.”
Welsh himself has been confronting aging.
“A lot people I know have been dropping dead over the past few years and that’s been a shock.”
As for those who are still around?
“I am thinking about what old folks’ homes are going to be like in 20 years’ time. People jumping around on drugs trying to stay young, DJing sets for each other. We are physically aging the same way but we aren’t mentally aging the same way.”
The book is full of the local vernacular so it needs some patience. But it, like Welsh, is full of sardonic humour.
“We find a lot of laughter in the dark in Scotland. The best laughs in Scotland are at somebody’s funeral. Everyone is telling jokes and laughing and all that and the most miserable time is at a wedding. They are supposed to be a celebration but everybody is p---ed off and squabbling and arguing.”
“We can always make comedy out of tragedy and can always tease tragedy out of comedy. It’s a perverse way of looking at the world.”
Taking that in account, Welsh says, being Scottish is a “tremendous” gift for a writer.
“You just have a massive head start. I really appreciate it now because I have lived out of the U.K. for 10 years” — in Chicago — “and out of Scotland for about 20 years.”
Scotland is now becoming more exotic to him, he says.
“When you grow up some place you always find it very mundane because it is all you know. But when you go away, you actually realize it’s the most crazy exotic messedup place I’ve ever seen.”
He does go back for a couple of months every year to an apartment he keeps in Edinburgh. Most of the time he hangs out with family and friends, goes to soccer games and reconnects with his roots. It suits him just fine.
“You get best of both worlds: The perspective of distance but still being a part of people’s everyday life. I can fall into old social networks and family networks. It’s a great thing because as soon as they get fed up with you, you’re gone. When you come back they are pleased to see you.”
As a chronicler of Edinburgh, one thing Welsh notes about his hometown is a growing confidence and sophistication.
“I’ve seen a lot of that growth in the last 10 years since the parliament has been there. The city has kind of grown into itself and gained confidence as a European capital.
“It never really had that before. It was more like a mausoleum before. There were all these old seats of power that were empty of meaning.
“Now with the Parliament and the move toward independence, the city has a sense of purpose back. I think it is great to have all that history but you have to have a contemporary relevance as well. It’s nice to have ghosts in the attic but you need real people in there too.”