Latest news with #Trainspotting
Spectator
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Tedious, lazy and pretentious – Irvine Welsh's Men in Love is a disgrace
There are 32 years between the publication of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and his Men in Love – a gap roughly equivalent to that between Sgt. Pepper and 'Windowlicker' by Aphex Twin. Perhaps three cultural generations. It is disturbing, therefore, to find Welsh still pumping out further sequels to his spectacular literary debut. But whereas that had verbal fireworks, razor-sharp dialogue, superb character ventriloquism and a fearless examination of Scottish moral rot, Men in Love is – let's be frank – tedious, lazy, pretentious and simply bad writing. Under the influence of American Psycho, Welsh has had characters narrating their fleeting perceptions since Filth (1998), in the hope that accumulation will create meaning. But where Bret Easton Ellis is satirising the vicious lizard-brain petulance of the 1 per cent, Welsh now simply takes you with the narrator on increasingly pointless journeys. The result is entire chapters that feel redundant and anti-plots that seem to build to something before ending in irritating anti-climaxes. (The Renton-Begbie confrontation in 2002's Porno was so bad that I wondered whether a refusal to climax was a meta joke.) Trainspotting vibrated with malevolent vernacular energy, but the prequels and sequels have seen Welsh lose his ventriloquial gift. This was already apparent in Porno, where Nikki's speech at the end was pure authorial intervention as she tells us What It All Meant. From Skagboys (2012) onwards, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and even Begbie have been articulating their thoughts in increasingly florid sentences, as if Welsh were trying to impress us with his new-found vocabulary. But it doesn't impress. Of course, part of the pleasure of reading Welsh was how he combined the demotic and the cerebral. But the writing in Men in Love can be as clumsy and self-regarding as undergraduate poetry. For instance, Spud thinks that 'she should pure huv the vocabulary tae express hersel withoot recourse tae foul language'. Without recourse, aye? The once-fearsome Begbie, meanwhile: Now he was outside and it was Saturday, drifting into late afternoon, a time Begbie found replete with opportunities for violence. Potential adversaries were out, some since Friday after work. Many of those boys acquiring the delicious bold-but-sloppy combination that would service his chaotic outpourings. He found them replete, did he? He had chaotic outpourings, did he? And the sex writing – 'in languid, ethereal movements she groans in soft tones', for example – is excruciating. Another key weakness of Men in Love is how many earlier beats it replays. Sick Boy is involved with porn films and pimping; women magically fall under his spell; and he outplays a privileged male competitor (this time his father-in-law, a Home Office civil servant). Renton gets into nightclubs and DJ-ing. Spud is a romantic loser. Begbie is still psychotically aggressive. All of which we've seen in Porno, The Blade Artist and Dead Men's Trousers. The record is stuck. The heartbreaking thing is there's a good novel to be written about the punk/smack generation of the early 1980s encountering the ecstasy love-buzz period as the decade progressed. But Welsh has signally failed to tackle any of that. He could have taken them to Ibiza, the Hacienda or Spike Island, or considered the achievements and failures of the Love Generation Mk II. But no. It's another lazy retread. The impression one gets from Men in Love is that of Fat Elvis, sweating and unknowingly self-parodic in Las Vegas. Welsh desperately needs an editor with the guts to tell him this schtick isn't working any more. To quote Melody Maker on David Bowie: 'Sit down, man, you're a fucking disgrace.'
The Herald Scotland
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
'Hopeless romantic' Welsh sends his gang looking for love
But it is the characters he created for Trainspotting that he keeps returning to – even if their latest adventures may be something of a departure for Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie. Read more: The fourth sequel to Trainspotting, which picks up shortly after the end of the first novel, sees them leaving heroin behind in pursuit of romance and raves. And Welsh has admitted he has drawn on his own experience as a 'pretty hopeless romantic' for the novel, which sees the characters seeking sex and looking for love in London, Amsterdam, Paris and their home city of Edinburgh, where Welsh suddenly emerged as a major new literary voice in the early 1990s. Irvine Welsh shot to fame with his debut novel Trainspotting in 1993. (Image: Getty) Within three years of Trainspotting's publication, it had been turned into an acclaimed feature film starring Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner and Jonny Lee Miller, who were reunited in 2016 for a sequel set around 20 years on from the original. Men In Love, Welsh's latest novel, is the second Trainspotting novel since the movie sequel, although the new book unfolds as the 1980s are drawing to a close with Margaret Thatcher still Prime Minister and rave culture sweeping the UK. Welsh said: 'I've never really left these characters behind. They are in my head as the go-to guys that I'm always writing stories about to try to understand the world. 'To write a novel I really need to have a theme. I really wanted to write a positive book as there is so much hate in the world just now. I wanted to get people thinking about the more emotional and romantic side of life.' Welsh has been working on Men In Love since getting married for a third time, in 2022. He said: 'I was thinking back to that era when guys in their twenties first get serious about romance and their partner becomes more important than their mates, but they are not really equipped for it. 'I was looking back and thinking about how useless most guys are at that time. I thought I'd get the most useless guys of all and see how they shape up. 'I think I've always been quite serious about relationships. I was always obsessed with any women who were daft enough to go out with me. I've always been a pretty hopeless romantic at heart.' Welsh, who worked in Edinburgh City Council's housing department before pursuing a career as a writer, said he had never intended to create a whole series of books on the Trainspotting characters. The author told The Herald: 'I don't know if it is a blessing or a curse, but I have always lived in the present. I don't really have the ability to look back or forward. 'When I go out with pals they come out with all these stories and tell me what I was wearing 35 years ago. I can't even remember what colour of underpants I put on in the morning. 'I always said in the past that I was done with the characters from Trainspotting, but I'm not going to say that now. I will probably revisit them again. 'But I've just written a contemporary book, which is coming out next year, which is set in Las Vegas and has a whole new cast of characters. It's a very different book, which has been incredibly freeing to write.' While his new book offers Welsh's fans a nostalgic trip, the author bemoans the impact of new technology on younger generations, society, culture and nightlife. The author said: 'Things have changed massively, when I think about the freedom that we had. We could do anything. 'The internet was supposed to be this great liberation, but it's become such an intrusive and confining thing now. We are being monitored all the time and we are policing each other. 'I do think about how much more boring my life would have been if we had had the internet, surveillance technology and all that kind of stuff back then. I do really feel for the youth of today. They are not really allowed to transgress in any way. 'Nobody has really got money to do anything now. That's the main reason pubs are shutting down. 'So many music and literature festivals have shut down this summer because people just don't have the money to go to them. 'The internet is also driving us to a post-culture society where a lot of people, particularly working-class people, are not engaging in culture in any way. It's a horrible development.' Welsh's interest in music has seen him co-write a Trainspotting stage musical, which is hoped to be launched next year, and release a disco-inspired Men In Love album to coincide with the release of his new novel. After his book launches in Edinburgh and Glasgow this week, he will also be performing late-night DJ sets at the official after-parties. Welsh will also be making further appearances in his home city over the next few weeks, with a Men In Love book festival event and the world premiere of a new documentary, Reality Is Not Enough, made by Edinburgh-based filmmaker Paul Sng, who followed the author around the world for more than a year. The film, which is described as 'a gripping and revealing deep dive' into the mind of the author, is said to find Welsh 'at a crossroads, acutely aware of his own mortality.' Welsh said: 'By god, it makes me look interesting, which is quite an achievement. 'You spend so much time in your own head, you don't really perceive of yourself as someone who has an interesting life. 'You are in all these locations, talking to different people and doing different things. You don't really think of it as being particularly glamorous as you are transit all the time. 'But I have met so many interesting people down the years. 'In some ways, watching the documentary was like meeting a version of myself for the first time.' Welsh is launching Men In Love days before the main Edinburgh Festival season gets underway. He said: 'It's great that the Festival happens, but the downside of it is that we put all our eggs into the one cultural basket. It's an importation. There's not really a living, breathing thing going in the town.'
Scotsman
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
What's on in Edinburgh today? 10 events to enjoy including Trainspotting sequel launch
1 . Irvine Welsh Men in Love Q&A and Exclusive Launch Party Celebrating the release of his new Trainspotting sequel Men in Love, Scottish author Irvine Welsh will participate in a Q&A with Jenni Fagan early in the evening, before heading over to Leith Arches for an exclusive launch party. The Q&A will take place at Ps and Gs Church on York Place from 7.30pm, with the album launch party kicking off from 8pm until 1am, and featuring the Sci Fi Soul Orchestra, Carl Loben, Steve Mac and more, with a limited number of exclusive vinyl and CD editions available on the night. | LISA FERGUSON Photo: Lisa Ferguson
Scotsman
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Men in Love by Irvine Welsh review: 'his paciest, funniest book in years'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The early stages of drug dependency and romantic love have such similar rushing, all-consuming power that scientific studies of their comparative neurological effects have been made. That a book about one group of young men's devastating heroin habits should be followed by another about their often self-destructive pursuits of sex and relationship highs therefore makes plenty of sense. Thirty-two years have passed since Leith tearaways Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie first leapt off the pages of Irvine Welsh's darkly delirious million-selling masterpiece Trainspotting. Danny Boyle's 1996 film adaptation subsequently made icons of the characters and their creator. There have been numerous prequel, sequel and spin-off novels and short stories of varying merit, plus an iffy follow-up movie (2017's T2, set decades after the original). Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Irvine Welsh At the outset of Men In Love, merely weeks have expired since Trainspotting's end, when Renton chose life by ripping off his mates in a drug deal before disappearing with their cash. The mixture of guilt, rage, betrayal and confusion each man feels is as fresh as the sweat on Renton's brow, as he goes cold turkey in Amsterdam trying to get clean. He, Sick Boy and Spud are estranged, yet largely united in their resolve not to fall back on the smack (Begbie's tangential compulsion for violent mayhem, meanwhile, rages unchecked). But what should fill the void? Foreshadowing 2002's Porno, the book that inspired T2, pseudo-sophisticate Scots Italian manipulator Sick Boy is in London building a career in adult entertainment, while using and abusing various women to different ends. Including Amanda, an upper-class dropout he encounters at drug counselling. She forces him to feel forbidden feelings no natural born shagger should feel. The thickest yet most morally sound of them all, Spud, is in a relationship with Sick Boy's ex Alison, whom he showers with a desperate, cloying love she can't requite. In Amsterdam, Renton becomes immersed in the burgeoning acid house club scene, and a world of fluid sexual and romantic relationships he may not be emotionally equipped for. Begbie's devotion remains only to Leith, the blade and the bottle. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The raw, gritty, trippy urgency and hyper-realism that drove Welsh's debut novel has long-since faded from his writing. Some of his graphic descriptions of oftentimes squalid sex may leave you needing a shower. But the simple ease and joy with which he reinhabits these vivid characters makes this his paciest, funniest, most page-turning book in years. If there is a love to be felt, it's Welsh's for his Leith young team, who for all their flaws and indeed evils, he never leaves without hope of redemption - be it Sick Boy in his battle of wits with Amanda's toff hypocrite father in the build up to their wedding, or Begbie, the world's worst best man, hanging over the climactic posh nuptials like a black cloud, threatening to rain either rough class justice or purely psychotic chaos.
Irish Independent
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Irvine Welsh's Trainspotters fumble towards human connection in the expertly funny and tender Men in Love
Fiction This book, Men in Love is the third novel in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting universe, but it sits second in the story's chronology – bridging the gap between the youthful anarchy of Trainspotting (1993) and the cynical scheming of Porno (2002). While Danny Boyle's movie T2 Trainspotting (2017) was loosely based on Porno, it aged the characters into middle age. Men in Love, by contrast, returns to the late 1980s, exploring the emotional fallout of addiction and betrayal, and deepening the internal lives of characters that is only hinted at on screen.
