GLUE. By Irvine Welsh. Jonathan Cape
Irvine Welsh may have captured the mood of a generation with
Trainspotting, but his latest novel, Glue, betrays a writer bereft of
subtlety.
Simplicity and understatement are the core tools of most great
authors, but they are alien concepts to Irvine Welsh. In 1999 Welsh
described his antipathy to simple English. "When I started writing
Trainspotting, I started writing it in standard English at first, but
it just seemed pretentious. I really like standard English, but it is
an administrative language, an imperialist language. It's not very
funky. I think it's got its place in academia, when you have to
understand concepts in a very cold and analytical way. But I think in
terms of drama, fiction, literature, it's quite limited really."
Which phrase in this preposterous rant stands out for you? For me
"It's not very funky" is the most foolish claim. Irvine, have you
read Martin Amis's Money or London Fields, where the author made
English read like the funkiest, most vibrant, modern (let's leave
Shakespeare out of this) language?
Welsh made his name in 1994 with Trainspotting, a rumbustious but
vacuous commentary on the Edinburgh drug culture (lots of people take
drugs. Er, that's it). But his use of abstruse, phonetic dialogue was
hardly, as claimed at the time, revolutionary. James Kelman, a
Glaswegian author, had predated him by ten years, with his debut
novel, The Busconductor Hines. However, Welsh's Zeitgeist-surfing
novel was heralded as groundbreaking. Kelman, who has always actually
had something to say, must have been mortified.
Welsh's subsequent books have seen him thrashing around in the same
shallow, and increasingly polluted, waters. His last, 1998's Filth,
was not only a dreadful attempt at a thriller, but also covered acres
of ground that he had already negotiated - dirty sex (first explored
in 1994's The Acid House), social comment (already clumsily expounded
upon in Maribou Stork Nightmare, 1995) and drugs (all of them).
Welsh's latest, Glue, complete with designer cover courtesy of the
photographer du jour, Rankin, is his assay on the epic novel. More
than 450 pages long, Glue, which spans four decades, chronicles the
friendship of four lads from a housing scheme in Edinburgh, beginning
with their childhood days in the Seventies. There's Juice Terry, a
Lothario with an eye for the main chance, the principled but hard-as-
nails boxer Billy Burrell, Carl Ewart, the music-obsessed nice kid
who eventually becomes a wildly successful DJ (Welsh, a part-time DJ,
obviously has a lot of time for Carl) and a perennial loser junkie,
Andrew Galloway.
Glue begins competently enough. Welsh writes well about Seventies
Edinburgh. The boys' parents, particularly, are rendered with acute
sensitivity; in fact the most moving part of the novel is the passage
in which Terry's fickle father deserts his family in the garden of a
pub. Looking upon his broken wife, Terry's father thinks: "Crying,
puffy, sagging Alice. What a contrast with Paula's youthful body;
tight, lithe, unmarked by childbirth. There really could be no
contest."
But this is only page seven. Before long, Welsh switches to the
viewpoints of his four main protagonists, and the momentum and all
subtlety is lost.
Tellingly, this is also the point at which Welsh reverts completely
to the naturalistic speech patterns of his previous efforts. Even
more concerning is that the four voices are almost interchangeable,
so poor is Welsh's characterisation.
Oddly, two thirds into Glue, and with no apparent reason, Welsh
switches to mostly standard English. And it's the last third of the
novel that explains why Welsh so hates writing in this simple
fashion. He just can't do it. Take this quote from Carl, who, after
returning from being off his face in the Australian bush (believe me,
however it reads, it's not an interesting plot development) discovers
that his caring girlfriend has bad news about his father: "There's a
trickle of sweat on the back of her neck, and I've an overwhelming
urge to lick it, kiss it, suck it, eat her like I was a f* vampire,
which I probably am, though of the social kind."
Lazy writing of this kind is frustrating because the very early part
of the book suggests that Welsh is just about capable of simple,
affecting prose.
Phonetic dialogue may be pleasingly rhythmic and possessed of
metronomic cadences, but in Welsh's hands it is a blunt instrument.
It can convey only anger or violence. Empathy and subtlety are
qualities that have always been absent from Welsh's writing. Glue
suggests that he is capable only of shouting. He needs to learn how
to whisper.
Irvine Welsh may have captured the mood of a generation with
Trainspotting, but his latest novel, Glue, betrays a writer bereft of
subtlety.
Simplicity and understatement are the core tools of most great
authors, but they are alien concepts to Irvine Welsh. In 1999 Welsh
described his antipathy to simple English. "When I started writing
Trainspotting, I started writing it in standard English at first, but
it just seemed pretentious. I really like standard English, but it is
an administrative language, an imperialist language. It's not very
funky. I think it's got its place in academia, when you have to
understand concepts in a very cold and analytical way. But I think in
terms of drama, fiction, literature, it's quite limited really."
Which phrase in this preposterous rant stands out for you? For me
"It's not very funky" is the most foolish claim. Irvine, have you
read Martin Amis's Money or London Fields, where the author made
English read like the funkiest, most vibrant, modern (let's leave
Shakespeare out of this) language?
Welsh made his name in 1994 with Trainspotting, a rumbustious but
vacuous commentary on the Edinburgh drug culture (lots of people take
drugs. Er, that's it). But his use of abstruse, phonetic dialogue was
hardly, as claimed at the time, revolutionary. James Kelman, a
Glaswegian author, had predated him by ten years, with his debut
novel, The Busconductor Hines. However, Welsh's Zeitgeist-surfing
novel was heralded as groundbreaking. Kelman, who has always actually
had something to say, must have been mortified.
Welsh's subsequent books have seen him thrashing around in the same
shallow, and increasingly polluted, waters. His last, 1998's Filth,
was not only a dreadful attempt at a thriller, but also covered acres
of ground that he had already negotiated - dirty sex (first explored
in 1994's The Acid House), social comment (already clumsily expounded
upon in Maribou Stork Nightmare, 1995) and drugs (all of them).
Welsh's latest, Glue, complete with designer cover courtesy of the
photographer du jour, Rankin, is his assay on the epic novel. More
than 450 pages long, Glue, which spans four decades, chronicles the
friendship of four lads from a housing scheme in Edinburgh, beginning
with their childhood days in the Seventies. There's Juice Terry, a
Lothario with an eye for the main chance, the principled but hard-as-
nails boxer Billy Burrell, Carl Ewart, the music-obsessed nice kid
who eventually becomes a wildly successful DJ (Welsh, a part-time DJ,
obviously has a lot of time for Carl) and a perennial loser junkie,
Andrew Galloway.
Glue begins competently enough. Welsh writes well about Seventies
Edinburgh. The boys' parents, particularly, are rendered with acute
sensitivity; in fact the most moving part of the novel is the passage
in which Terry's fickle father deserts his family in the garden of a
pub. Looking upon his broken wife, Terry's father thinks: "Crying,
puffy, sagging Alice. What a contrast with Paula's youthful body;
tight, lithe, unmarked by childbirth. There really could be no
contest."
But this is only page seven. Before long, Welsh switches to the
viewpoints of his four main protagonists, and the momentum and all
subtlety is lost.
Tellingly, this is also the point at which Welsh reverts completely
to the naturalistic speech patterns of his previous efforts. Even
more concerning is that the four voices are almost interchangeable,
so poor is Welsh's characterisation.
Oddly, two thirds into Glue, and with no apparent reason, Welsh
switches to mostly standard English. And it's the last third of the
novel that explains why Welsh so hates writing in this simple
fashion. He just can't do it. Take this quote from Carl, who, after
returning from being off his face in the Australian bush (believe me,
however it reads, it's not an interesting plot development) discovers
that his caring girlfriend has bad news about his father: "There's a
trickle of sweat on the back of her neck, and I've an overwhelming
urge to lick it, kiss it, suck it, eat her like I was a f* vampire,
which I probably am, though of the social kind."
Lazy writing of this kind is frustrating because the very early part
of the book suggests that Welsh is just about capable of simple,
affecting prose.
Phonetic dialogue may be pleasingly rhythmic and possessed of
metronomic cadences, but in Welsh's hands it is a blunt instrument.
It can convey only anger or violence. Empathy and subtlety are
qualities that have always been absent from Welsh's writing. Glue
suggests that he is capable only of shouting. He needs to learn how
to whisper.