|
|
Scotland is
a land I don't really understand. They still say "hame" instead of "home"
over there, when the rest of the English-speaking world left that behind in
the 1500s, I believe. What's going on? Is it because of that dinosaur in the
lake? Are they truly prehistoric people? And what about those goofy beanie
hats?
Apparently, some parts of Scotland have caught up with the present day,
even if the dialect has not. So says Irvine Welsh, author of his watershed
Trainspotting, and many books since that are as filthy as that.
In it he demonstrates that indeed the prehistoric Scots, or at least,
those located within the city, enjoy heroin as much as the rest of us
do, even if their version of it sounds more like "aerr-waaa." Thankfully,
Trainspotting comes complete with a glossary to help us poor souls
translate.
Which is necessary because Welsh tends to write as the Scotch speak; which
is to say, that you will in fact see the word "hame" in place of home. It
serves as a device to bring about the authentically desperate world in which
his characters live, powerless against temptation and the lack of anything
better to do. His characters are not nice people, and you know that in your
mind; but in your heart you know that they didn't start out that way… you
know, if only they could catch a break. Welsh makes it clear that he thinks
that, too: In all their pallid squalor, they are still human beings struggling
to make it what just what they have. They may have gotten themselves in all
this trouble, but you don't want to blame them for it.
And so Welsh prefers to call himself a "cultural activist" than a writer.
What he does in his work is not so much create but re-create the world of
the disadvantaged, showing us how near impossible it is, in Scotland anyway,
to break free from the bounds of poverty and bad breeding. He works to exemplify
all that's wrong with Scottish society and what it does to its people. What
they do to themselves? Given the circumstances, there's nothing else they
could have done. Is there?
Of note is Welsh's use of the Scotch dialect as well as a very masculine voice
- often the crassest version of it. How he manages to generate sympathy for
even the asshole narrator is beyond me, but he manages, and it's interesting
to try to parse out just exactly how he succeeded in doing so.
If you enjoy Welsh, you may also want to try Chuck Palanhiuk, author of the
infamous Fight Club. Other than that I can't think of any other appropriate
associations. Can you?
|
|
