Irvine Welsh: High on mischief, low on malice

The Edinburgh-set novel dives headlong into the lives of its drug-addled youth in dialectic prose bursting with wit and vitriol. Adapted by Danny Boyle into an endlessly quotable film by the same name, it also spawned a cinematic sequel T2. The writer, who was at the Jaipur Literature Festival, got talking on life, letters and everything in between. 

It’s amazing to be in India. People are here at the festival by the thousands and they want to see you and get their books signed. You go somewhere, like a festival in Bogotá, Columbia, and there are 4,000 people in the audience. It’s absolutely bizarre. But again, it’s so fortunate that it’s (Trainspotting) become such a worldwide phenomenon. I am just lucky and I feel privileged I have had that kind of life as a writer.

 

It’s harder for younger writers to have that same thing. When you go to festivals, most of the ones selling books are my age or older. You get the occasional younger one who breaks through. But they are not really shifting a lot of books. Within a couple of years, you don’t read about them again; they are replaced by others. It’s the old guys like myself who keep coming back because we were pre-Internet. We came from an era which didn’t have a media culture. 

Filmmaking is a collaborative act and the most important part is that of the directors who pools in all these collaborators. It’s not appropriate for a writer to have creative control in these sorts of things. Your control is more as a producer as you look for an inspiring director, someone who has a very strong vision for how the book is going to be made into this great piece of cinema. So it’s a complicated relationship. But I have been very lucky with the people I have worked with.

Terry from Glue is my favourite character from all my books and probably Spud from Trainspotting, not because I relate to him the most, but just because he is the nicest one. 

Substance(s) have now become such an unremarkable part of life, that it’s too mundane almost to write about it. It’s so much a part of who we are. It’s just assumed now that our behaviour is based on the idea that we take a substance to alter our moods. Everything else about our social life is based around that. 

You can’t really criticise technology or the Internet. It’s done a lot of great things. We are moving into an era where human invention can’t just serve profit. Hopefully, the new era that we are living in frees up creativity and allows technologists and inventors to get better at solving problems of humanity — problems that were caused through capitalism and imperialism. These are epochs in history. They have thrown up a lot of modern day problems that we as a species need to resolve to survive. We are hoping that when technology is liberated from such concerns, we can actually start solving problems. 

In some ways, Brexit is a monumental act of self harm. In other ways, there is something inevitable about it. It’s something that’s been brewing for 30 odd years, since we kind of took to Thatcherism and the neoliberal route to managing the decline of capitalism. We are facing all these issues now. It’s not just about Europe, but it’s always about Britain — who British people are and what their relationship is with each other and the rest of the world. It’s about us trying to free ourselves from the vestiges of imperialism, which has been a devastating thing to do. The British psyche is aware it is something we have inflicted on the rest of the world. So now, we are inevitably trying to change that. We are like the last prisoners of our own imperialism in our little islands. 

Nothing’s changed over 30 years. You grow up, you get older, you get into different things, and get out of different things. You travel, new lives, new loves, all come flying by. It’s fun, it’s a trip. The world is an incredibly dynamic and interesting place and you’ve got to go with everything that comes your way.  I have always been quite mellow in a lot of ways. I hope that everything that I have done has been done with a spirit of mischief rather than malice. I have been a bit of pain sometimes, but I hope there’s a sense of fun that pervades everything. I have got my musical album coming out in April, that’s a big thing for me now. I have also got done with writing one book. I am going through the process of editing it, it’s all over the place and it’s a bit of a mess. I know what it’s going to be... bursting with Zeitgeist like every single thing that I write.