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Without actually intending to, I had the advantage of putting this book to
the ultimate subjective test before sitting down to write this review: Did
Irvine Welsh's latest novel affect me? Will it stay with me? Have I made it
a part of my life, in some slight way or other? See, I finished this novel a
couple of months back, but for various reasons I never got around to
actually reviewing it. Until now, that is. The hour of reckoning -- when
maybe, due to these lame circumstances, I'm able to view the novel in a
somewhat different light than if I'd written the review when I was supposed
to have done.
Or maybe it's just a lame excuse for me being so lazy in the first place.
I recently had the dubious pleasure of putting together one of those end of
the year, Top Novels of 2002 sort of lists. Porno wasn't even a
contender for the shortlist. Welsh may be one of the most widely read
authors of today, but there's nothing in this book that warrants a position
among the real top names out there. Welsh's writing is engaging and witty,
but far too inconsequential and safe to really grab the listener and to
challenge his or her conceptions.
Welsh's greatest achievement remains Trainspotting, a beautiful and
profound look at drugged-out life in Edinburgh -- the story of Renton and
his friends, fighting for survival and trying to make sense out of lower class,
unemployed life. Every book Welsh has written since has been compared to his first great work, and none of them has measured up. Welsh has
perfected his narrative tone and his empathic character descriptions, but
has lost the raw, cynical edge that made Trainspotting such a
relentless and focused novel.
His other books may have attempted to surpass the monster he created, but
have failed for that very reason: Welsh has become so conscious of his
legacy that he seems unable to find new and unique voices to add to and
redefine his already well-defined literary universe. And so he has finally
accepted the fact that perhaps it'd be better to embrace his own legend,
and potentially even be able to move on afterwards. Porno, then, is a
sequel of sorts to Trainspotting -- Welsh revisits his characters ten years later and checks up on them.
Trainspotting's Renton and Simon "Sick Boy" occupy center stage, as
they did the last time around. Sick Boy has inherited a small town pub in
Scotland and decides it's the perfect opportunity to pull off the biggest
scam in his long history of chicanery; the steady income from the pub allows him
to produce a porn flick in the pub's loft. Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, Renton
is still living high on the stolen cash he ran off with at the end of
Trainspotting. And so, while the characters from Trainspotting have
spent the last decade trying to avoid each other as much as humanly
possible, Porno reins them all back together again -- Simon's porn
flick needs Renton's money, while Renton is up for some new
"entrepreneurial" activities. And everyone else likes the idea of naked
people and cash and wants to join in on the fun. Porno is the story
of a group of people who have grown apart and now need to confront each
other for one last time in order to make sense of the present and to move on
-- if they're lucky.
It's a somewhat ridiculously clichéd story, then, but Porno survives
its close to 500 pages on Welsh's storytelling prowess alone. It's
neither clever nor anything even remotely approaching profound, but it's
executed with a fluent bravado and a cinematic sense of slapstick that only the
most hardened reader will argue against. Welsh's greatest strength lies in
his character drawing -- he's a masterful composer of stereotypical
characters, somehow able to bring them life.
The characters all tell their own stories, in their own words, from their
own viewpoints, and in their own dialects. The latter part may prove
particularly troublesome to some American readers, as they'll have to get used to
lines like, "At least huvin nae mates hus pure geid ays the chance tae git
oan wi ma Leith book." The constant shift of character and setting works
great in here -- Welsh is, most of the time, in full control of his stories.
And while his overlapping of different plots, negations and
meta-comments aren't all that original, he pulls it off with enough elegance
and authority to claim his own voice in the midst of it all.
The characters may be too dumb, volatile or self-centered to actually be
believed, but Welsh brings them to life. There are two major exceptions to this, and they work in different
ways; Nikki is the novel's only major female character, and Welsh just can't
seem to get his head around her. He really wants her to be steaming hot,
clever, warmhearted and suffering, all at the same time, but he ends up with
little more than a middle-aged man's jerk-off fantasy queen. Her story
leaves room for quite a lot of the kind of urban street drama that Welsh
normally excels in, but Nikki remains one of the novel's least convincing characters, and her chapters are some of the book's least satisfactory parts.
On the other hand, there's Spud, the heroin-addicted laughing stock of
Trainspotting. Spud is the warmhearted but super-naïve man who never
seems to be able to do things right -- although that's all he really wants
to do. Welsh is in outstanding form here -- these are the parts that will make you remember this book. Spud's story takes Porno that little mile
extra, ensuring it's not all a superficial laugh-and-caper drama. Welsh
never preaches, but is a beautiful teller of underdogs' tales -- like
a less stylish, more expressive Ken Loach of the novel. Spud's tale
represents Porno's true heart. It's just a shame that it's secondary
to the main story.
Porno fails to live up to Trainspotting's legend, and is
ultimately little more than a dear reminder of that other, far superior novel. However,
if this is what it takes for Welsh to rid himself of the ghost that clearly
haunts him so, then so be it. Hopefully he'll come out looking all the
better for it in the end. Porno effectively squeezes the last few
drops of life from our old Edinburgh friends, and if you're really
curious to hear more about them, this is an entertaining revisit.
Let's hope this does it, then, and keep our fingers crossed for Welsh's next.
-- Anthony M. Ford
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About the Publisher:
The UK chapter of Random House is better than the
American chapter.
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