Irvine Welsh: The Buzz

PORNO news, reviews, and interviews. Updated February 2003.

Porno is coming in paperback in June 2003.
Photos of Welsh reading from Porno during his tour appearance at Austin, Texas's BookPeople.
Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian bemoans the debasement of our culture by the media and advertising, noting that "Irvine Welsh's publishers pushed his last novel, Porno, with a close-up image of the mouth of a blow-up doll. The first time I saw it, it was attached to a lamp post; a child was pointing at it from his pushchair." Read the entire article
"Zap2It.com" reports that the movie version of Porno sequel is facing problems because the film cast of Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle and Jonny Lee Miller look too healthy...."None of them look any different," director Danny Boyle tells Screen International. "I need them to look like they've burned themselves out, but they have all been using face cream and Vitamin E lotion." Read the entire article • Another article on the movie production from ScreenDaily.com
Welsh was interviewed in depth by Tasha Robinson in The Onion on 11/14/02: "The whole point of consumer society was to give us more choices. And the irony of it is, we're becoming like the Soviet Union, but with money. I mean, how many fucking Starbucks does Seattle need?" Read the entire interview
Jane magazine's Kate Hambrecht gave Porno a score of four hot dogs (whatever that means) in the November 2002 issue.
From The Onion, October 16, 2002, Porno is reviewed by Tasha Robinson: "Much like the infamous "lost" 21st chapter of Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange, Irvine Welsh's new Porno is likely to polarize fans: Some will argue that it unnecessarily expands the boundaries of a self-contained story, while others will find it a welcome continuation of a narrative that otherwise ended too abruptly." Read the entire review
From Salon, October 10, 2002, Porno is reviewed by Laura Miller: "[M]uch of Porno is Seinfeld in Scotland and on hard drugs—and often it's just as funny." Read the entire review
From GQ, September 2002: "Welsh's long-awaited follow-up revisits Sick Boy, Renton, Begbie and Spud as they rant and scheme in a version of the English language that has seemingly been poured into a blender and whirred at high speed with a handful of razor blades."
From Details, September 2002: "Despotic and often hilarious....Why did Welsh, 43, revist the degenerates who made him famous? 'Your first book is like the girl you lose your virginity to,' he says, absoluitely intelligible for once. 'You think, I wish I had shagged her properly.'"
From Time Out New York: "Porno finds the lads older and wiser, having settled down with their speech-therapist wives and become productive members of Edinburgh society. Kidding! Nothing has really changed for Sick Boy, Renton, Begbie and Spud, who are caught up in a scheme to produce a porn film."
From Publishers Weekly: "Welsh has an uncanny talent for dialogue, and his writing is often diamond sharp."
From Library Journal, 1 September 2002: "Welsh's ear for dialect doesn't fail him in this worthy successor, and his fans won't be disappointed. Dust off those Scottish-English dictionaries."
From the Evening Standard [London], Porno is reviewed by Melanie McGrath: "A worthy sequel....Welsh has penned a touching love song to the possibilities and limits of friendship. Charming, funny and sly, Porno is a good poke at all kinds of pretence and moral tidiness. "
Welsh stirs up controversy in Edinburgh, saying his home city suffers from an "overbearing domineering middle-class culture....I'd like to see Edinburgh have a bit more respect for its own people." Read the entire article
From the Observer [London], 18 August 2002, Porno is reviewed by Burhan Wazir: "Back for the first time since 1993 on friendly ground, Porno, like Trainspotting, captures and celebrates the hangover of youth." Read the entire review
Burhan Wazir profiled Welsh (and Porno) in the August 11, 2002 edition of The Observer: "Last Christmas, in another incident that might have stepped out of the pages of any of his novels, Welsh, in a heightened fit of drunken celebration, destroyed both Reekie's Aiwa karaoke machine and his television set. Reekie has since glued the remnants back together. Taken in the context of his writing, and last week's vicious attack on contemporary Edinburgh, Renton, Sick Boy and Begbie would surely heartily approve of their creator's behaviour." Read the entire article

GLUE reviews and interviews

From the Houston Chronicle, Glue is reviewed by Suzanne Ferriss: "Terry, Billy, Carl and Gally remain the heart of the novel owing to Welsh's brilliant characterization. His descriptions of schemie life are cinematic, and it would not be surprising if this novel, like Trainspotting, were to become a major motion picture. With subtitles, of course."
From the Boston Phoenix, Glue is reviewed by Chris Wright: "Part of the reason for Welsh's popularity is that he's just a cracking storyteller —there's a forward momentum in his books that makes turning the page seem less an option than a necessity. And he's funny. His work hums with grim sarcasm and a schoolboy's love of dirty jokes." Read the entire review
Read an interview with Welsh in Seattle Weekly: "Q: Can you forgive Ewan McGregor for starring in Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace? Welsh: If he forgives me for Ecstasy.
From Seattle Weekly, Glue is reviewed by Paul Fontana: "Glue is a work of tremendous scope and the product of a supremely talented writer, one who—like his characters—clearly exhibits a capacity for growth. " Read the entire review
"Pills, Thrills, and Bellyaches": Read an interview with Welsh from the Austin Chronicle
From Time Out New York's Summer 2001 Reading supplement, reviewed by Michael Hayes: "Welsh is at his best here. Glue is epic in scope and daring in form, and its strengths lie in what we are left to surmise as nmuch as in what we learn about its characters."
From Soma: Left Coast Culture, Glue is reviewed by Steffan Chirazi: "Glue stands strong in its own right, as a modern drama that all can relate to, from teenage punks to middle-aged bankers....Brilliantly scripted, Glue is a modern Dickensonian journey through feral working-class lives, with equal parts humor, morality, compasion and disgust....And as ever, Welsh clearly does not give a damn what the literati think, which explains why he continues to bring us nearer to our own dark closest than any other modern novelist."
Wild man Irvine Welsh chills: Drug-culture writer mellows a bit' A conversation with the new, "mellow" Irvine Welsh in the San Francisco Chronicle
Glue was reviewed in the Washington Post Book World by Jonathan Fasman: "Welsh affords us an intimate, honest and accurate look at how people write their own stories."
Glue was reviewed in the Seattle Times by Mark Lindquist: "The [characters] flail along, tossing off brilliant one-liners and finding moments of transcendence and dignity in a world seemingly designed to sabotage, beat, and emasculate them. There are shades of Hemingway in passages where the men buck up and carry on." Read the entire review
Glue was reviewed in the Portland Oregonian by Christopher Lewis: "[A] refreshing immersion into the author's kinetic language and brilliant characterization....it's a great read. Lord help ays."
Welsh answered questions in an online chat hosted by the Washington Post. Read the chat transcript
From the Village Voice: "Glue is his best-plotted novel yet."
Glue is reviewed in Flyer NYC: The New York City Urban Culture Guide: "As always, Welsh's strength is his ability to write beautifully raw and honest dialogue, and he's now even more skilled and adept at dissecting the subtlety of his character's interactions."
A review of Glue from the Los Angeles Features Syndicate: "[A] winner....these characters will stay with you long after you close the book."
Glue is reviewed in Salon.com: "Welsh's novel describes a highly scripted, slangy, violent, sexy, drunken series of events that, over time, constitutes a fully realized vision of the world. (And, like a night dancing on E. to acid house, it's often a damn good time.) You can't ask for much more than that." Read the entire review
Read an interview with Welsh in Salon
A superb review of Glue by Jonathan Letham (Motherless Brooklyn) in the New York Times Book Review: "[S]uperb and hilarious....Relaxed, generous, and wise, Glue should slow the superficial comparisons of Welsh to William Burroughs and Céline. Here he's really more like an unflinching contemporary Dickens—if Dickens had freed his characters to gather in an alehouse and write one of his novels by Dictaphone, as an oral history."
A rave review of Glue in the Times Literary Supplement: "Welsh has produced, not only his most ambitious, but also his most complete and engaging work to date....his best book."
A review by Dennis Cooper (Period) in LA Weekly: "[W]here Trainspotting heralded both an important new voice and a significant mouthpiece for a new, previously unarticulated generation, Glue is a great example of why Welsh caused such a fuss in the first place—and, on its own terms, as thrilling and ambitious a book as Welsh has written." Read the review
Another great review, from Library Journal: " Welsh continues to demonstrate a keen ear for the Scottish dialect and a black humor appropriate to the bleak settings. Along with James Kelman, Welsh is proof that Scotland has not only its own Parliament but its own literature as well.."
Glue has gotten its first rave review, from Publishers Weekly, in a starred review in the March 26 issue: "Stocked with his usual quirky, sympathetic characters, this rollicking new tale sparkles with the writer's trademark satiric wit. Its heft and narrative breadth should convince any remaining skeptics that Welsh—now effectively the grand old man of in-your-face Scottish fiction—is a writer to be taken seriously."

WELSH BUZZ

The official Irvine Welsh site is now online. Welsh writes: "This is my website, official, if you like. There's already some good ones, the site ran by Spike Magazine www.irvinewelsh.com. has a good mixture of interesting stuff and rubbish. It's hoped this one will have the same good and crap mixture, but with a different slant. One guarantee: there will be stuff on it you can't get elsewhere. " Read sections edited from Glue, news on Welsh's new filmscript, the first hints on Porno (his new book, featuring characters from Trainspotting), Cult Saturday film reviews, UK touring dates, and much more!
Welsh has a short story, "Catholic Guilt (You Know You Love It)," in the new collection edited by Nick Hornby, Speaking with the Angel. Other contributors include Dave Eggers, Helen Fielding, Robert Harris, Melissa Bank, Zadie Smith, Roddy Doyle, Colin Firth, John O'Farrell, Nick Hornby, and Patrick Marber. A portion of each sale of this book benefits autism charities around the world. Look for it in your local bookstore. (This book is not published by W. W. Norton.)
Read about the classic 1997 Great Scots Tour which teamed up Welsh, Duncan McLean, and James Kelman, in this article by Welsh's original editor in the US, Gerald Howard.