Diggin up the underground : representations of dysfunctionality of Irvine Welsh's trainspotting

Abstract

Irvine Welsh continuously divides critics, perhaps more than any other writer within the contemporary British canon. While some have labelled him outrageous and unremittingly graphic, others hail him as one of the most honest and exhilarating writers around. This dissertation aims to find out why. In nearly two decades since its publication, Trainspotting continues to cause controversy. Nevertheless, the novel has provided many an inspiration, especially to those who, in certain instances, have felt suppressed in society. Irvine Welsh should be given more credit than he deserves, if only for being one of the main writers who has revived Scottish literature. Trainspotting has gathered notorious fame and a cult status in most places across the globe. Welsh, obsessed with the perverted, the depraved and the macabre, displays lives of debauchery in ways relevant to the realities of the underclass he is depicting. Spud, Begbie, Renton and Sick Boy are not just fictional characters; they are symbols of human frailty and, paradoxically, of his affirmation in less than auspicious contexts. Postmodern fiction reflects the fragmented age in which we live in, with Trainspotting taking the culture of drugs into the arena of the disaffected youth. Moreover, Welsh deals with further instances of dysfunctionality including misogyny, alienation, anomie and violence, aspects which appear to be both reflections of the current world in general as well as the specific elements in which they occur. One cannot tackle such sensitive subjects without giving an insight into what the novel is all about, and the critical reception upon Trainspotting' s publication. After dealing with the novel's poetics, this dissertation will aim to look at the male characters of Trainspotting and their subsequent masculinities, the causes of drug abuse, whether politics and social realities are the driving force behind such beings, and whether it is justifiable to claim that Welsh has been a major force in reviving Scottish literature. Ultimately, this dissertation will examine how these issues are brought up in Trainspotting, how dysfunctional lifestyles are abetted by certain parts in society, and how Irvine Welsh's novel provides a powerful re-imagination of all that.