'Skagboys': Irvine Welsh leaks details of next novel at Jaipur Lit Fest
Welsh's next novel "Skagboys" is due to be published in 2012.Irvine Welsh has just penned a prequel to the cult novel "Trainspotting." Entitled "Skagboys," the book resurrects his infamous characters Renton and Sick Boy, rewinding to their teenage years.
"Skagboys" is the story of how the junkies first developed their habit.
Welsh spoke about his forthcoming novel at the recently concluded Jaipur Literature Festival.
“I wanted to write about their journey from being nice, rough and ready, wee guys about town, into hardcore drug addicts. It seemed to me a lot of people I knew had made that journey and I probably had myself in the early 1980s,” shared the Scottish novelist with his audience on the final day of the festival.
Pausing to take a sip of wine, Welsh explained that he wrote a 300,000-word treatise initially, which he divided into parts.
The middle section of the text became "Trainspotting" and "Skagboys" was the first portion which he had abandoned for years.
Welsh said he returned to the beginning of the story partly to understand why he got addicted to heroin himself.
Clutching his unpublished manuscript, Welsh shared a passage with the audience.
Taking on the role of the character Renton (played by Ewan McGregor in the film), Welsh spoke emotively about drugs, guilt, autism and masturbation and within seconds, the audience was transported to Aberdeen, Scotland in the 1980s, where the novel is set.
Over a second glass of wine, afterwards, Welsh told CNNGo more about "Skagboys," his writing process and that trippy dead baby scene from "Trainspotting" that we're still not over.
CNNGo: When did you finish writing "Skagboys" and where did you get the title?
Irvine Welsh: I finished just now. Skag is a slang for heroin used a lot in Scotland. There is a play called "The Slab Boys" by a great Scottish playwright called John Byrne. I decided to call it '"Skagboys" as a parody of that.
CNNGo: You wrote "Trainspotting" 18 years ago, what made you revisit the story now?
Welsh: There’s a lot of reasons to do it now. I mean you’ve got a right wing government and you’re getting unemployment taking off just now in Scotland. So it feels a lot like things are going around in a full circle.
It seems to be an interesting time to draw parallels and write about that time.
I also wanted to get to the point where I had a different story. I didn’t want ["Skagboys"] to just read like "Trainspotting." I wanted to get to a point where I could start thinking more deeply of what had happened to these characters and how they got into drugs.
CNNGo: Can you tell us about your writing process?
Welsh: For every character I have: ‘Where they stay; Who they lay; What they play.’ That is my matrix. I am interested in their background, where they come from, their hometown their family life.
I’m interested in their sex life, who they are sleeping with now who they aspire to sleep with. I am interested in what they listen to now, what they use to listen to and their music taste. I make a playlist for every character in my book.
These things give me so much information to pull the character together.
CNNGo: Give us an example of a playlist
Welsh: The guy in [Welsh's third novel] "Filth" had terrible music taste. He had all this horrible soft rock like by Foreigner and power ballads but I listened to them. I got into [the music] and because of that I got into the character.
CNNGo: Speaking of "Filth," you are currently working on the film adaptation of that novel. Do you ever fear that films leave less room for imagination?
Welsh: I love looking at film and sitting in the cinema and escaping into someone else’s world.
But I think the great thing about reading is that the reader and writer enter into a discourse with each other. You are in the writer’s world looking at it through your own lens.
You can take a lot more in with a book.
If something is very violent or horrible happens on screen you just close your eyes but in a book you put your own shock absorbers on and process it through your own consciousness.
Everyone that reads somebody’s book, they’re basically doing their own remix of it.
CNNGo: But that baby crawling on the ceiling scene in "Trainspotting" -- trippy in the book, trippy on film. Where did you get your inspiration?
Welsh: One of the things is that you don’t hallucinate on heroin. I was doing a lot of speed as well just to get me moving and out of bed. Some of the worst hallucinations I’ve had, worse than acid or LSD, was sleep deprivation and hallucinations on speed.
When you stay up for three days and have not slept your mind really starts to go. You can’t distinguish what’s real and what’s not.
I wanted to capture that in this discourse with a dead baby hanging on the ceiling.
CNNGo: The reality of drug abuse can be quite gruesome yet "Trainspotting" was a beautiful film. How accurate do you think the film is?
Welsh: I think that film does glamorize. It’s a medium of glamorizing because actors don’t look like real people. I think the audience in a way wants it like that. They don’t want realism too much in cinema. People want that filmic gloss.
Having said that I think within these parameters it was a great film.
CNNGo: Do you have a favorite character that you are attached to?
Welsh: I think Spud from "Trainspotting" because he’s basically a lovable loser and everyone likes a lovable loser.
CNNGo: What’s next for you?
Welsh: I am producing "Filth" so we are casting now, so I’m back to London straight into casting meetings. I am also going to start a new novel in Florida. I’m going there next month to research it.
Skagboys is due to be published in 2012; www.irvinewelsh.net
