It was meant to be a warning against the excesses of heroin use, according to its author. A no-holds-barred, gritty – albeit often comic – portrait of the travails of a disparate group of misfits navigating Edinburgh’s dark, drug-riddled underbelly.
Yet 30 years after Trainspotting was first published, the book’s message has turned full circle, says Irvine Welsh – and now might as well be: “choose drugs”.
“The horrible thing is that Trainspotting was supposed to be a cautionary tale in some ways,” says Welsh of his 1993 novel. “But now, 30 years on, you can’t really see it that way any more.
“You can’t really say to the kids in the schemes [Scottish council estates]: don’t do drugs, they’ll wreck your life, you’ll never get a job or a house or buy nice things.”
One of the most famous passages from the book was a monologue voiced by protagonist Renton – a breakthrough role for Ewan McGregor in Danny Boyle’s 1996 film adaptation.
“Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family,” he said. “Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance…” Renton rails against these choices. After all, he’s got heroin.
Now, says Welsh, the notion of being able to choose those things has been taken away. In 2023 the book has “a different context”, he says.
“People can’t get jobs. People will never buy a house. They can’t buy nice things. Everything is fucked even if you’re not on drugs,” he says.
“It [the book] almost becomes some kind of inspiring clarion call: let’s do fucking drugs, man. We’re fucked anyway. Let’s just go for it.”
Published in the early 1990s, when Welsh was 35, and started in the mid-80s, the book’s fanbase has grown over the years far beyond the now fiftysomething demographic who were there at the beginning.
“The great thing about what I suppose you’d call the Trainspotting industry and the fact that it’s such a cult thing is that it renews all the time,” said Welsh.
“Every five or six years there’s a new bunch of students that come in when Channel 4 shows the movie late at night. There’s always a big spike in sales for the book in the days after.”
The Trainspotting industry has certainly been a fruitful one. Most famously came Boyle’s movie and then a clutch of loose sequels and prequel novels (Porno, Skagboys, Dead Men’s Trousers). The book was adapted for the stage before it became a movie, and that production morphed in 2013 into Trainspotting Live, an immersive theatre experience that toured the UK and the US. What’s next? A musical, of course.
“Aye, a proper musical, with singing and dancing and shit,” laughs Welsh. “Phil McIntyre [promoter and producer] had been asking me for years to do it, and I always said, nah, I’m not doing that.
“Then I thought, if I don’t do it, someone like Andrew Lloyd Webber will do it when I’m in an urn above the fireplace, so I might as well.”
Though the classic Trainspotting movie tracks Lust for Life, by Iggy Pop, and Underworld’s rave anthem Born Slippy will bookend the show, it will feature all new songs, which Welsh is writing with his co-creators.
A young Scottish cast is rehearsing now, ahead of a planned February 2024 launch in the West End, followed by a UK tour. “I wanted this to be something very different from either the film or the two versions of the stage play,” says Welsh.
“So there are some new characters in there, and to be honest it’s quite a lot darker than the book or the film. It’s going to be quite full-on, but hopefully a great experience.”
In the meantime, there will be two new editions of Trainspotting to mark its 30th anniversary. Publisher Vintage has elevated the novel to its Quarterbound Classics line – joining eight other books including Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black and Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle in hardback collector’s editions. And this week The Folio Society releases a sumptuous edition of the book with illustrations by Nicole Rifkin, selling for £60.
Tom Walker, the Folio Society’s publishing director, told the Observer: “Trainspotting remains one of the most anarchic and potent novels of the 20th century, and 30 years on Welsh’s writing has lost none of its capacity to overpower the reader with its energy and wit.”
“I’d never heard of the Folio Society,” confides Welsh. “It’s great about all these new editions, but to be honest, I never thought the thing would get published in the first place.”
What also surprises Welsh is that the book he started writing when he was 28 would still be just as relevant as he approaches 65, in terms of the world he was describing. “I was writing about things that we didn’t have labels for back then, like toxic masculinity,” he says.
“The characters were having mental health and existential crises and really, what’s different today?
“Is it any wonder people don’t really know what their place is in the world? Capitalism is on the way out but we’re not mature enough for socialism, and instead we’re sleepwalking towards some kind of fascistic model and pretty much everything is toxic.”
