““Begbie and the like are fucking failures in a country ay failures. It’s no good blaming it on the English for colonising us. Ah don’t hate the English, they’re just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can’t even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We’re ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the low, the scum of the earth, the most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat into creation. I don’t hate the English. They just get on with the shit they’ve got. I hate the Scots.”
Irvine Welch, Trainspotting
Lively, potent critique and sharp dialogue, before Welch’s novel descends into self-parody. Much of it is pretty horrible but with the current tension with Westminster seemed somehow appropriate.
A book I’ve never read. Not sure I want to
I wouldn’t recommend the book. It becomes repellent. I also dislike books written largely in vernacular. It works a lot better as a film, in which some of the more nasty bits are sanitised.
the vernacular is part of the reason I am nervous about reading How Late it Was How Late which is on my Booker winner list
If you don’t mind me saying, you are quite right to be nervous.
yikes……