Irvine Welsh on the legacy of Trainspotting

GlasgowWorld

Scottish author Irvine Welsh discusses the enduring appeal of Trainspotting and the legacy of the book.

Transcript

00:00You were the punky upstart when you started, and now you're in the Big Ten with all the elder statesmen.

00:07Does that sometimes feel a bit odd?

00:11He's gone from all point terrible to national treasure in about two weeks.

00:19It's something that, again, it's like I've...

00:22One of the interesting things about the documentary is you look at yourself in a way,

00:27and it's like I think to myself, well, one of the great things that I've had gone from me

00:31is that I've never really been self-conscious about anything.

00:34I've just steamed in and lived in the moment, and that's kind of served me well.

00:39So you don't really...

00:41I don't really perceive myself as having any kind of legacy or even any kind of status

00:46in the literary world or anything like that.

00:48I just, you know, what I am about is the thing that I'm working on at the moment,

00:52and that's the thing that I'm immersed in.

00:53And everything else is just, you know, it's an act of giving it away.

00:56You're giving it out to the world and all that.

00:59And, you know, the world might think brilliant,

01:01and the world might think, eh, keep it, meh.

01:03You know, but it doesn't matter.

01:04You've got rid of it and you're on to the next thing.

01:06And that's the great freedom you have as a writer.

01:08You have that blank page again.

01:10You want to get back to that scenario where you have this blank page.

01:14Yeah, when you were in America, you're talking to your manager,

01:16and he said he was out at some kind of cool festival or something,

01:19and there were younger kids, and two of them were wearing train-spotting T-shirts.

01:23The fact that that's like a classic album that keeps self-erpetuating,

01:27that people, that's become part of pop culture,

01:28but not just, like, here, like, all kinds of different crazy places.

01:32The fact that it had a life of its own, that you have given it away,

01:35is that kind of cool?

01:36Well, it is.

01:37It's great because usually about every five years,

01:41you know, the royalties will just suddenly speak again

01:44because there's a new bunch of, a whole new bunch of people

01:46who have discovered it.

01:47You know, usually college kids and all that

01:49it's become like a rite of passage book that, you know,

01:52we used to have Kerouac on the road and all that stuff.

01:54It was a kind of book you had to read, you know,

01:57and it's become like that, basically,

02:00and it's fabulous for me to, I mean, I can't, you know,

02:04it's like, it's made me confront that's the extent of it, basically.

02:09So, I don't know what, maybe I'll start kind of getting big heated

02:14and sort of thinking, wow, I deserve a Rolls Royce

02:17up to the book fair and all that kind of thing.

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