Porno

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as Trainspotting, but still a great book
Review: I really enjoyed reading more about Sick Boy, Rents, Begbie, and Spud. Welsh does such a good job describing his characters that I really felt like I "knew" them. He also has a way of making you care about his characters even though some (most) of them are despicable.

Porno is not as good as Trainspotting, but how good it be? Trainspotting was perfect. Porno is still a great book and a "can't put it down" read. If you loved Trainspotting then you have to read Porno.

Rating:
Summary: All the young junkies...
Review: Before you read this book, you definitely must first read Welsh's first novel Trainspotting, and you should probably also read his last one, Glue. Porno is a direct sequel to Trainspotting, bringing back virtually all the characters some ten years later, and it's a semi-sequel to Glue, adding some of that book's characters into the mix, most notably "Juice" Terry Lawton and Rab Birrell. Porno will lack a great deal of depth and resonance for readers not familiar with those earlier books and their characters and settings.

And therein lies both Porno's attraction and minor disappointments. If you loved Trainspotting, reading Porno is very much like the experience of having seen a great band in a tiny club when they were just starting, and then seeing the same band ten years later in a large venue when they are more popular. They may still be amazing and play your favorite songs, but inevitably they've mellowed a touch, the intensity is isn't the same, and you get a little wistful. And to a certain extent, that's exactly what the book is about, aging, maturing, and getting over one's past. It's totally unfair to expect another Trainspotting from Welsh, an author can only write that passionate and electric a book once, and it's usually the first book they write. In any event, readers have had ten years to get used to reading Scots dialect and it's hard to conceive of what Welsh could write about that would be equally shocking as his heroin underworld.

In any event, Porno is a carefully plotted and constructed story, told in alternating first-person chapters by Sick Boy, his new lady Nikki Fuller-Smith, Spud, Begbie, and Renton. The central character is Sick Boy, who's seeking to reinvent himself as post-millenium entrepreneur, starting by making a porn film with his circle of acquaintances. Eventually this intertwines with the reappearance of Renton and the question of what went down in London ten years ago when he cheated Sick Boy, Begbie, and Spud on a heroin deal and skipped town. Cynics will no doubt say that Welsh is looking to ride the sequel bus to potloads of money, which is, again, unfair. Clearly the Trainspotting crew were the characters closest to his heart, so of course he's going to want to revisit them and it seems churlish to suggest that an author who uses characters twice is a sellout.

Foe most part the characters are exactly as they were in the earlier books, although to varying degrees, most realize they're getting older and need to change. In this regard, Spud's story is the most poignant and affecting of the lot. And of course Renton's attempt to settle the past and lead a normal life is hard not to empathize with, which is why mad-dog Begbie is such a menacing presence throughout the book. Ultimately however, this is a comedy, lacking the darkness of Trainspotting, or Welsh's severely underrated Filth. It's a wonderful sentimental adventure full or wacky hi-jinks, and comuppances aplenty.

Rating:
Summary: Let's make a film
Review: Irvine Welsh is one of my favorite writers. His last few books GLue and Filth were difficult to get into, even though they were risky books to write. They were funny and strange. They were a walk in the fields. Porno is more in line with Trainspotting, Acid House, and Ecstacy. Porno even takes the characters of Trainspotting and meets them ten years down the road. Like Faulkner wrote about his little town and used some of the same characters, one gets a feeling that Welsh will be writing about Renton, Sick Boy, and Begbie until they die. In this book, Sick Boy and Renton are still up to their underworld lives. Sick Boy is making a porn film. Begbie is out of jail and seeks revenge. The comedy starts then. It is one of Welsh's best books.

Rating:
Summary: sick indeed
Review: It's a great book. I, personally, prefered Trainspotting because the dialogue was better and Renton makes a better main character. Sick boy loses a lot when you take away the mistery in him. Porno has a better structure story wise (and better English for that matter). It grabs you from the beginning and you always have something to look forward to. The first 100 pages you're waiting for the gang to get reunited. The next 200 pages you're wondering how are they gonna make the film and the last pages you're dying to see if Franco gets his revenge. The end is particularly striking as you realize nothing's changed.

Rating:
Summary: Fonetik spelln'
Review: It's my third Irvine Welsh so I must be finding some entertainment from him and I feel entitled to sound off about this business of phonetic spelling of dialect. Sometimes it works, in small doses,but it reduces intelligibilty and becomes irritating over over long stretches. This didn't matter so much in the earlier Welsh's because the sheer energy of the narrative and the shock of it all carried the me along. Here there's a more complex plot to be followed and the orthographic veil is obfuscating. He remains brilliantly funny and delightfully shocking at times.

Rating:
Summary: lots of laughs
Review: Most of the critical takes on Welsh revolve around the blow, smack & x which his characters ingest on an epic scale. I find all of this has been overrated. There are all these morons who want to trivialize him as some sort of party beast who ingests horse tranquilizers on a daily basis. Better living through chemistry. Well, if you think W.S. Burroughs was just a junky then you've reached the end of your choke chain. You are a functional illiterate. Time to buy a vowel. Sure, Welsh's characters swim in controlled substances just as sperm swim in semen. Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was very rarely sober. The point is that Welsh is the greatest prose stylist of the psychic landscape since old Germs Juice himself. Like Joyce, Welsh's command of the interior swamplands of consciousness is simply f-ing terrifying at times. Marabou Stork Nightmares & Filth (with the Pig on the cover) were key examples. I was in an altered mental state for a month after reading those two. It wasn't pretty, but it felt real. And yet Welsh has such a command of dialogue that this psychic miasma becomes a sort of exterior monologue- when he wants it to. It makes you want to cheer- that the apparently impossible expression can actually be articulated, at least in the books. Maybe this seems easy to you, but it's not. That's the brilliance of it, making it feel really natural. It's like DeNiro- the trick is in the ease & elegance of it, the flow of talk. Porno is a riot- a true comic novel- I laughed myself sick & kicked my cat without really meaning to, it was so funny. I am an American, but I learned Scottish just so I could read Irvine Welsh...go on with it, mate.

Rating:
Summary: A deeply flawed masterpiece
Review: Reading Porno is a bit like digging in the mud for nuggets of
gold. The story is rambling, the structure is haphazard and many
characters are forgettable, but the keen spirit of observation
of the author and his ability to make his point with
oscar-wildean wit provide more than enough morsels of pure
reading pleasure, especially when the agent is the pompous and
egomaniacal Simon (Sickboy) Williamson. Nikki Fuller-Smith's
insights come a distant second and Mark Renton's an even more
distant third. The chapters reflecting Frank Begbie and Spud
Murphy's thoughts I found, however, unreadable. In fact I
re-read the book skipping said chapters and it was a much
improved read.

Rating:
Summary: A deeply flawed masterpiece
Review: Reading Porno is like digging in the mud for gold nuggets. The story is rambling, the structure is haphazard and many characters are forgettable, but the keen spirit of observation of the author and his ability to make his point with wildean wit provide more than enough morsels of pure reading pleasure, especially when the agent is the pompous and egomaniacal Simon (Sickboy) Williamson. Nikki Fuller-Smith's insights come a distant second and Mark Renton's an even more distant third. The chapters reflecting Frank Begbie and Spud Murphy's thoughts I found, however, unreadable. In fact I re-read the book skipping said chapters and it was a much improved experience

Rating:
Summary: As addicting as the drugs that the characters are on
Review: This is the first Irvine Welsh I've read. At first glance I thought I was rereading A Clockwork Orange. The slang is heavy, particularly with Spud's and Begbie's narratives and I had a love/hate relationship with it at first. But stick with it, it becomes easier as the book goes along and it makes for part of the books charm.

I would easily pick up another Irvine Welsh. This is one of the few books where the characters are so well written, you really don't care where they are going. Never once did I ask "What's the point?" Welsh has the ability to make the most unsympathetic of his mates human, and makes nothing black and white. No one gets off clean and the author doesen't apologize for it, which makes the book that much better.

Coming from someone who has only seen the movie Trainspotting and not reading the book, I did not feel lost. The book manages to tell just enough to get you up to speed. So movie fans should be fine. As it did with me though, the book Trainspotting is going to be on your must read list. I have read some reviews saying that this was not the authors strongest work. I cannot wait to read what some consider better. Now, if I only knew what Grassin' really means.....

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Folowup to Trainspotting
Review: Well, it's ten years after Mark Renton stole the loot the Trainspotting boys made off the drug sale and Begbie went to prison and his other "friends" Sick Boy and Spud are up to their normal routines. Sick Boy decides to leave London and go back to Leith and quickly falls in with a friend who's into porno. Sick Boy sees a career (and a ton of money for himself) and begins the scam to make himself rich. He digs up Renton and talks him into returning to help him and soon they begin scamming each other. Finally, Begbie gets out of prison (it hasn't mellowed him) and he's looking for Renton and his revenge.

The book is a high energy romp through a segment of the pornography business and Welsh keeps ratcheting up the tension as time goes on and the book approaches it's climax. Despite that, he continues to approach the topic (and his characters) with a good deal of humor. This is a real page turner and deserves to be picked up.

I've heard rumors of a movie being planned which would be great. Don't let the title mislead you, the book is not primarily about sex but rather the industry, the deals, and the crazy lives of the players. Many old Trainspotting favorites turn up (some briefly but often memorably) and the new characters are interesting to follow as well.