I'm a Junky: Here's My Card. My Agent Will Be In Touch With You. . . .

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

Mittelwerk at aol.com writes:
> man, i'm really sick of junkies, and even more sick of heroin chic--which
> reeks of the kind of officially-sanctioned bourgeois cultural
> approval--that's condescension to you, Jack--formerly reserved for jazz
> (which could then be systematically de-Negroized), Native Americana (which
> could be converted into self-help), and, lately, homosexuality (which could
> be--with the aid of AIDS (we like to humanize dead people)--de-politicized as
> fashion).

Oh yes indeed.

> as someone who stole to get high, and watched my former best-friend (who
> introduced me to Pynchon) turn to shit on it, i've had it with dope as real
> and/or literary substance.  In Burrough's shadow (and he's no picnic himself,
> but at least he doesn't cut corners), Welsh is a self-aggrandizing piece of
> shit.  You watch:  I've already noticed a proliferation of junky fiction in
> the bookstores.  The MO is always the same:  do the drug for a coupla years
> after college, fuck over your friends, commit a crime or two (don't worry,
> you can pay bail with touching the principal on your trust), and lo and
> behold, out spews a novel of your exploits.

Quite a few smack-heads have made it into print recently. Most
loathsome of all has to be Will Self - yet another middle class
low-life.

> As for trainspotting's
> romanticization of the life, let's just say it seems to be a movie (and book)
> written on speed, about heroin:  it's all wrong.  It romanticizes by
> rationalizing.

It's a very well written book. I am not sure that it (or the film)
romanticises heroin. It does describe some aspects of life in Britain
very faithfully and precisely. Welsh's characters are faced with a
pretty shitty set of choices and I don't blame them for making the
choices they do. The `choose life' routine which is used to open the
film presents the junk/straight dilemma most clearly. It actually
occurs much later on in the book and makes lots more sense. Renton has
to attend drug counselling with a variety of psychiatrists,
psychologists and social workers. He is faced with the notion that he
must choose between being a productive member of society or a waster
who will soon die of AIDS or an overdose, choosing life or death. He
chooses heroin because the life he is supposed to choose will be
nothing more than drudgery, like the drudges around him.

Not that Renton could not survive in such a world, even do quite well
by that world's standards. Welsh is not so hopeless a romantic as to
think that `kids on the street' have no opportunities, especially the
sharp ones like Renton. No, Renton's is a much more subtle malaise. A
conventional life would be a struggle and would require Renton to deal
with the trivia and routine of everyday life. I think Renton sees such
trivia as polluting and numbing, such routine as a cage, the two
together conspiring to crush the life out of him. Whereas the heroin
path requires him to scheme and plot every day to preserve his
remaining fragment of mortality, gives him incredible highs and lows
and holds out the promise of a fast and early death with no dependents
and no dependence on anything other than heroin. It is not Welsh but
Renton who is the romantic, choosing to actually die rather than
stumble on dead inside, unable or unwilling to accept his own
preterition.

> i also find Welsh's defensiveness about his past amusing:  he takes it
> personally when someone says he' not a junky.  a wretched omen of cultural
> 'authenticity' to come. . . . kind of like a gangsta rapper posing with his
> uzi when his record turns platinum.

Actually, it's not the authenticity of his habit which matters to the
boy Irvine but his class. His habit was never in doubt but his class
was. Given where he is coming from he has to excuse himself for being
able to read and write, for having gone to University (this very
University here where I am writing). Turning his mates into a
best-seller is probably the worst kind of sell out he could have come
up with.


Andrew Dinn
-----------
And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.