4.1
Trainspotting : A Postmodern Working-class Novel?

by Nathan Hollier

Intro

In this lecture I will be looking at Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting (1993) as an example of a ‘contemporary' working-class novel and asking what this text reveals of contemporary class relations and identity.

In tutorials a number of students have pointed out that the texts we look at in this course are mostly from periods of history that seem fundamentally different from our own. Also, we've recognised that much of what we generally think of as ‘working-class culture' now seems old fashioned or has disappeared. The culture of the main characters of Bobbin Up and The Morality of Gentlemen , who lived in the 1950s, seems very different. The way of life of Geoff Goodfellow's parents and childhood community, represented in Poems for a Dead Father , have also changed irrevocably. His collection is in part a nostalgic look back at that time and place. And he uses the culture of his family as a means of maintaining a strong identity in a very different present. Perhaps Goodfellow's collection can be seen as ‘crossing over' between the experiences of an older working class and the experience and reality of a new working class.

In these texts, as well as in Zola's Germinal , Devanny's Sugar Heaven , Agnes Smedley's Daughter of Earth , Frank Hardy's Power Without Glory , Betty Collins' The Copper Crucible and other working-class texts written prior to the 1970s, the workers tend to live close to each other, in a suburb located not far from the place or places where they work. They work together and the work they do is physically demanding. They also have common forms of recreation, centred on the pub and sport. There is a political party that seeks to directly represent the interests of these communities: namely the Communist Party. This Party may not have power, but it exists and probably helps to keep the major political parties aware of the particular needs and interests of working-class communities. The characters in these novels are aware of the CP, though they're usually not members of it. There are fleeting references in these texts and others by Frank Hardy and Robert Tressell and other working-class texts, to CP and other politically radical and progressive publications, newspapers and so on. The communities are generally relatively racially homogenous and so to an extent relatively culturally homogenous. There is a degree of poverty and want in the lives of these people that still exists in our present society but that is probably not the working-class norm. There is a relative absence of modern equipment – white goods, televisions, cars – in the lives of these people. And there is a sense of community, of common identity and sometimes of common political interests evident in the working-class characters of these pre-contemporary works.

In our society, by contrast, people who work in the same industry tend not to live in the same community. They don't live close to each other. They drive to work or catch public transport to work, often all the way across town. They live in suburbs that have spread out exponentially and so are increasingly reliant on travel. This separation is often mirrored in the workplace itself. There are fewer workplaces where the staff all work in the same place doing the same thing. The relationship between workers is often more mediated by the machine, by technological processes (see for example Chris Scanlon, ‘A Touch of Class', the Age , 17 April 2004). If you work in a bakery, for example, you now don't hand your workmate a loaf of bread, you press a button to have that happen. Workplaces generally tend to have fewer workers. The work that is done, even at the bottom end of the labour market, is generally less physically demanding than the work of the traditional working class. Recreation is now much more diverse. It's no longer centred on a local sporting club and pub. People will travel to watch sport and might have no direct connection with the sporting club. They spend less time in pubs and more time watching television in the home and doing lots of other things. But crucially, they are less likely to experience recreation together with members of their workplace and local community. There obviously is no (meaningful) CP, or political representation of working-class people (eg of ‘work for the dole'). Society as a whole and the working class in particular is now more racially heterogenous – it includes many more different races – than had previously been the case (eg of representation of ‘migrant' workers in Bobbin Up , Copper Crucible , The Outcasts of Foolgarah , cf. Dennis McIntosh comments). There is not the same sense of poverty characterising the working class. As we've discussed, many members of the traditional working class are now relatively well paid. An enormous proliferation of consumer goods, which have become relatively cheaper eg DVDs. A sense of a common working-class community, identity and political interests have all dissipated (eg decline of wc consciousness in voting: Kemp, Connell, cf. Goot; on social and cultural ‘atomisation' see R. Putnam, Bowling Alone ).

In our society now, there is a reluctance to admit that there is a wc and at the same time a direct and often indirect, more casual, denigration of people who might be categorised as wc.

In the media especially but in society more generally there is a routine denigration of people who want to claim a wc identity for themselves, on the grounds that these people aren't authentically wc:

• If you're white collar or work in the service sector you're not wc (often because the jobs are part-time and transitory)
• If you're blue collar but make a lot of money you're not wc (eg of wharfies)
• If you're born into a mc family you can't be wc (eg Craig Johnston)
• If you're educated you can't be wc

This can be understood as an expression of intolerance by relatively privileged people for those who either come from a poor background or have a political commitment to wage justice or whatever (eg of Johnston and Sparrow). But the perception is also based on these older notions of what it is to be wc: to be wc is to work hard, be part of a local community, be poor and uneducated etc.

And if you don't meet any of these criteria that I've mentioned above, you're likely to be a ‘bogan', or part of an ethnic gang, or ghetto, or ‘white trash' or ‘trailer trash' or perhaps a dole bludger etc. cf. ‘larrikin', ‘ocker', ‘yobbo': a progression. [my memory of being called a bogan, then ‘bogan night' at university, cf. ‘blackfella night'] Or consider ‘the mullet'.

So, directly and indirectly, the ‘working class' have become unfashionable, both as a term and a social category. Even within the university, class isn't studied very much.

This is in spite of the fact that when we look at what has happened at the macro level, at the level of society as a whole, it can be seen that since the early 1970s the general trend has been towards an increasing economic inequality both within and between nations. This is a reversal of a trend towards increasing economic equality within and between nations that lasted from the end of the Second World War until that time: the early 1970s (see Greg Whitwell, Making the Market: The Rise of Consumer Society , 1989). Economic inequality now is much more pronounced than it was during the period in which Hardy, Hewett and Collins, for example, wrote (see for eg Alastair Greig, Frank Lewins and Kevin White, Inequality in Australia , 2003). Also, over roughly the same period, but particularly since the early 1980s, the proportion of national income within Australia going to the labour section of the economy has consistently declined relative to the proportion going to capital, or business. This trend is also replicated at the international level. And yet, at the same time, economic inequality has largely ceased to be a political issue.

Eg of the Henderson Report of 1975 and Ruth Fincher and John Nieuwenhuysen, Australian Poverty: Then and Now , 1998.

Eg of the current budget, that actively increases inequality and that works on the assumption that the rich need incentive, the poor need punishment (Ross Gittens, Age , 19 May 2005, p.19).

Both the conservatives and the leadership of the ALP generally believe that good economic management requires giving more of the nations resources to capital so that it can invest it and create economic growth.

So, how and why have these changes in our society happened? And assuming for the moment, on the basis of this fact of increasing economic inequality, that class relations do continue to exist, what has happened to class identity?

Is the Present really ‘New'?

This is a persistent argument within the University. As Tim Watson explains:

One question occurs again and again in the key intellectual debate on globalisation: is it new ? “Theorists of the ‘world-system', such as Immanuel Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi [and see Humphrey McQueen], trace the beginnings of a global economic system all the way back to the fifteenth century, and see little or nothing qualitatively new about the current scene, although they will admit that the world moves a little faster now. On the other hand, writers such as Argun Appadurai ague that a fundamental transformation has taken place in both cultural and economic processes: the end of European territorial colonialism, the rise of instantaneous global communication networks, the worldwide movements of people and capital, all these are historically unprecedented” (Tim Watson, ‘An American Empire?' (review of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire , Cambridge, MA and London, Harvard University Press, 2000), Postcolonial Studies 4:3, 2001 (pp.351-359), p.352.

There is a lot of heat in this argument about the past because it is ultimately an argument about the present and future. If the present is fundamentally ‘new', then previous ways of thinking about the world and previous ideas about social progress, resistance and control may not be relevant.

[Because arguments about the nature of our present historical period are ultimately about how we respond to the present, the idea that the present is fundamentally new has devotees amongst postmodernist intellectuals, many of whom think of themselves as politically ‘left', and amongst right-wing intellectuals from the liberal tradition who see economic rationalism as the natural or inevitable policy response to present social condition. And some Marxist intellectuals also see the present as distinctively new, though as a new development within an ongoing, essentially rational or inevitable historical process. Postmodernists argue their case in order to present themselves as an intellectual van guarde (see my argument with the Arena intellectuals in Arena Journal 15), or, in the case of those advancing ‘identity politics', to play down the relative importance of material factors (see Milner and Burgmann in Rick Kuhn and Tom O'Lincoln, Class and Class Conflict in Australia , 1996).]

The Causes of Social Change

I said in the week 5 lecture that class experience, culture and identity arises out of class relations, out of the nature of the general relationship between labour and capital in society. So, what happened to the relationship between capital and labour around the early 1970s? Basically, capital, as a class, becomes significantly more powerful in relation to labour. Society became more unequal within and between nations, reversing an earlier, postwar trend. And society became more ‘atomised' and culturally individualistic. There are a number of reasons why this is the case, although the historical process is very complicated and contested. Some of these reasons were the result of new events, and some were the culmination of long-standing trends.

[long-term trends: mobility of capital, enabled especially by developments in and applications of communications technologies; mechanisation (shift from labour-to capital intensive industry); monopolisation and conglomeration, including of the (arts and entertainment) cultural industries; spread of manufacturing to the third world; rise of the service sector; social atomisation (auto industry); increasing affluence, demanded by the industrial economy; consumerism rather than production; increasing demands on the state made by third world nations and then social justice movements: civil rights movement in the US and elsewhere, feminism, environmentalism, student radicalism etc.; New Right critique of the welfare state]

[short-term trends or recent developments: Vietnam War and probs with the US and global economy; leading to a shift in US foreign and economic policy; OECD and oil shocks raising the spectre of an end to unlimited growth; inflation and stagflation; increasing power of the finance sector vis-à-vis the industrial sector of capital; New Right policy solution to stagflation and social unrest.]

The combination of these short and long-term factors results in: i) the replacement of the welfare state by neo-classical liberal public policy; ii) a relative decline of the power of labour in society, as evident in the decline of trade unions and trade union membership; iii) a trend towards lower wages and higher profits, longer working hours and more arduous working conditions; iv) increasing social atomisation; v) an absence of working-class cultural production, the relative monopolisation of cultural production by Capital. As wc cultural production and as squeezed out of the market and as increasing affluence and social atomisation undermines traditional notions of class identity; vi) relatedly, under the influence of the New Right there are increased attacks on the welfare state and its liberal supporters (wets, politically correct etc.: attacks on the principles of government intervention, affirmative action) and on the wc (bludgers, bogans etc).

And there are increased indirect attacks eg ‘Reality TV' – recognising a desire for the real, which Capital then purchases and re-presents in a conservative way – we're all ‘dog eat dog' types, we all want to be filthy rich, or to meet society's expections of beauty etc;

idealisation of ‘heroes' and especially very wealthy heroes (lifestyles of the rich and famous, Trump, etc) and sometimes an idealisation of society's victims (eg charities);

the normalisation of free-market policy (eg presentation of business ‘news'): it becomes normal, natural, inevitable, modern (presented in the news, just before the weather).

One novel we don't look at in this course but that is worth reading on this subject is Frank Hardy's The Outcasts of Foolgarah (1971). This text deals with the increasing affluence of the working class and the early disintegration of traditional working-class culture: the breakdown of a sense of common identity, of a sense of political solidarity, an increasing greed and the increasing targetting of working-class consumers by a consumerist capitalism. In targetting working-class consumers capitalism also targets working-class culture, in advertising especially, aligning its products with working-class culture. cf. nowadays capital is even focusing on toddlers, as they come to have purchasing power (eg McDonalds).

[The causes of inequality and social atomisation since the 1970s are related: ultimately, in order to explain these changing historical conditions, our present reality, I would point to shifting US foreign and economic policy at the behest of an emergent, finance sector of the capitalist class (see Tim Watson's reading of Hardt and Negri's Empire ).]

[Causes of increased inequality:

Depression of the 1930s, Keynesian revolution in government policy (‘New Deal'), welfare state, based on government intervention, formed at Bretton Woods conference in 1944.

Keynesian or welfare state policy was opposed from the beginning by classical liberal thinkers especially Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago.

Economic trend towards monopoly, a swallowing up of small firms, an increasing expansion of government and the public sector, and unions.

This suited the US, because of the Cold War and because of the need for it to develop consumers for its exports.

But the US economy runs into problems in the late 1960s, problems arising out of its commitment to the war in Vietnam (basically it was exporting inflation because Nixon wouldn't raise internal taxes to pay for the war in Vietnam).

In 1971 the US takes its currency off the fixed setting that had been established at Bretton Woods and begins the unravelling of Western global economic management and the replacement of this management by market forces and competition.

In 1973 there is a dramatic stock market crash, the new phenomenon of stagflation, presenting a significant challenge to (Keynesian) economic management, and the ‘oil shocks' produced by the formation and behaviour of OPEC.

There had also been, during the 1960s, a significant challenge to the behaviour of business and government arising from third world movements for political and economic emancipation, the civil rights movement in the US, related movements elsewhere, including Australia, the rise of political radicalism, particularly amongst students, the rise of feminism etc (gay rights movements were some time away).

So in the early 1970s there are all these challenges to government. The ‘New Right', which had actually existed since the arrival of the welfare state, suggested a new policy path: free-market economics to solve stagflation and harsh social policy to re-inject fear into the society, especially as a means of inserting or re-inserting a strong or obedient work ethic. An important conference in Japan discussed by Pusey in The Experience of Middle Australia and Economic Rationalism in Canberra (see also Eric Wilmot). There was also a desire on behalf of the US and the UK in particular to redress its declining economic performance in relation to Germany and Japan and the South-East Asian ‘tiger' economies. From the early 1970s, the policy consensus among first world economists and policy-makers shifts from welfare state to New Right or neo-classical or neo-liberal or economic rationalist. These theories were coming mostly from the US, and in particular the University of Chicago (eg John Hewson then in Treasury).

A further major factor in the reasons why governments changed their policy framework is a shift in power within the capitalist class at around this time. Basically, finance capital becomes for the first time more powerful than industrial capital. This is partly as a result of the oil shocks and the subsequent redistribution of global wealth. If the third world could quickly pay back its debts than the finance sector would be in trouble. The finance sector, then, wanted an unregulated, low-government-investment policy, framework, that would exacerbate inequality and dampen growth; whereas this regulated framework had suited much of industrial capital, which wanted high growth (See Connell, ‘Moloch Mutates').

A further major factor is that Capital becomes more mobile, especially through the particular development and application of communications technologies. Capital is not tied to a particular place, even a particular country, to the extent that it had previously been. This leads to a downward pressure on wages. This process is aided by the fact that ‘developing' or ‘third world' nations are increasingly drawn into the ‘first world' labour market.

Mechanisation generally is developed and applied in such a way as to dramatically increase unemployment. This is a shift from labour- to capital-intensive industry. There is a corresponding increase in secondary production and the service sector, influneced by falling wages and rising unemployment.

A relative decline in capitalist competition, particularly in capital-intensive industries like the mass media and publishing, through a long-term trend towards monopolisation and conglomeration. (cf. the policy recommendations of Raymond Williams around this time) Consider Alex Carey: three developments in liberal Western societies make the twentieth century distinctive – growth of democracy, growth of huge concentrations of capital known as corporations, and growth of sophisticated propaganda, especially as a means of protecting corporations from democracy.

A decline in the bargaining power of unions

Movement to the (economic) right of the ALP

Causes of social atomisation:

Mobility of Capital

Mechanisation of the workplace

Growth of the service sector

Power and importance of the automobile industry (see Graeme Davison, also R.W. Connell).

New communications technologies

Desire for private ownership of land, home, consumer goods, etc., pushed through the expansionist govt policy of the postwar period and the needs of industry to have their products sold.

New forms of recreation and entertainment, competing with hotels, pubs etc.

Decline of unions and wc political parties.]

Trainspotting , Class and Postmodernity

Working-class writing is firstly a category. If we wish to see Trainspotting as a wc novel it is relatively easy to do so: it can be argued that it is written by a working-class author, about working-class people, for a working-class audience. But as a wc novel written in the present historical period this text demonstrates the present general relationship between capital and labour, and part of this general relationship is i) a relative absence of class consciousness; and ii), corresponding with this, a relative inability to depict the world in class terms. It is neither realistic nor fashionable to depict a bunch of radical working-class people struggling to cast off the capitalist yoke. In order to read Trainspotting as a working-class novel, we have to have some awareness of the overall economic conditions in which it was produced, and search beneath the surface of the text to find, beneath the still obvious working-class experience, a working-class culture and identity.

Trainspotting was marketed not as a book about class or alienation but as a book about drugs. By the time the film based on the book was released, this was being publicised as a prime example of ‘heroin chic ', a fashion development of the time. Most of the media attention given to the book and its author was concerned with issues of drug use, and with the question of whether or not the Trainspotting film romanticised heroin use and addiction. The text itself is structured in terms of the characters' relations with heroin. The individual chapters are grouped into sections: ‘Kicking', ‘Relapsing', ‘Kicking Again', ‘Blowing It', ‘Exile', ‘Home' and ‘Exit'. I had thought of this text as a text primarily about drugs, having seen the movie, and was a little surprised to see it discussed in Ian Haywood's book on working-class fiction ( Working-Class Fiction: From Chartism to Trainspotting , 1997; also discussed in Knight and Klaus, eds., British Industrial Fictions ). Having considered the proposition that Trainspotting might be considered a working-class novel, and read the text closely, it would be interesting to know if the decision to structure the novel in terms of heroin use and to market it as a work about drugs, was made by the author or by the publisher and the publishing company's publicity department.

Originally of course the author wrote stories and published them in local magazines. These were then collated into novel form. At what point, I wonder, did the decision that this was principally a book about drugs get made.

For while drug use is certainly a central concern of the author and his main character, the anti-hero Mark Renton, (Rent Boy i.e. homosexual male prostitute), it seems to me that the main drama in this work comes not from the question of whether or not Renton is going to get off drugs, but from the constant tension, present within and between characters throughout the novel, and particularly within Renton, between a philosophy of collectivism and selflessness, mateship, on one hand, and of individualism and selfishness on the other. Mateship is the ostensible basis for the friendship of the main characters Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie, and for the broader social circle they move in. This is an exclusively male circle, a “brotherhood”, and is demonstrated to be based on the values of an older generation of industrial workers. Heroin use functions in the novel as a symbol of a broader culture of radical individualism that now permeates this society. Several references to Margaret Thatcher indicate her important association with this form of society and its culture.

Plot

Although the narrative does not progress in a straight linear way, but rather through overlapping episodes, mostly narrated by the book's characters but sometimes by an omniscient narrator, the plot of this story does progress steadily, through recognisable stages. The main narrative thread is provided by the story of Renton, told in the first person. Renton's journey is essentially a journey from innocence, though this seems the wrong word for this character who from the beginning is more than commonly cynical, to experience. In the opening chapter Renton is shown as having being made selfish through drug use, but as having genuine brotherly love for his mate Sick Boy. When Sick Boy, Simon Williamson, says:

The point is ah'm really fucking sufferin here, n ma so-called mate's draggin his feet deliberately, lovin every fuckin minute ay it! (4)

Renton thinks to himself:

His eyes seem the size ay fitba's n look hostile, yet pleadin at the same time; poignant testimonies tae ma supposed betrayal. If ah ever live long enough tae hauv a bairn, ah hope it never looks at us like Sick Boy does. The cunt is irrestibable oan this form (4).

By the end of the book Renton has given up on Sick Boy. One suspects this is partly because Sick Boy has revealed his true colours, most notably through his willingness to act as a pimp and exploit girls who have liked him. He has also given up on the rest of his mates, including Spud (Danny) whom he still genuinely liked but could not really respect. In this sense the journey from partial innocence to complete disaffection and individualism is one in which Renton comes to realise the necessity of selfish self-preservation within his society. The stories are thematically linked, and different characters and their stories are ingeniously interwoven into an overarching single narrative, in a way reminiscent of the equally skilfully told contemporary story, Pulp Fiction . This plot structure can be contrasted with classic heroin and drug novels, such as William Burroughs' The Naked Lunch , which in eschewing all semblance of plot and narrative sequence has been praised as a primary text of postmodernity. As there is a recognisable plot, the author clearly wishes to communicate, to tell a story about something, rather than simply to represent the world as in some way indecipherable or completely lacking meaning. Having said this, the notion of complete knowledge or enlightenment or wisdom within this society is completely undercut through the juxtaposition of different speaking positions, perspectives and subjectivities, and by the many examples of lost opportunity and failed human connection.

Characters

While the main focus of the novel is Mark Renton, a number of other characters are skilfully and effectively developed: Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud, Tommy, Johnny Swan, Mark's cousin Nina, Stevie, ‘Second Prize', Diane, Mark's parents, Dave Mitchell (the guy who got aids inadvertently via Alan Venters), and Kelly (Mark's main love interest). In spite of their rough and / or dishonest relations with each other, they all know and associate with each other. These people are all members of a working-class community who have been displaced from their traditional sources of employment by the shift from labour to capital-intensive industry. As a result, this younger generation is largely unemployed and living on welfare. Ironically, the only character in a ‘good job' is Gavin, who works at the Scottish version of Centrelink. The absence of traditional working-class employment means that the characters can either leave in search of work elsewhere, can go to university if this is an option, in both cases losing their community and part of their identity, or try to get work in what Douglas Coupland, the author of Generation X , called ‘mcjobs': low paid, low prestige positions in the service sector commonly viewed as good career opportunities by those who have none (burger king eg, Mark in London with the cockneys). The characters are alienated from their parents' generation, and feel that they are a disappointment to them (eg), not that, with the partial exception of Begbie, they want to have the lifestyle of their parents. But the characters are also, even more so (eg), alienated from the yuppies who are the supposed success stories of their society (eg of Kelly with the restaurant punters; also Renton in London). It is clearly the case that, for cultural reasons, becoming a yuppy is not really an option for the characters. In this sense, they are bound together by a class consciousness, though the term ‘white trash' is preferred to ‘working class', and this white trash identity is in no way idealised.

The main dramatic tension within the book, between an earlier generation's values of mateship and the present generation's values of individualism is exemplified in the depiction of the major characters. Sick Boy is a representative of the most selfish and self-serving aspects of his culture. He thinks of himself as possessing a James Bond persona, adopting the voice of Sean Connery throughout, and like this figure he is a symbol of intelligent, self-contained machismo (anyone read Bond novels?). Sick Boy appears to be more in control of his life than Mark Renton, and more intelligent (eg). He enjoys the pain of others and causing it, and is never one to allow himself to be made vulnerable. It is as though the death of his baby, Dawn, hardens rather than softens his resolve. He goes and visits Mark but this is presented as being more a passtime than an expression of solidarity.

Begbie is representative of all that is wrong with the culture of the ‘old' working class. Racism, sexism and violence is depicted throughout the novel, and Mark's brother Brian is shown also as an unattractive believer in the old wc ways, but these negative qualities reach their apotheosis in Begbie. He is also the most virutent defender of mateship, and in the most despicable and hypocritical way. Sadly, one suspects he is not even aware of his own hypocrisy [mateship here is an intolerance of difference and achievement]. He is full of self-righteousness (eg of with Spud's mum). Virtually all of the characters in the book are addicted to something, despite the hypocrisy of those who think heroin use is worse, for instance, than alcoholism (eg). Begbie is addicted to violence. While we are shown reasons for this (his encounter with his father), he is shown as being beyond salvation. Like Sick Boy, Begbie hardens over the course of the narrative. At the end, when he bashes a man while walking home with Mark, he no longer makes a pretence of having an excuse to do this. [a very powerful moment and very significant: justifies renton's later decision]

Significantly, Begbie is a drinker not a drug taker. As heroin serves in the novel as a symbol of the individualistic nature of contemporary wc culture, alcohol serves as a symbol of the ultimately insecure, enforced conformity that, in practice, the collectivist culture of mateship often existed as. This is a drug which in contrast to heroin encourages sociability, facilitating the mobilisation of an industrial workforce, though this is a mixed blessing, since this sociability often leads to violence (cf. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning ). In contrast to heroin, which affects the body, and the mind only indirectly, booze clouds judgement and encourages rash behaviour including violence, sexual harassment and worse. Booze is the sort of drug that can get a workforce into a factory year after year, while heroin is the drug that will enable them to cope with complete alienation.

Football functions in the novel in a similar way, as representative of what is good and bad about this older, more tribal culture. Football enables dialogue across generations and between those who have nothing else in common, but it also serves as an excuse to enforce conformity and to victimise difference (egs). Begbie's evil serves to reinforce the impression created by the novel, that the culture of mateship is not an ethical, desirable or even viable basis of behaviour, if it ever was. Members of the older generation, with the exception of Mark's parents, who are depicted as kind and loving though gullible and uninformed, are usually shown as being predatorial toward the young and / or as hypocritical (eg of Uncle Kenny with Nina). These older people are also addicts, of valium for example, and uncritical consumers of the consumerist rewards offered them by capitalism, such as gambling and TV (references to Coronation Street and The East Enders).

Spud serves in the novel as all that is good about the culture of solidarity and mateship. In a sense his moral purity provides some hope for humanity, but this is seriously undercut by his profound victimhood. If Spud is Christ-like, it is in the same way that Dostoevsky's character the Idiot is (in the novel of that name). His purity verges on stupidity and he is incapable of inspiring any form of progressive social change. When Spud and Renton are in court, for instance, Renton's lies are rewarded while Spud's truth is punished. In this society, it is made clear, this kind of gormless goodness will get one nowhere. Spud needs to grow up if he is to protect himself, to become closer to Mark's ‘experience', though this is not likely to happen. Like the idealised socialistic virtues of the older generation, exemplified in Mark's parents, Spud is depicted as outdated and powerless.

Mark Renton, the main character, is also the most complex character of the novel, for it is in him that the struggle between the cultures of collectivism and individualism is most apparent. In the end he chooses individualism, taking a quantum leap from where there is no going back. He has left Scotland and his working-class community, and to a certain extent his identity as a member of this community, and knows he cannot go back. By this stage, however, we are convinced, like him, that there is no real alternative. The culture of his circle of friends is totally corrupted and beyond hope. This conclusion, that there is no alternative but to rip off one's mates in order to get away from them, echoes Margaret Thatcher's famous phrase in description of her classical liberal, economic rationalist policy program: ‘there is no alternative'. Renton's ‘choice', then, or rather, his lack of choice, is partly a result of the economic and political regime put in place by Thatcher: this is the culture that has been produced by this absence of choice. Importantly, however, this is not a completely selfish choice (in fact, given the absence of real choice it could never be wholly selfish): Renton resolves to leave some money for Spud, indicating that although he has no faith in it, Renton still retains sympathy for the values and culture Spud represents. Also, Renton's decision to screw his ‘mates' is partly reached through a growing realisation of and identification with the victims of these people: with all the ‘different' people picked on in his neighborhood, with Sick Boy's pimped and abused girls, with the women abused by Begbie and with the boys and men physically assaulted by him (egs). A small but important sub-plot is Renton's increasing realisation, through his relationship with Kelly, of his and his culture's misogynistic nature (eg).

Themes

This major theme of the novel is revealed most clearly through a number of important chapters [that we can look at perhaps in the tutes]:

Egs. First chap, chapt about the cards, ‘house arrest', ‘Bad Blood', ‘Winter in West Granton', and of course ‘Station to Station'.

Imagery

Trainspotting is written in an essentially realist mode but it does include poetic imagery, mostly focused on the use of heroin. Heroin is depicted as a drug which gives a lot in the immediate sense but which takes back more in the longer term. It is a drug which enables orgasmic connections between people but which, during comedown, enforces total self-absorbtion. Heroin is also depicted as a form of escape from reality (egs) and from self-loathing (eg). Heroin is alluring but its rewards are basically shown to be fraudulent. The case of Tommy is the most obvious example of this. Heroin use functions in the novel to question the misconception that drug use is a personal problem experienced by flawed victims. The characters who use heroin do it consciously. They are or can be intelligent people and they look down on alcoholics and those who are stupid and / or ugly. Most of all, they possess agency, as made clear in the powerful passage where Renton chooses to not choose life. Through this conscious and self-destructive adoption of one of society's main taboo objects, the logic of the society itself is radically drawn into question.

Style

The most characteristic feature of the author's style in this text is his use of phonetic spelling for an unmistakably demotic language. The book could clearly not have been written by someone who was not from or did not understand this culture. You could imagine the difficulty of translating this book into another language. In particular, the humour is intimately tied to the language. The effect of this style is to reinforce the impression of cultural authenticity and verisimilitude and to give the reader a sense of the full humanity and cultural richness of this ‘unfashionable' group of people. Trainspotting is a good example of the potential power of cultural products, in that it has visibly helped to strengthen, by making ‘cool', working-class Scottish culture; though as the author is aware, there is always the chance of this being appropriated, in the way that yuppies appropriate cockney accents in the novel (cf. Murdoch's journos in the 80s).

Conclusion

There are obvious reasons why Trainspotting would be marketed as a book about heroin addiction rather than class. Class as a concept is out of fashion in both popular and intellectual circles. As an Australian publisher said to Mark Davis a few years ago, class just ‘isn't sexy at the moment'. Heroin was sexy at the time. Moreover, it is easier for those in the mainstream media and entertainment industries, and for political conservatives in general, to see social problems as a result of individual actions, rather than as the product of structural factors, such as the relative disappearance of community. Welsh has certainly not claimed to speak for ‘the working class', and has made apparent his lack of hope in the value of a culture of solidarity in the present context. In Trainspotting , the values of individualism and the motivations of self-interest lurk just beneath the surface of many ostensibly altruistic and collectivist actions.

It could however be argued that like Tsiolkas's character Ari in Loaded , Welsh's anti-hero Mark Renton (Rent Boy) expresses the author's alienation from others within society, and that this alienation and disempowerment leads to this ‘negative' anti-humanist attitude. It could also be argued that in expressing these views both authors are consciously or otherwise seeking to locate themselves within a Romantic tradition, of the alienated artist who, through this alienation, sees more than others around him or her.

Perhaps Tsiolkas and Welsh genuinely believe that no better form of society or genuine, broad-based social improvement, is possible. This would not be a surprizing conclusion for any intelligent member of the working class, having seen the devestation of the way of life of his or her community and the virtual end of their community's capacity to be active creators of their own cultural objects and artefacts, to reach. If there never was a personal awareness of community, the conclusion is even less surprizing. Even Robert Tressell, who wrote the first universally acknowledged working-class novel, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (1910?), in which he set out in anecdotal form the labour theory of surplus value and presented characters capable of imagining socialism, has been criticised for representing working-class people as unrelentingly stupid and irreemably flawed. If Tressell could not endorse the hope for a socialist society, it is not surprising that Tsiolkas, Welsh and other working-class contemporaries cannot. It is possible too that these authors are fearful of being ridiculed for claiming a working-class identity, as educated people in the first world routinely are. To claim a working-class identity is to invite accusations of fraudulence and / or self-pity. Arguably this is part of the cultural means by which middle-class and ruling class domination is maintained. It could also be speculated that the individualist values which have come to dominate his society have permeated Welsh's consciousness, in spite of the fact that these values are partly responsible for the continuing oppression of members of his class. From this perspective, the valorising of the role of heroin in the novel can be seen as a pragmatic decision not to alienate publishers and large sections of the book-buying market.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Renton's final choice is made necessary, and even noble, by the society and culture he has found himself in. His cynicism towards all forms of authority and his dismissal of the consumerist rewards of his society encourage the reader to, like him, keep searching for something better. Though he is disillusioned with the selfless working-class ideals of his parents, they are the only representatives of authority that, in the course of his journey from innocence to experience, he increases his respect for.

[Literature, like any art, has an intellectual and political content and impact. But it also has an aesthetic content and emotional effect (even if that is a non-moving effect). Literary writers seek to impact upon the intellect and the emotions of the reader through the intellectual, political and aesthetic content of their work. A particular aesthetic will appeal to a particular group because that group recognises that the aesthetic accords with its life, what it knows, or because a group believes thinks that aesthetic is exotic, representative of a culture that is truly different from its own. An aesthetic does not, in itself, have a political effect. But in practice any aesthetic has a political effect because of the way that it is used – by artists or othes – to buttress or undermine a particular politics. Put another way: an aesthetic causes an emotional response. The emotional response cannot, by definition, by ‘wrong'. But an emotional response can support a good or a bad political position, depending on the context in which the response is induced, including the intellectual and political content of a work of art.

In Trainspotting , Irvine Welsh uses colloquial language, language that is aesthetically specific to a particular time and place. This language will have a different emotional impact on members of this culture than on others, who are not members of this culture. Members of this culture will recognise this culture, as represented in the novel, as their own, and feel a bond to it that is different from the bond to it that I might feel. A major publisher decided, after most of these stories had been published in small and independent publications, that this novel, appropriately marketed, was worth publishing. The ‘exoticness' of this book may even have appealed to the publishers. But it seems clear that Welsh wrote the novel for members of his own culture, first and foremost, that it was on members of that culture that he wanted to make an emotional impact. He uses a particular aesthetic to advance a particular politics to a particular group. Using culturally specific language demonstrates that he is taking this culture seriously and that he is concerned to preserve it.

For these reasons, above all others, I think it is clear that Welsh does, however consciously, feel a sense of kinship and solidarity with, and a sense of commitment to , his working-class community.]

My sense is that this is a novel about the working class by one of its members and for the working class, in the sense that the author wants to tell the truth about the lives of these people, his people, in an honest way. But this is not a novel for the working class in the sense that its author holds out the hope that this book might contribute to this class's freeing of itself from domination, its casting off of the chains of capitalist servitude. Welsh cares for members of his class, but holds out little hope for the class as a collective group. His working-class remains the object, rather than the subject of history. Like Tressell, Welsh's familiarity with his community has bred contempt as well as empathy, while in contrast to Emile Zola he doesn't fear this community, partly because he's a member of it and partly because he sees it as even less powerful than Zola saw the French workers to be. This lack of hope in a working class politics, on the part of the author, is indicative of the economic, political and cultural changes that have taken place since the 1970s, and of Welsh's personal experience of and response to these changes.

It is hard to write ‘for' a working-class audience when the working class doesn't have its own organs of cultural production. In the Australian context for example, there is no Australasian Book Society (Bobbin Up), no Realist Printing and Publishing Company (PWG), no (effective) Communist Party, no, or very few ‘worker' newspapers, while those that do exist are usually narrowly focused on economic issues. In the early 1970s, worker education became adult education (cases of CAE, RMIT – used to be the Melbourne Working Man's College?, FIT), worker arts became ‘community arts', the category of ‘the poor' appeared, partially replacing ‘the working class', fixing poverty came to be the preserve of private charities rather than governments, as though poverty was a personal characteristic requiring personal generosity rather than a product of the labour market and the social system. And in our present society mutual obligation, that thing which was historically an element of working-class culture, that enabled working-class people to fight against exploitation, has been appropriated, like the Cockney accents of the yuppies in Kelly's café near the end of Trainspotting , to try to imply that those at the lowest end of the social and economic scale are not making the best of the myriad of glittering opportunities offered to them (where, one might ask, is the mutual obligation of government and business to provide meaningful employment, decent wages and conditions etc.). I would argue that Trainspotting is a working-class novel, but one which strongly bears the trace of the relative decline of working-class power and the institutionalisation of ruling-class culture over the last thirty years.

Nathan Hollier, 26 May 2005

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