‘I should fuckin say so’ – Reheated Cabbage by Irvine Welsh

I remember it clearly: aged 15 in a our mixed-ability English lesson, at the end of a Creative Writing test. “Hey, Miss, why can’t we have swearing? That’s how we all speak, isn’t it?” There was a temporary lull in the chattering while we all listened, everyone interested. “Because….” (Miss obviously had to think a bit) “It shows a distinct lack of vocabulary.”

Strange how some things stay with you.

I’m not sure if Irvine Welsh had a lesson like that, but if he did he obviously chose to ignore it. Welsh’s characters swear and curse copiously. Their lack of vocabulary is used to great effect. It gives them an immediate violence, and for the more timorous reader it is shocking. In the end I had to be led into it by reading a little Niall Griffiths; and having survived that decided I was ready for a little Welsh. Getting into an Irvine Welsh book is a struggle. There is not only the swearing but the dialect to master. But after a few pages the reader’s ‘ear’ becomes accustomed to it all, just as gradually Rab C Nesbitt becomes comprehensible, and, inevitably, the reader (well this reader, anyway) is hooked.

My introduction to Irvine Welsh was Reheated Cabbage – a collection of short stories from 1994 until 2009.

‘A Fault of the Line’ is about a man with a fat wife. It’s a brilliant observational piece. The character is unbelievably self-centred, and yet, just as unbelievably, the reader is quickly convinced that he is real. It must also be the blackest comedy I have ever read.

In ‘Catholic Guilt’ a homophobic man and his apt punishment. It’s revolting, graphic and… funny. Homophobia and mysogeny are dominant features in almost all of Welsh’s characters. ‘Elspeth’s Boyfriend’ is about another homophobic character, this time at home in his mother’s house with the rest of his family on Christmas day. He has the same views and character as the narrators in the first two stories and it was at this point I was beginning to wonder how much of this is actually Irvine Welsh writing about himself.

The fourth story, ‘Kissing and Making Up’, was perhaps my favourite. This time the homophobic misogynist goes to see Tanya the stripper. As a character study I don’t think it could be surpassed. ‘The Rosewell Incident’ is a long story about… aliens. The joke is that they make first contact with thugs in Scotland and so they talk and act just like the character of the previous stories. Now, in ‘The State of the Party’ the same character goes on a trip at a party – excellent description of what that’s like to the initiated – and it deals with sex and grief. The women do not have a huge role in an Irvine Welsh book, but the ones here view sex as a kind of therapy; while the men are impotent. Death haunts this piece – affecting them in a way they can’t acknowledge. The characters are not quite as unfeeling as in the previous stories – as if Irvine Welsh is softening with age (although it was only written three years later than ‘Kissing and Making Up’).

‘Victor Spoils’ is a love story of sorts. Sarah is on the rebound from Victor and has sex with Gavin. Gavin thinks he is in love with Sarah, but Sarah is in love with neither of them. It’s a story about love and knowing what you want. It works well, and the characters are more sympathetic still.

The last story, ‘I am Miami’ is almost long enough to be called a novella. It is the most recent Welsh, with a wider variety of characters, and to someone new to Irvine Welsh’s writing the most accessible because there are fewer pages in dialect. The characters are less sharp and for me had lost some of their energy. I also felt that too much was explained, and I liked the earlier Irvine Welsh better for that. But still, the humour was still there, and there was one passage which was one of the most moving group of words I’d ever read.

Any Cop?: I should fuckin say so.

Clare Dudman