Show Notes
For this episode of the Working Class Library, the writer Craig McLean joins Richard Benson, editor of The Bee, and Claire Malcolm, CEO of New Writing North, to discuss Irvine Welsh’s 1993 novel Trainspotting.
Trainspotting has become, as McLean says, a multi-media “literary industrial complex”, with prequels, sequels, films, theatre productions and a mooted TV series having given its characters lives far beyond the pages of the original book. Given its fame, and the dark slapstick with which it is sometimes associated, it is easy to overlook Welsh’s serious intent in writing the novel.
Using heavy dialect, he set out to write a representative account of a generation’s suffering under 1980s economic policies, a popularisation of heroin, and an AIDS epidemic. He has since made it clear that he intended this to be part of a working-class saga. In the podcast, aided by McLean’s recollections of Edinburgh’s 1990 book scene, we ask if it deserves a place on the shelves of our imaginary library of great books by and about ordinary people.
More from The Working Class Library
For the ninth episode of the Working Class Library, the writer and campaigner Terri White joins Richard Benson and Claire Malcolm to talk about the legendary Catherine Cookson. We focus on Cookson’s 1968 novel about a mixed-ethnicity marriage in 1920s Tyneside, but also talk a lot about the author herself, and her phenomenal popularity among working-class women readers in the late 20th century.
For the eighth episode of the Working Class Library, the globally bestselling author Lee Child joins hosts Richard Benson and Claire Malcolm to talk about Dreda Say Mitchell’s groundbreaking 2004 novel Running Hot.
In this episode of the Working Class Library, David Peace joins Claire Malcolm, Chief Executive of New Writing North, and Richard Benson, editor of The Bee, to discuss David Storey’s classic, controversial 1960 kitchen-sink novel, This Sporting Life.
In the sixth episode of the Working Class Library, Kevin Barry joins Claire Malcolm, chief executive of New Writing North, and Richard Benson, editor of The Bee, to discuss Frank McCourt’s 1996 memoir Angela’s Ashes.
For the fifth episode of the Working Class Library, the novelist David Nicholls joins Claire Malcolm, CEO of New Writing North, and Richard Benson, editor of The Bee, and to discuss Sue Townsend’s 1982 novel The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾.