Porno by Irvine Welsch
Score: 2/10
First published: 2002
Original language: English (though the author is Scottish)
I found this in one of the car parks at the Barbican (Speed?) in a spot where people leave all kinds of stuff they don’t want anymore. I didn’t particularly notice the placement at the time but now it makes me a laugh a little.
I didn’t make a mark in this book until page 284. I say that because I want to show you how non-committal I felt whilst reading it, how certain I felt about giving it up… and yet what did I do? Despite all my doubts? I kept reading it like a whipped bitch because you frenzied me Mr. Welsch you made me feel shit but still I sought you out
And now I’m pissed. Pissed because it’s too late. Pissed because you can’t dump a book you’ve already read not if you let it take you all the way to the end especially if it’s 500 pages like this one is I mean that’s not an acciden,t that’s a series of bad choices. What was I waiting for anyway? Clarity? Redemption?
I’m being unfair. There was something perversely exciting about seeing you ape the inside of a girl’s head with your character of Nikki; all the things you thinks girls do when they’re alone like make themselves throw up and brush their hair (routinely-speaking…) but now I’m getting ahead of myself. There were some good one-liners in here. I have put them down so no one else has to read it:
The male ego may seem fragile, but it doesn’t in my experience, take too long to repair itself.
That is a great line. I wave it like a flag as I insult you (politely)
He’s got hyena street cunning skooshing out of every pore.
(Oooooo, skooshing he said)
There’s some chickies you just smell damage off of… it’s just there in the eyes, that blighted, wounded aspect, manifesting itself in the need to give a destructive love to an evil force, and to keep giving it till it consumes them.
Oof I thought. What a moment to feel seen.
And now, for my favourite:
The Islington middle classes… they cut some fuckin pieces of ciabatta with a knife and they go: ‘Isn’t this civilised?’ And you want to go: no, you daft cunt, no it’s fuckin well not, because civilisation extends beyond pouring wine & cutting bread, and what you’re really talking about it simply leisure and relaxation.
I don’t think your novel got much better than that?
I think that’s what ruined everything for me in this book, the relentless Scottish accent (“ahm roonin oot ah patience here”) which is why it felt like such a relief to get inside the head of Nikki and Sick Boy, both of them with their fit Queen’s English—especially Nikki tho. Mostly because we agree on which guy we wanna fuck and yep it’s you Sick Boy. And guess what? We actually get to in chapter 37 AND it’s from his perspective which is so lush & generally more than a girl could ask for… except, of course, he’s a cunt about it:
Having sex with Nikki was excellent but it was that first-shag syndrome: no matter how good it is there’s always a perfunctory element which you can’t help but find distasteful.
Which made me feel alone because I wasn’t sure what he meant? I thought the first time was always good because you go from 0 to 1? Whatever. Soon I get what I’ve been waiting for all along: Sick Boy’s over-the-top desire,
Nikki, so devastating in a red two-piece swimsuit I thought I was going to have some kind of seizure.
I skip down the page (past the seafood restaurant and the fried king scallops which wow Nikki) until finally,
All I can think about is getting her back to my place.
Oh yeh. We’re getting close. But then Irvine ruins the moment—no, I ruin the moment by mentioning Irvine’s name
In the back seat of the taxi she has my ballot open.
Ballot? Flash-forward to Nikki’s flat now and Sick Boy takes off his “strides” (strides?) I’m able to ignore all of the technical clothing vocabulary at the time even though it sits so weirdly alongside the rest of the text because there’s a description of breast-fondling to take my critical eye off things,
he frees my breasts and everything slows down as he strokes them, handling them with a careful awe, like a kid who’s been entrusted with the care of a soft, furry pet
But then it clicks because he brings it back to clothes again. Nikki’s getting dressed afterwards and she’s trying to choose between the “tight cashmere” & the “shapeless Angora” and suddenly I see how Irvine prepared to get inside the head of his female characters… by learning loads of technical clothing vocab. Which he then didn’t know what to do with and so he started sprinkling into the novel way too often to make sense. The realisation is funny in real time in a sad sort of way. Sorry to have taken it from you… it was probably the highlight of my reading experience.
Basically Porno taught me how to skim-read.
You read but you also don’t. You skip sentences and half way hope you haven’t missed anything important or randomly beautiful, you wonder whether this is what literary theorists would call a “male poetics of reading”? A senseless trying to get to the end no matter the cost of meaning? No really I was so desperate to finish this book I didn’t care. One day I’ll be bad bitch enough to leave a petty narrative hanging 30 pages from the end but not yet, not now. Na. I wanna see Irvine officially spunk it. There are of course other ways to read books, officially:
1. a caterpillar poetics of reading = you read slavishly and eat all the good bits in the hope of becoming a butterfly (foolishly)
2. a topographical poetics of reading = this is when you choose a book that directly reflects your physical environment. For example you go to Mallorca and only read books set in Mallorca. This is in contradistinction to the usual framing of reading books¹ as escapism. This is book as mirror, magnifying glass or rose-tinted spectacles.
3. a colourful poetics of reading = this is all about visual aesthetics; ordering the books on your bookshelf according to colour and then reading in successive hues. Out of the house it’s then all about using a book as an accessory and carrying it without a bag (always without a bag) to match your outfit and character.
4. a moral poetics of reading = this is the kind of reading that happens in the wake of listening to Sam Harris’ Waking Up course because there’s a central idea there that we’re always meditating on something and shaping our brains with it which creates huge implications for our reading. In this case it’s not just about wasting your time by reading a terrible book it’s actually a kind of brain damage.
a productive writer’s poetics of reading = this is about reading books which give you things to say—correction: which make you want to write. This does not always (usually) correlate with enjoying the book.
It’s the next day now
And guess what?
I’m onto the next. I didn’t even finish Porno. I just said Hey man, let go of the idea of completion. And that was that. It was easy. Yeah, pat my back. Yeah, circles—keep it friendly. I guess I’m finally learning my lesson of cutting it short with guys who don’t deserve my time. And now I’ve got Henry Miller in bed (oops)—until, oh I don’t know, it’s hard? Seeing a book lying there all unfinished like that… and for some reason, driven by a weird sense of guilt perhaps, I pick it up again because… why not just skim-read it until the end? So that’s what I do. And that’s when it all comes back to me!
Ohhhhhhhhhhh I did finish it. Late last night!
It was just so disappointing… I couldn’t even remember that.
Sorry Irvine. So long.
I’m sure Trainspotting is way better.
My fault for being lured towards the P-word I guess.
This book does not not not go back on my darling little bookshelf.
With the fawning appreciation
(Of a dead deer)
Tilly
NEXT.