Dead Men's Trousers

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Welsh, 60, knows of what he writes, admitting to fairly prodigious use when younger. He still uses occasionally, but says, “You just get to the point where you’ve done enough physiologically and psychologically, they don’t work in the same way. The intoxication gets less and less and there’s the tiredness and the lethargy and the comedown.”

Mark Renton is finally a success. He now makes significant money managing DJs, but the constant travel, airport lounges, soulless hotel rooms, and broken relationships have left him dissatisfied with life. But everyone other than Spud is comparatively rich – most especially the Miami-based Welsh himself – and they all spend their time in pursuit of the “more” that will finally fill their empty spaces. Other than for the tying up of some old loose ends, Dead Men's Trousers is a fairly pointless read. Even so, every now and then, Welsh throws in an old school passage that made me smile: The stewardess, not the lovely Jenny I was chatting tae, but a low-rent, pleb-serving, varicose-veined battleaxe, bike-rode into decrepitude over decades by the few hetero pilots, without even a hint of a sparkler thrown into the mix, is right over, her crabbit pus rammed into my coupon. Welsh allows that can be intimidating for readers — "You don’t get the biggest audience abroad in some countries” but adds, “You do get a very clued-up audience that likes a bit of a challenge.” The parts with Begbie are also a huge improvement from the disappointing The Blade Artist. I respect Welsh for pulling off Begbie's transformation from a psychotic force of nature to a well known artist, loyal teetotaler husband and responsible father of two kids. He is still a psycho to people who try to mess with his family. I guess Welsh was trying to make the point that truly great artists are not what they seem to be on the surface.Title Drop: Mark notes that people are nothing but a work in progress until we die and fall into the world of dead men's trousers. My favorite quote is an updated version of the "Choose Life" monologue, which completely fits our current era: What we are trading that for is years of entertainment, and I for one will take it. But I definitely understand if others aren't into this diluting of the "franchise." As said, I'm into it and I'm entertained. Not to mention, this new novel also directly takes place after the solo Begbie novel Blade Artist which feels like required reading now. Then there's that novel Glue, featuring characters such as the perverted Juice Terry and DJ N-Sign--who have also been in more novels.

CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Begbie performs it on Spud pretty easily when he starts suffocating while Frank's making a plaster cast of his head. Never Suicide: Begbie drugs Harry and hangs him from the ceiling hoping to make it look like a suicide, but the roof collapses. Replace ice … Whoa, man, no sae sure aboot that. Ice is pure natural like, well, it’s usually made artificially in fridges like, but in its natural state in the polar regions –

In this the latest and apparently last novel in the series, the gang, now all in middle age are thrown together for one last enterprise. You're nothing but a work-in-progress until that day you fall out of this world into the land ay dead men's trousers. Global commercialism has compelled the Scots tae pretend tae like Christmas, but we're genetically programmed tae rebel against it. Perché, dato il loro stile di vita non proprio morigerato, era inevitabile che qualcuno della banda prima o poi ci lasciasse, e quando questo alla fine accade, ci si sente quasi come aver perso un vecchio amico. While comparisons can be made to the first sequel novel Porno, which was about gentrification after coming home to the ol' scene, suddenly all our old friends are middle-aged and very successful. I suppose it has to do with the author's journey himself. But Begbie as a rich artist, Rents as a globe-trotting music manager, does it work? I don't know. Somehow, it does seem to diminish the brutality of our first impression all those years ago. At least Spud is still a loser.

Afterlife Express: Begbie has another fantasy similar to his DMT hallucinations where he has dinner with his dead enemies. He said the dining room felt like a bus terminal or a railway station where they'd move on and go somewhere else when they finished their meals. It’s not a book Welsh anticipated writing. During the planning stages of “T2 Trainspotting” — the 2017 movie roughly based on “Porno,” the second book in the series — Welsh was holed up in an Edinburgh flat talking with director Boyle, producer Andrew MacDonald and writer John Hodge. One of the pictures at Begbie's art exhibition is a painting of Jimmy Savile with his eyes gouged out. This is, without doubt, the most enjoyable audio book I've listened to for quite some time and certainly the best of the year so far (probably the last couple of years), in my opinion.

Carl’s been dragging his flight case ay records wi him, perspiring like a Thatcher Cabinet minister wi the education portfolio up for grabs, and looking dangerously red. Among the deeper themes presented herein would be the concept of death. So many funerals. The violence scenes are serious, with the feeling that it can lead to a permanent end at any time. And about the acceptance of it. A beloved old school character even passes, but I won't spoil by saying who. Begbie changes his name to Jim Francis and re-fashions himself as a successful artist in LA, a collegial, thoughtful man, or so it seems. Right for the Wrong Reasons: Spud has a dog called Toto which he named after the band and didn't realize there was a dog called Toto in The Wizard of Oz. Sto seduto nel mio appartamento a fumare canne e compatirmi. A deprimermi ancora di più con la coscienza esatta di quello che farò per sopportare questo disastro: mi sfonderò di sostanze, e passato l'effetto mi butterò nel lavoro. Lo ripeto fino alla morte. E questa la trappola. Non c'è un dopo.

The story begins in 2015 when Mark Renton, now a successful DJ manager hopping between Amsterdam and LA, bumps into Franco Begbie on a transatlantic flight. In their last encounter Begbie disappeared under the wheels of a car while en route to take bloody revenge on Mark for ripping him off at the end of Trainspotting. But Begbie – now teetotal, and a successful artist living in California with a wife and two young children – comes over all Zen. Is he a changed character? There are other problems. It’s still very male-focused, not to say misogynistic. It might be plausible to depict an entirely male friendship group of 1980s junkies, but Renton and Begbie now work in gender-balanced fields, and the women in the novel are almost exclusively trophies, victims, or whores. You can always tell the status of a Welsh character by the blondness and waist measurement of his girlfriend. Begbie, now going by the name of Jim Francis, meets Renton on a plane, and surprisingly does not try to kill him. It seems that the psycho has mellowed, and is now an acclaimed arstist with a devoted wife and two lovely children. Last Supper" Steal: Begbie's DMT hallucination is himself at a The Last Supper-style dinner with several people who are now dead. He claims the image of the last supper was always caused by DMT hallucination ls and predates Jesus. You can always tell the status of a Welsh character by the blondness and waist measurement of his girlfriend

When he's at his best, Welsh spins a story of four men broken by addiction and betrayal; old friends who've shared their youths, somehow lived through them, and just can't quite seem to let go. Tonight, Someone Dies: An advertising point was that one of the main four characters wouldn't survive the book. It's Spud Murphy incase you're wondering. Dove se non in un romanzo un detenuto psicato può intortare la propria psicologa (ovviamente gran fica) fingere si essersi redento, sposarla, avere due figlie con lei pur rimanendo il solito folle psicato? by the end, what could've been a fitting, apt, even startling counterweight to Trainspotting has been weighed down with so much awkward sex, so many grown men on drugs and so many antic, unlikely capers, that the great idea Welsh had at the beginning has been lost. The most crazed and vicious of the four, Begbie had appeared in other Welsh works — "coming out of jail for violent cameos" — but Welsh says he had to “completely reboot him and give him a second life.”