Irvine Welsh

Irvine Welsh is one of the most revered writers of his generation and is globally renowned for his debut novel Trainspotting (1993) and the film adaptation that followed. Though his biography is sketchy—perhaps deliberately so—we can say with some certainty that he was raised in Leith and Muirhouse, Scotland, and that he gained useful life and work experiences in London during the late 1970s and 1980s. His year of birth in Edinburgh is mainly given as 1958, though some reports offer an earlier date. Upon returning to Scotland in the late 1980s, he completed an MBA at Heriot-Watt University (his thesis was based on creating equal opportunities for women), and soon became acquainted with writers such as Alan Warner, Duncan McLean, and Kevin Williamson. Trainspotting was once a series of diary entries that were published in parts from 1991 onward in small independent magazines like DOG and Rebel Inc. Draft sections were also printed in A Parcel of Rogues and Past Tense: Four Stories from a Novel. It was through this network that Welsh became known to the director of Secker & Warburg, who published Trainspotting in its entirety. Set in the late 1980s, the novel was a critique of capitalism, individualism, nationalism, and war. This sweat-lashed, dialect-driven journey into the self and the nation was met with very high critical regard and a good measure of disgust. The novel is said to have missed out on the Booker Prize shortlist for causing offense to female judges. One year later James Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late won the same award, much to the bemusement of one or two judges, and so the pair have been entwined as controversial antiestablishment types ever since. For Welsh, his reputation as a writer of mind-bending literature was enhanced with The Acid House (1994) and Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995), both showcasing an impressive range of narrative skills. Danny Boyle’s film version of Trainspotting (1996) propelled Welsh into a stratosphere that few Scottish writers have enjoyed, and while three more books were published before the sequel to Trainspotting, Porno (2002), he is chiefly remembered for creating one of the great novels of the late 20th century with his debut. Welsh’s extensive novels, short story collections, and stage and screen plays have kept him at the forefront of the Scottish literary scene, though he has revived the Trainspotting case time and again, most recently with Skagboys (2012), The Blade Artist (2016), and Dead Men’s Trousers (2018).

Urban waste no replacement for natural foods—Marabou storks in Botswana

We compared diets of marabou storks Leptoptilos crumenifer foraging from urban landfills and natural areas in northern Botswana using stable isotope analyses and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry on moulted feathers. There were significant differences in the diet of marabous foraging from natural areas compared to urban waste sites, reflected by lower δ13C and less enriched δ15N concentrations in those feeding at landfills, suggesting a shift in trophic niche. Feathers from birds foraging at landfills also had significantly higher concentrations of chromium, lead, nickel, and zinc and lower levels of cadmium and potassium than feathers sampled from natural areas. We also analysed marabou regurgitant (42 kg, naturally expelled indigestible food resources) from the Kasane landfill site. More than half was plastic, with single regurgitants weighing up to 125 g. Urban waste stored in open air landfills is altering some marabou diets, affecting their natural trophic niche, resulting in the consumption (and regurgitation) of large amounts of plastic, and exposing marabou to potentially chronic levels of trace metals. Despite the marabou’s apparent resilience to this behavioural shift, it could have long-term effects on the population of the marabou stork, particularly considering Botswana has some of the few regular marabou breeding colonies in southern Africa.

« Marabou Stork Nightmares » d'Irvine Welsh. Épuisement du récit réaliste et mise en récit de l'Histoire

La littérature prend acte de la pauvreté ressentie du réel contemporain en optant pour l’épuisement, tandis que les discours déployés dans l’espace public, pour pallier cette même pauvreté, deviennent le lieu d’une narrativisation croissante. Ces phénomènes, complémentaires, sont toutefois difficiles à appréhender simultanément : ils relèvent de domaines différents. Au moyen de l’exemple de Marabou Stork Nightmares d’Irvine Welsh (1995), je montrerai que le roman peut, cependant, rendre compte de ce double jeu. Le réalisme affiché y est corrompu par l’amnésie du narrateur, tandis que la dimension fantaisiste du roman propose une mise en récit de l’histoire écossaise et britannique qui conduit à une représentation sociale et littéraire en traversant les trames.AbstractLiterature expresses the poverty of our contemporary reality by its own exhaustion, whereas discourses displayed in the public space, to mitigate the same poverty, are increasingly narrative. These phenomena, though complementary, are difficult to comprehend simultaneously: they pertain to different domains. Using the example of Irvine Welsh’s Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995), I shall show that the novel can, however, take this double game into account. The realism displayed is corrupted by the narrator’s amnesia, whereas the novel’s fantastic dimension proposes a symbolic display of Scottish and British history, leading to a social and literary representation crossing its levels.