The latest novel from Scottish author Irvine Welsh is Filth, a tale of a violent, sexist, racist, cocaine-addicted, tapeworm-infested Edinburgh cop, Bruce Robertson.

Readers of Welsh's earlier works, such as The Marabou Stork Nightmares and the now almost legendary Trainspotting already know what to expect: tensely written prose and simultaneously shocking and revolting scenarios. Without a doubt, Filth is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

In Bruce Robertson, Welsh has taken the concept of the anti-hero and pushed it several steps further--much further than his earlier novels. It cannot be overstated what a marvelously despicable character "Robbo" (as his few friends call him) is; few novels have antagonists as sadistic and malicious as him. And yet, as surprising as it may seem (although it happens gradually enough that you don't notice it), the reader actually finds himself rooting for this character. Perhaps it's the creativity and calculation of his malice as he systematically eliminates his competition for Detective Inspector, or gets his revenge on a meddlesome fellow passenger on a plane flight.

Robertson is a homicide detective and while there is a murder for him to solve, it's relegated to sub-plot status for most of the novel. Throughout much of the novel, he is actually trying to avoid having to work on the case, as it inconveniently conflicts with his vacation.

At one point in the novel, one of Bruce's fellow police officers asks him about his behavior, to which he replies "I believe there are only so many bad things that can be happening at one time... if they're happening to someone else, then that means they're not happening to me." And he approaches this philosophy in a very pro-active way, to say the least. He is relentless in his malevolence, although Welsh very adeptly manages to keep it from getting repetitive. There are moments when it appears that Bruce is about to soften, do something altruistic, or maybe just pass up an opportunity to do something nasty.

To the critical reader, this adds almost as much suspense as the plot itself; "Will Welsh show us that Bruce isn't really such a bad guy after all, that he's a diamond in the rough, really a decent guy at heart whose just had a bad life, a victim of circumstance?" In other words, will he chicken out? The answer, for the most part, is "no". And Filth is a better book for this.

One of the few issues I had with the book, however, was the way that Welsh does eventually show the reader a little bit of why Bruce is the way he is. It's somewhat similar to the way he shows the formative years of Roy Strang in his previous novel, the Marabou Stork Nightmares. And as that book proved, it is possible to show the motivations of an anti-heroic character without it seeming like a cliche cop-out. The problem in Filth is that Welsh tries to do this in about 20 pages, whereas he had about a third of The Marabou Stork Nightmares to accomplish the same task. It seems a bit awkward and tacked on here, although - to Welsh's credit - the sequence isn't nearly as contrived as it could have been.

Filth possesses another feature recognisable to those who have read The Marabou Stork Nightmares, namely the physical arrangement of words to enhance the effects of the words themselves. One of the most commented-upon aspects of Filth are the monologues spread throughout the novel, monologues that are given by Bruce's intestinal tapeworm. These are placed directly over the text of the story and outlined in an appropriately wormy shape. The monologues are funny, in a strange sort of way - the idea of a tapeworm lamenting that, because it's only a mere intestinal tract parasite, it has no way to express its grand and noble thoughts. It also doubles as one-man... I mean "one worm" peanut gallery, providing commentary on Bruce's life.

Welsh never makes it entirely clear whether or not the worm's dialogue is merely a hallucination of Bruce's or meant to represent something else. You also get the feeling that the portions of the story these monologues cover up were chosen very carefully; they obscure most of the text behind them, but you can see just enough to make it interesting. Trying to get a sense of what's going on behind the wormy monologue is like watching television through a pane of frosted glass.

The dark humour that has characterised Welsh's work is present in Filth as well. At first glance, the novel appears to exude grittiness and realism, but closer inspection shows that it's actually a parody on at least two levels. The most obvious level is that of Welsh poking fun at Edinburgh police officers, a group he's no stranger to.

The second level of parody is much more subtle and has to do with the fact that a lot of the judgements the reader makes about Bruce stem from the way the first person perspective gives us total access to his thoughts. While the main character's thoughts are shocking and revolting, they're only slight exaggerations of the things that run through everyone's mind in the course of a day. Whether intentional or not, it's an effective mockery of taboo and hypocrisy. The main difference is that Bruce actually acts on these dark thoughts and desires, while most of us do not.

With Filth, Irvine Welsh has shown that he is a versatile as well as an effective writer, and that he is capable of writing about things other than Ecstasy-addicted Scottish youths. It's worth a read both for long-time fans of Welsh and virgins of his work who are looking for something thoroughly unique from most of the other fiction out there. If nothing else, this novel is worth its cover price for its value as a tutorial in Scottish slang.

Stephen Butters, June, 2000

Links:

Famous Scot Irvine Welsh
The Marabou Stork Nightmares