Fiction Friday (69)

Finding time to read anything that wasn't a textbook or academic journal article has been difficult over the past few months, but through it all, I'd been carefully digesting this book written by one of my favorite authors, and biggest inspirations. Given that this book was about characters that I'm already familiar with, I enjoyed taking my time and alluding to their other adventures in my mind as I read. Though it doesn't require reading the other books first, it certainly would help. This is a book that provides a bigger picture to past events which take place after. 

Skagboys by Irvine Welsh
(W. W. Norton, 2012)

All the familiar scoundrels are back, including Rents, Sickboy, Spud and Begbie in this prequel to Welsh's popular Trainspotting novel. Fans will have encountered these characters in multiple books, learning about their lives after Renton took off at the end of Trainspotting, but knowing little about how they got to the place where Trainspotting began. This book covers the years leading up to the time where we first met them and gives some insight as to how they ended up being everybody's favorite junkies.

Readers learn more about Mark Renton than any of the others. We get a glimpse into his home life and discover what motivated his destructive pursuits. As with most abusers of drugs, and I know because I speak from personal experience, the direct connection is not typically clear to the user. There's a part of the user that convinces themselves that it simply out of boredom, or because its fun, or makes them feel good. What is is hidden in that way of thinking is the causes for the symptoms and subconscious ignorance pertaining to the depression that the drug use is usually masking. This is the kind of thing that a users doesn't usually face until the drug use stops being fun and becomes a contributor to hardship.

Though this book is a prequel, it's obviously written from a more mature and reflective view of addiction. Each character expresses some level of regret during this novel, which distinguishes it from the other novels in which they appear. Reading it with the other books in mind, this level of regret becomes an interesting aspect of future behavior. The regret will later become another contributing factor of abuse, giving a clear portrait of the struggle of abuse and how every action can be turned against getting better. Unlike some of Welsh's earlier work, there is no attempt to glamorize the situations. The behavior is displayed in all it's raw ugliness.

Into the Woods

In case you missed it, this week's episode of Louie was essentially a short film, and brilliant in so many ways. The show abandoned its usual dark humor in order to portray a powerful and unexpected coming of age story when Louie discovers his 12 year old daughter smoking pot. From there, the episode flashes back to his own youthful experiences with the drug when he was his daughter's age. 

Louie's story captured the experience in a truly accurate and moving way. I've always believed that the drift into drug use as a young teen often springs from issues that are not located on the surface. From the eyes of the youthful user, it's simply something fun to do, a way to escape the boredom that seeps in once childhood fades. It's not usually until years later that one realizes there were deep rooted issues that were taking place which you weren't consciously aware of at the time. It's a self-medicating tool that manages to work to some extent. You make new friends, some of which you probably shouldn't. You have fun, some of which involves very poor decisions. But ultimately, it cannot be the answer for whatever is bothering you inside, and those problem are not going to go away. Eventually you need to deal with them, and hopefully the cure you sought won't have caused too many new ones.

The episode took on all of these complicated aspects of the decent into drug use in an intelligent and non-judgemental way. It showed things the way they really are without reverting to horror stories. But more importantly, it explored the parenting angle that goes with it. Especially today, more and more parents are going to have to deal with their child's drug use by viewing it through a mirror of their own. Decades ago, parents weren't necessarily coming from a point of experience. After an initial blow-up, Louie's character enters a stage of deep reflection, recalling the difficult years of transitioning from childhood to adulthood and comes to understand his daughter's choice. By the end he realizes that she is going through things that he might not fully be aware of, and instead of punishing her, simply tells her that he's there for her. 

Perhaps one of the best, and most worthwhile episodes on television this year.