Literature / Porno

Irvine Welsh's fifth novel, Porno is the sequel to the iconic Trainspotting, following the original's four core characters plus a new female addition. It's a study of how far you can push friendship and relationships in the face of betrayal, past mistakes and differing agendas. Other major themes include paranoia in the context of the hunter and the hunted, and attempting to prosper in elder years amongst a cohort and environment which has changed almost unrecognisably in the new millennium.

Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson is still scheming and burning his way through people in the big smoke, but something is missing. Leaving his bar job under acrimonious circumstances, he agrees to his auntie Paula's offer of taking over the Port Sunshine pub back in Leith. He recognises one last big chance to flourish his egotistical obsessions and repair his cashflow: a feature length porn film named "Seven Rides For Seven Brothers" starring the hottest sluts and best hung studs in town. Yet the only way to fund and produce this project is to scam yet more people... like it's going out of fashion. All the while he's fuelled on a Colombian factory level quantity of cocaine.

Mark Renton has, believe it or not, been enjoying a prosperous life in Amsterdam. Notoriously fleeing his friends at the end of Trainspotting with thousands of pounds which was to be their's, he's cleaned up from hard drugs and invested in a popular nightclub. Nevertheless, he's wary of crossing paths with his old mates and has been practising karate in fear of an eventual encounter with the dreaded Begbie. What's more, he's tired of his relationship with a jaded German woman and knows that sooner or later he'll have to be moving onward. But even his cautious administration of the club behind the scenes can't keep him hidden from Leith eyes for ever...

Nicola Fuller Smith or "Nikki" is a twenty five year old English student and proud boss bitch who feels her life is stalling with no decent opportunities ahead of her. She's bored of her modules, changes uni and programme frequently and relies on illicit massage therapy at a local sauna to make up the bills. Joining her highly strung flatmate Lauren and their new friend Rab Birrel on the Edinburgh film studies course, she gets introduced to his sex crazed mate from way back, Terry "Juice" Lawson and his posse of stag video associates. Enjoying the company, and encouraged by Rab's ideas of making a "thinking man's porno", she signs up for a leading role and gets into a torrid affair with Simon. She also is a main player when it comes to the writing and financing of the picture.

Franco Begbie has been serving further prison time for a murder of one of his psycho contemporaries (albeit he managed to disguise it as a justified self defence kill). Tormented by anonymously-sent gay erotica magazines and brooding heavily about revenge on various parties (not least of which is Renton), he finally walks out of Saughton with the intention of never returning. But he's eager to pick up things exactly where they left off and find a new "burd" to replace his battered ex-wife, June. Parenting their two sons however isn't high on his priority list.

And last but not least, Danny "Spud" Murphy is at a crossroads with his girlfriend Alison. He's almost, finally, kicked heroin, but minor relapses, thefts and continued unemployment are doing nothing to impress her. Forced to live independently from Ali and their son, he decides to write a celebration of local Leith history to turn his fortunes around. However, a horrific drinking session with his prison chum Chizzy and difficult reunions with the old school crew threaten his hopes for a better life.

Several elements of the novel were drawn upon for Danny Boyle's T2 Trainspotting, but certain aspects, notably the whole porn production angle, were excised for reasons of pragmatism.

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Provides examples of the following tropes:

• Ascended Extra:
  • Sick Boy's the protagonist this time around, not Renton.
  • Allison also plays a bigger role this time around.
• Ambiguous Time Period: The book doesn't make itself all that clear on whether it's set in the late nineties or early noughties, though Renton's use of Guilders in Amsterdam means that it cannot possibly be set after early 2002. Dead Men's Trousers explicitly sets it in 1998, though, meaning it runs almost concurrent with the events of Filth. However, take this with a grain of salt as Welsh's grasp of maths is sometimes shakey and this can be somewhat justified by taking the characters' chemical-addled state into account.
• The Artifact: Second Prize's presence at the climatic drug deal in the first book becomes this due to the Big Four (Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie) receiving the most limelight here, along with his absence from the film adaptation. He interacts with Renton precisely once towards the end of the book, and barely figures into the plot otherwise.
• Ax-Crazy: Begbie outdoes himself here, popping his murder cherry for the first time. Well, that we know of, at least.
  • He starts the book in prison for murdering someone in rage due to Renton's actions in the previous book. He gets it down to manslaughter by stabbing himself to make it look like self defence.
  • He beats his ex-wife mercilessly due to being misled by Sick Boy's snake tongue. Then he kicks Spud's head in to within an inch of his life. Admittedly Spud wanted him to do this at first but when he changed his mind, Begbie was not going to stop.
  • He's slipped into cocaine use, which would definitely not help his state of mind.
• Batman Gambit: Soon after taking over his aunt's pub, Sick Boy starts "Leith Publicans Against Drugs", an organization that gets coverage in the newspaper. He displays the article and a supportive letter from the local police sergeant prominently in the pub, reasoning that no rank-and-file officer would want to embarrass his boss by busting all the drug dealing that Sick Boy depends on taking place in and around the pub. At the end of the book we learn that it didn't work.
• Because I Said So: One of Begbie's mantras, as per usual.
• Bolivian Army Ending: The book ends with Begbie waking up from his coma and grabbing Simon's wrist as the latter verbally abuses him while writing on his face.
• Copiously Credited Creator: In-Universe: Sick Boy credits himself with practically everything in the titular porno. Since Nikki and Rab actually wrote the film's script, they are not pleased that he's taking credit for it. It comes back to bite him when the police investigate him.
• Demoted to Extra: Second Prize, despite being a part of the group Renton ripped off at the end of Trainspotting.
• Deus ex Machina: When Begbie finally gets to confront Renton, he gets hit by a car.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: To lesser and greater degrees, all of the lads:
  • Begbie has spent most of The Nineties in prison and everyone has mobile phones when he gets out, much to his chagrin. Also, his furniture store he owned with fellow bam Lexo has been converted into a Thai restaurant/cafe and he's not best pleased with the poxy payoff given as remuneration. And Sick Boy and Spud can hardly be bothered to play card games with him and the other nutters!
    "Wits fuckin wrong with ivray cunt?!"
  • Sick Boy's ability to charm women is diminishing as his gut widens, his nose rots and his looks fade. This was the primary interest of his, along with scamming, in 1980s Leith. Also, he forgets once again that if you're going to use people, they might just bite back. They get wiser to his games this time round.
  • Renton has spent the last decade in the Dam and finds Leith to have morphed beyond his comprehension in the interim.
  • Spud is still hitting bad luck again and again, and the new order has even less place for him than it did back in the day.
• Freestate Amsterdam: Renton's place of safe haven since the original novel, and Rab's stag do get away of choice. Sick Boy eagerly joins the stag just so he can track down Mark to demand his money back and bring Rents back to the fold.
• Gag Penis: Curtis is a shy teenager whom Sick Boy initially refers to as "an apprentice Spud" until his sees the size of his penis in the toilets. Curtis is immediately signed up for the titular porno.
• Heel–Faith Turn: Second Prize has distanced himself from alcohol and, by extension, the lads, by becoming a Christian. Doesn't stop Begbie from getting him into further trouble...
• Humiliation Conga: Sick Boy and how. Having spent the entire novel, no, his life scamming, fucking over, using and otherwise pissing off a great many people, it all comes crashing down on him. Trying to phone Renton from the Cannes porn festival, he realises with shock that Rents has cleared out the joint production bank account (in which were the embezzled earnings of dozens of Rangers supporters, to the tune of over £60,000) and stolen the prints of the film. He tries and fails to catch Renton via Begbie, and in doing so causes the latter grievous injuries in a car crash. Embarrassing himself in front of his friends and Nikki, he just barely misses Renton at the airport. To pour salt on his wounds, he learns that the authorities have found out he illegally produced the porno in the UK and is named and shamed in the paper. He's now forced to do a runner with Nikki, only to find... that she's left him to run away with Renton and Dianne. He headbutts himself in the mirror in self loathing yet decides to get one tiny victory over the comatose Begbie by taunting him at the hospital. But to cap it all off, Franco wakes up and grabs his arm with ferocious intent...
  • Well and truly justified, because apart from everything else, he had always been intending to sic Begbie on Renton.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: He actually made his arrest for making the porno worse, on account of having replaced his name over everyone else on the crew. As a result, the police are only looking for him.
  • It gets to the point where he has literally nine different suspects (and counting) as to who got the cops on him, because he didn't realise how badly he antagonised certain people.
• Hypocrite: It is a bit rich for Alison to coldly dismiss Tommy as a smackhead when, as Spud notes to himself, all of them (including Alison) used far more heroin for far longer, and it was purely a matter of luck that they escaped HIV infection over years of addiction while Tommy fell victim within a few months.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming:
  • Each character has their individual chapter naming convention:
    • Sick Boy has Scam # 18,732-18,753.
    • Nikki has "...quote from chapter..."
    • Spud has Quote Fae Chapter.
    • Renton has Whores Of Amsterdam Pt 1 through 12.
    • Begbie has QUOTE FAE FUCKIN CHAPTER.
  • The three sections overall are named Stag, Porno and Exhibition (ironically, as each character's true nature becomes apparent for all to see, and Sick Boy makes an utter spectacle out of himself).
• Intentionally Awkward Title: It's called Porno and has a blowup doll on the cover.
• Manipulative Editing: Sick Boy does this to the porn film to make it look like Nikki has done anal, when she refused to do so. He adds his name to every crew role in the credits, displacing Nikki and Rab's roles in writing the script.
• Moral Event Horizon: In-Universe, various characters get alienated from each other due to their views of this occurring, in actual fact or otherwise.
  • From Begbie's perspective, certain people have just gone too far and therefore justifiably aroused his righteous anger. This can only mean trouble. Chronologically:
    • Naturally Renton for absconding with the loot and never bothering to compensate him. He also comes to believe that it was Rents who sent him the gay porn while in the nick, unaware that it was in fact Sick Boy.
    • Sick Boy warns him that his ex-wife June was "washing up" i.e doing crack pipes with Spud in front of their children. Along with heroin, this is one of the drugs Begbie simply cannot abide, and the danger it represents for the boys is way too much for him to take. In reality, Spud was literally washing dishes with her to cheer her up and do a favour after Sean beat up Michael and frazzled her nerves. Unfortunately for all parties, this misunderstanding never gets clarified over the course of the story.
    • Chizzie for being rumoured to have abused young children (while it's heavily implied, Begbie doesn't know for certain what he did exactly). He glasses Chizzie in the neck to kill him in front of several witnesses and very much traumatises Second Prize in the process. This also informs much of his paranoia during the latter third of the novel.
    • Spud wants to cash out on life insurance so goads him into killing him too. He infuriates Begbie by taunting him about the previous murders, headbutting him and gloating that Renton compensated him alone, all proceeds mainly going to further his heroin supply. But the thing that pushes Begbie over the edge is the simple fact that Spud has, perversely, given up and wants him to murder him. After a lengthy beating Spud is only barely saved by the arrival of Alison and their wee boy.
    • Finally, Sick Boy for leading him on throughout the novel and taunting him something fierce while he's in a coma on a hospital bed. Franco wakes up...
  • Renton burns his bridges with Sick Boy for good because he misled him into thinking Begbie was still safely behind bars and essentially was just using him for finances while always intending to sic Begbie on him when the porn film was wrapped.
  • Chizzie crosses it when he wins a hefty payout with Spud (who has taken tranquillisers as a downer) in the horse races. Going out on an epic bender, they find a drunken skank and take her to a secluded location. He first demonstrates his preferred blowjob technique on Spud and then proceeds to rape first her mouth, then her arse, also forcing the two of them to have sex in their messed up state. Then he gets into a big fight with Spud in a pub and later threatens to take his girlfriend Alison "on a date".
  • Nikki is appalled when Sick Boy changes the tone of her fellow starlet's skin in the movie's final cut to make it seem as though Nikki had done anal when she had abjectly refused to and shown the whole thing to really be a cheap, tacky vanity project for him and him alone. He has misused her trust in the relationship and revealed himself for the nasty, cruel scumbag that he is.
  • Sick Boy views this towards Renton when he steals the money a second time and the dominoes start falling on Simon via everybody else. He's conveniently ignoring the fact that he really did deserve this punishment.
• Pædo Hunt: Begbie's motive for eventually murdering Chizzy when they meet for the first and last time in the pub.
• Parallel Porn Titles: The porno is titled Seven Rides For Seven Brothers to accommodate as many cast members as possible.
• Sex Equals Love: Dianne and Mark finally end up together, making this trope applicable even though it takes them ten years to get there.
• Small Name, Big Ego: This comes to shine very clearly through the cracks of Sick Boy's deceit.
• Suicide by Cop: Spud tries to manipulate Begbie into killing him. Frank persuades him that he has plenty to live for then says he's going to kill him because he doesn't like being manipulated. Luckily they get interrupted.
• Wham Line: For Sick Boy, from Spud: "HE NEVER RIPPED ME OFF!" While it isn't a surprise to the reader, Sick Boy had no idea that Renton gave Spud his share of the money. He's honestly hurt to learn that his ex-Heterosexual Life-Partner was ultimately more loyal to Spud, which prompts him to seek revenge (and, in turn, is the catalyst for the entire plot).

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