Irvine Welsh Not The New Jane Austen Shocker
Aaron Kelly, author of the recent full-length critical study of Irvine Welsh, sent me a note recently about the spurious supposed connection between Mr Welsh and Jane Austen. On irvinewelsh.com a while ago I flagged the BBC story about Welsh’s ‘debt’ to Austen, which was supposedly based on comments made to Aaron Kelly by Welsh during the course of researching his book. As Aaron points out, this is simply not true. Here’s his take on what happened:
“I noticed that you also mentioned I was the supposed source of a number of spurious newspaper claims that Irvine’s work was influenced by Jane Austen and others. I just wanted to set the record straight and say that I never claim this in my book or any other published work, nor did i say it to any journalist. I have been hideously misquoted. Actually not even misquoted as i never said such things.
Just to reassure you, Irvine never claimed to be influenced in this way. What I mentioned to the journalist was that in a Channel 4 documentary on the history of the novel a couple of years back, Irvine professed his interest in reading the work of Austen, George Eliot and others. So this already is public knowledge and not of any real note. A number of journalists with an axe to grind against Irvine (and papers such as the despicable Daily Record) then decided to use this information in a very misleading way. As you will know, the idea that such writers actually influenced Welsh’s writing, in its form and content, is ludicrous to say the least.
I just wanted to distance myself publicly from those journalists’ stories as I was preoccupied at the time and missed their appearance in the press.”
So there we have it. Thanks to Aaron for letting us know the real truth of the matter. And I can breathe a quiet sigh of relief because I hate bloody Jane Austen with a passion.
More on Irvine Welsh:
Spike | Google | Amazon UK | Amazon US | Wikipedia
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- Trainspotting Prequel Planned
- Irvine reads from the Masterchefs
- Irvine Welsh: Aaron Kelly
- Jane Austen in leather…
- New Irvine Welsh Interview
