It's Filth worth reading
Rob Clarke

"I go to the newsagent and buy a Sun. I also look at the pornographic magazines on the top shelf. I make no apologies for this; the job is one in which it's dangerous to think too much, so the best thing is to channel your energy into something that's the easiest to think about but which does you no harm. For most of us sex fits the bill nicely."

These are the inept words of Bruce Robertson, the corrupt cop who is at the centre of Irvine Welsh's latest novel simply titled Filth.

Anyone who has read Trainspotting understands that Irvine Welsh is not exactly a practitioner of linguistic verve--and Filth is no exception. In fact, the book reads more like a screenplay than a novel and there are even interludes written in the bodice-rippling style which Welsh has used in previous works.

The Scottish author is renown for glamorization of the unglamorous, but with Filth, Welsh enters new ground by probing into the depths of darkness and evil with the character of Bruce Robertson.

Bruce Robertson is the Detective Sergeant of an Edinburgh police department who is looking to finally get that promotion which he believes is his for the taking. Yet Bruce finds himself distracted by various elements, including an estranged wife, a coke habit, prostitution, football, and his declining genital health-not to mention a botched murder case to solve. Robertson plays a dual role of protagonist and antagonist as his mental state creates an internal opposition. He is the victim of anxiety attacks and often carries himself with an omnipresent stupor. As much as the egotistical cop attempts to bluff himself and everyone impeding his promotion, Robertson's ethical consciousness slowly accumulates.

Taking on the form of a tapeworm and a genital rash, Robertson's subconscience devours his repressed mental past to reveal his object self. The end result is an extremely dark and disturbing novel with an eerie schizophrenic tone.

Welsh's creation of Bruce Robertson is his personal testimonial to the neurotic persona of the tortured soul. He internalizes the mentations of good, evil, power, and greed into a methodical struggle within a lucidly average character. A defining moment in the book comes when Robertson's ethical consciousness reveals to him that he has paid a great price for repressing his true self:

"Your desperate sneering and mocking only illustrates how high the price has been and how fully it has been paid. The price is your soul. Your life, your circumstances and your job demanded that price.

Frightened that you wouldn't cast a shadow when you faced the sun, you stopped looking at it.

Your head stayed bowed, except in the service of your new masters. But this didn't happen with a strike.

This happened way way back. I would have said that you had a journey into the darkness, but in truth you never made it out of it."

Welsh's convictions are worn on his forehead rather than his sleeve as he conveys the battle for inner solitude and peacefulness through the persona of Bruce Robertson. Welsh takes the easy way out by purporting that the conceptual self is a weak and self contained domain.

Just like heroin can control us, so too can our repressed thoughts and feelings. Welsh conveys that giving in is a legitimate way out, when really it isn't.

If anything, one has to applaud Welsh for having the "bottle" to venture into new ground in terms of stylistic structure.

His first person social commentary and monologue carries the book with a stream of consciousness style that is very exciting and fresh.

Filth is a very brave step for Welsh in his crusade for versatility in literary fiction. Even when he stumbles, Welsh seems to be able to create a very readable novel that combines humour, shock, intelligence, and of course filth, all at once. Read it and bask in its glamorous Filth.