Lust for Life! by John Neil Munro

Author:John Neil Munro [Munro, John Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
ISBN: 9780857906649
Publisher: Birlinn

12

Fear and Lothian

I’m not saying that the reviews should not be taken seriously. But sales are important too, and sales in a way allow you to get beyond the critics. It’s nice to have critical acclaim, but there is something tangible about sales that removes the element of a single, subjective opinion.

Soon after signing up with Secker, Irvine learned that things were not well at his new publisher. During the winter of 1992 their parent company, Reed International, made two editors, including Lesley Bryce who had just finished editing Trainspotting, redundant. This left the firm worryingly short of staff to read scripts and commission books. Welsh was concerned at the idea of a pool of inexperienced copy-editors and feared a decline in standards at Secker, with the publisher playing safe and not taking risks signing up new writers who dared not to write in Standard English. Irvine encouraged other Scottish writers to sign a letter of protest to Secker’s parent company. But it was all to no avail, and Secker muddled along in a way that would eventually see Robertson leave for Jonathan Cape and take most of his writers – including Irvine – with him.

Despite the problems at Secker, Irvine signed another book deal with them on 21 July 1993, and The Acid House came out just seven months after the release of Trainspotting. (The deal also led to the later novel Marabou Stork Nightmares.) Irvine was, by then, starting to really enjoy writing, and he was churning out work at a prodigious rate. Robin bought the second book but paid a similar advance to the £1,000 dished out for Trainspotting; at that time there was nothing to suggest that Welsh’s sales figures would suddenly take off. In his letter to Duncan McLean on 13 April 1993 Irvine wrote about some of the short stories that would eventually appear in The Acid House. ‘I feel quite positive about it, although I suspect as you alluded to in your letter that most literary types will find it a bit of a head-fuck. Still, that’s the way the cookie crumbles . . . I’m seeing Robin from Secker about the short stories and novella I’ve been working on, tentatively entitled A Smart Cunt and other stories. I thought of that title as I don’t think Secker wouldn’t [sic] go for something called A Smart Cunt. It’s a novella and a collection of other stories, most of which are 15–20 pages long, so too long for the mags. I’ve completed most of them, and have a few more to rewrite. I’ve also taken the second draft of my new novel from the word processor. I’m hoping for a final draft for August, but the raving season has started . . . It should be quite different from Trainspotting although to be honest I haven’t a fucking clue what it’s actually about.’

Prior to the Secker publicity machine rolling into action for Trainspotting, Irvine’s old friends played their part in promoting the upcoming novel.

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