This novel is narrated by a tough-minded, gay man named
Rilke,an appraiser for an auction house which has been
comissioned to sell the contents of a house in Glasgow. He
uncovers a splendid collection of classic and modern
pornography compiled by the man who owned the house, but also
a set of half-a-century old photos which seem to depict a
woman's torture and murder. He sets out to discover whether
or not this
"snuff" really occured, and if the owner of that house could
really have participated in such an act. On the way, he
visits the considerable vice district of Glasgow, with its
dirty streets, greasy restaurants, bars, and porn stores. The
style is terse and carefully descriptive when necessary. We
learn about the increasing trade in women, children and their
vital organs, drugs, and porn in Europe since the fall of the
USSR, about the compulsions of transvestism and furtive gay
sex in dark corners (Rilke's own practice), and about the
reasons the auction business is primarily cash-based. The
depiction of amoral behavior from one end of the social scale
to the other is informative and intelligently noir-ish. But
the ultimate reality check Welsh is working toward is
problematical, and too narrowly conceived, in my opinion.
Various people explain to Rilke that if *men* desire
something purely enough, even snuff, they will bring it
about. Death is at the heart of sex; Poe is quoted about the
death of a beautiful women being the most beautiful thing in
the world. Since the cavemen drew pictures of naked ladies on
the walls of caves, "all manner of vice" existed. The
distance between between de Sade and the Traveller's
Companion books one bought in Paris b/c they were banned in
the US and Britain is collapsed. Late in the novel, Welsh has
Rilke discover the porn collector's edition of _Merryland_,
an 18th century version of the old theme of the woman's body
as a newly-discovered paradise. To Welsh (ok, Rilke), the
woman is not the subject of adulation and desire, but is
anatomized like a dead cadaver, taken apart like a student
would cut up a frog. Damned if the other texts are not all
about death also, cutting, stripping, murdering the female in
the man's heart. Not too far from Jane Campion's version of
the novel _The Cutting Room_. And here is Welsh
(er, Rilke's) interpretation of a bridal gown: "the bride a
sacrifice in white." Point taken, Ms Welsh, time and time
again. Yes your book is noir--unless your interpretation of
its universe cannot be taken seriously.
I wish someone else who has
read this book would comment on it, and on my interpretation,
which of couse may be all wet.
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