Irvine Welsh on Can Nothing Save Us? and the dark logic of modern America

Irvine Welsh says he ought to be photographed looking gritty and grumpy, but instead he appears wholesome, talks about yoga and says he could look a lot worse. Over three decades after Trainspotting was published in 1993, he remains best known for the book that made him famous, even though he has since written 17 novels and four short-story collections.

His new book, Can Nothing Save Us?, is a multigenerational thriller set in Las Vegas and aimed at Trump-era America. Welsh says he wanted to write a novel about modern America without getting into the politics of real figures directly, while still capturing a society shaped by affordability problems, climate crisis, health crises and family strain.

Welsh has spent much of the past 20 years in the United States and says he was there when Obama was elected and when Trump was first elected. He says he was less worried about Trump than many of the professional, educated women he knew, who were more angered by Hillary Clinton. In the novel, Trump appears only indirectly through a fictional television glow.

The book began as material for an HBO pilot with Calvin Harris in 2014, but that project stalled. Welsh then realised he had the basis for “a novel about modern America.” He gave the draft to his editor and writer friends, who disliked it, and he later rewrote it after watching writers work through the material for the screen version.

Welsh says the novel was also influenced by accelerationism, the idea that technology and capitalism must speed up in order for humanity to reach a better place. He says the book reflects a sense that everything is moving too fast to control, and he links that feeling to social media, the climate crisis, the internet, the “radicalisation of the centre” in British and US politics, and what he calls enshittification.

The novel moves from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968 to modern mass shootings and ends in spectacular carnage. Welsh says he does not own a gun, but a visit to the Lock & Load shooting range in Miami left him feeling the power of shooting and wondering how it might affect a dispossessed young person.

He also discusses his history of heroin addiction in his early 20s and says rehab did not work for him, so he quit cold turkey. He describes the main challenge as psychological rather than physical, because drug use had become part of his emotional vocabulary.

In recent years Welsh has become strict about wellbeing. He writes at a standing desk, takes the Zapply nutritional supplement, attends breathing workshops, and practices pilates and yoga, especially yin yoga. He says he is more Zen now than he used to be.

The article also looks at his family life and aging. Welsh says his father, a former dockworker and carpet salesman, was his best mate, while his relationship with his mother, a waitress, was more fractious. She was critical of Trainspotting at first, but later came to embrace its success, and she died in 2023.

Welsh says he has stopped celebrating birthdays, has no clear sense of his own age, and recently abandoned lifelong atheism after taking DMT. He says the experience made him feel more positive and more open to uncertainty about life after death.