We asked for your opinions on the author of `Trainspotting'

Irvine Welsh: readers reply

Drugs and the drug world are incapable of supporting Welsh's ambitions, hence his need to create ever more desperate and implausible horror scenarios, inflating this currency and devaluing its impact. Too many shortcuts are taken and his writing is now seriously repetitious (although this is perhaps an honest portrayal of drug culture). There is an element of voyeuristic fascination in many of Welsh's more hysterical admirers, for whom he chronicles a world of which they have no experience and (sensibly) little intention of experiencing.

Paul Sutton

Oxford

Welsh's media acolytes are fond of quoting Oscar Wilde: "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book, only good or bad writing" - But Chris Maume was right to blow the gaff on Irvine Welsh and to point out that his writing has impressive but also appalling elements. The ham- fisted attempts to provide a credible context for the vivid drugs, violence, sex set pieces at which he excels, show that he lacks the courage of his vaunted "amoral" convictions. Look at how post-traumatic guilt affects the murderers and gang rapists in The Acid House and Marabou Stork Nightmares and see the anarchic one spectacularly pulling his punches. See how a mawkish family tragedy is wheeled on like a deus ex machina in Trainspotting to explain away Renton's self-destructive urges. It cuts no ice artistically, and should destroy the image of Welsh as a contemporary Camus.

Miranda Green

London

Welsh is forever banging on about how much he is influenced by pop music. If Trainspotting was his Velvet Underground Banana album, bright and daring, then Ecstasy (correctly execrated by Chris Maume) is his Metal Machine Music; a numb, repetitive, cynical irritant.

EP Newton

Hove

Having not been able to put down Welsh's first offering Trainspotting, I was expecting an equally gripping sequel. The Acid House was, however, a disappointing follow-up. After the first story I had proclaimed myself a Welsh obsessive, but, like most fads, by the seventh I was bored. Like a lot of my peers, I had found Welsh's style fresh and innovative, although hard to translate at points. But I think that, like many of the "Britpop" bands with whom he is compared, Welsh is a one-hit wonder with all except the dedicated and fashionable few.

Ruth Joel

Calne, Wilts