#121: ‘The Two Philosophers’ by Irvine Welsh

As mentioned in my previous post about a short fight scene in The Odyssey, I’ve been wondering for a while whether or not to include Irvine Welsh’s short story, ‘The Two Philosophers’, from his short story collection The Acid House.

Rereading it today I realised why it came to mind reading Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s epic poem, and that’s that the two stories (or part of, in the case of the poem) are inverse versions of each other. While Homer has two beggars fighting for the entertainment of Greek noblemen, Welsh has two career academics going at it for the benefit of a crowd of Glasgow Rangers fans. While Welsh’s version can’t be spun to be anything other than a punch-up in a carpark (even with one of his protagonists shaping up in a ‘boxing stance’, he still ends up putting the boot in), the two fights are a direct result of a baying mob insisting that a quarrel is settled ‘with honour’.

Welsh’s story also reminds me of a story that the TV and radio presenter Danny Baker tells about his Bermondsey-born, former-docker father Spud’s dismay at what he saw as disrespectful treatment in the world of broadcast entertainment. The story ends with Spud exclaiming, ‘You know what their problem is son? Not enough right-handers in your game.’ Perhaps I’m projecting too much here, but I’ve always understood that to be less about justifying someone giving someone else a slap, and more about acknowledging that there are humans involved in these situations and it does no good to deny that these instincts exist. As Welsh describes the academics’ relationship:

Debate and argument are as natural to us as breathing is to others. […] Yet one thing was agreed on by both Ornstein and McGlone: the argument, which was their bread and butter, always spilled over from the professional into the personal. […] He [Ornstein] realised that part of him had wanted to punch McGlone’s smug face for ages.

This inner turmoil, which the pair have denied for so long, is seen through in the space of a short drinking session, by members of the Govan mob they have ended up drinking with:

Thir’s only wahn way tae settle this argument: yous two in a squerr go ootside.

With honour to many.

Anyway, I really like Irvine Welsh’s short story writing, but I’ll be glad to put this book away a bit more permanently and stop wondering whether or not to include it here. This is definitely not a story about boxing in any way, but it still feels like it fits.