Context: when. Publication. Political, cultural context. Literary or artistic association. The author.

Biography of the author. Works of the author. Any association between his life and the novel.
Genre
Plot
The title
Characters
Setting
Structure
Narrative voice/Lyrical I. How the narrative voice affects the story.
Author’s style and techniques and literary devices (related to meaning, do not separate for from
content). Symbols, metaphors, use of language.
Themes:
 Pornography and the role of woman
 Elements of detective fiction
 What elements belong to the traditional genre
 Sublime/gothic
 Vampirism (who acts over who?)
 Photographs: they become a search, a quest that accompanies a change in his life. It is a
personal quest. Interior search.

The Cutting Room (2002)

Louise Welsh

GENRE:
Louise Welsh’s novel sits easily within the parameters and conventions of the crime fiction genre. Louse
Welsh is definitely influenced by crime writers – especially Chandler. Thus, Welsh’s novel might resemble
the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. Chandler, Raymond (1888–1959) was an American novelist.
He is remembered as the creator of the private detective Philip Marlowe. He is considered to be a founder of
the hard-boiled school of detective fiction, which denotes a tough, realistic style of detective fiction. Even
though her work is grounded in the traditional roots of crime fiction, there are elements of the novel which
transcend or defy existing conventions, such as the author’s choice to make her main protagonist a
homosexual man. Welsh explains this herself when she describes Rilke as being ‘in a long line of literary anti-
heroes’.
In order to fully understand the work of Louise Welsh and talk about the concept of anti-hero, it is necessary to
have a clear concept of crime fiction.

Crime fiction: Crime fiction is the genre of fiction that deals with crimes, their detection, criminals, and their
motives. It has crime as its central theme. The commission and detection of crime, with the motives, actions,
arraignment (comparecencia), judgement and punishment of a criminal, is one of the great paradigms of
narrative. Theft, assault, rape and murder are central to the genre. The obsession with sexual violence, often
coupled with the supernatural, was central to the Gothic novel. Particularly in the early Victorian period, 19th c.
novels tended to be less explicit, and also began to explore the criminal underworld of the new industrial cities.
The crime fiction genre encompasses the subgenre of the detective story, which is defined by the adoption of
the investigator as protagonist. Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841) is often considered the first
detective story. Other notable pioneers include Dickens, principally for Inspector Bucket in Bleak House
(1853).
The detective story came of age in the creation by Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) of Sherlock Holmes. The
American ‘hard-boiled’ writing of Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) marks a dramatic break with the established
tradition of detective fiction. The traditional detective novels were hermetically sealed, typically by location in a
country house (though any isolated setting will do), while their structure was remarkably consistent, featuring a
discovery (the body), a sequence of clues (a parade of suspects), and a denouement [conclusion, resolution]
(the detective announces who is guilty). They are, for the most part, profoundly unreal, given the amateur
status of their detectives, and the omission of any forensic or proper police investigations. The hard-boiled
school reacted against this highly artificial model with harsh and violent stories, usually in grim (gloomy) urban
settings, which feature both professional investigators and police, and blurred the moral distinctions between
criminals and law enforcers.
Notable developments include the police procedural, a kind of novel giving extensive details of official
investigative methodology; the persistent investigation of sexuality; the continuing success and importance to
crime fiction of female authors; the prevalence of themes of corruption and conspiracy in high places; and the
very popular group of historical and particularly medieval detectives.
The traditional elements of the detective story are: (1) the seemingly perfect crime; (2) the wrongly accused
suspect at whom circumstantial evidence points; (3) the clumsiness of dim-witted police; (4) the greater
powers of observation and superior mind of the detective; and (5) the startling and unexpected denouement, in
which the detective reveals how the identity of the culprit was ascertained.

Anti-hero: A ‘non-hero’, or the antithesis of a hero of the old-fashioned kind who was capable of heroic deeds
(actions), who was dashing (attractive, adventurous, and full of confidence), strong, brave and resourceful.
There have been many instances of fictional heroes who have displayed noble qualities and virtuous
attributes. The anti-hero is the man who is given the vocation of failure. The anti-hero – a type who is
incompetent, unlucky, tactless, clumsy, stupid, buffoonish (tonto) – is of ancient lineage (roots/origin) and is to
be found, for instance, in the Greek New Comedy (A style of ancient Greek comedy in which young lovers
typically undergo endless vicissitudes in the company of stock fictional characters). An early and outstanding
example in European literature is the endearing (lovely/sweet/captivating) figure of the knight of Don Quixote
(1605, 1615).

PLOT
The novel is structured around an investigation into an assemblage (series) of unsettling photographs, in which
a woman appears to have been tortured for sexual gratification.
The snapshots discovered by Rilke, an auctioneer, while clearing a wealthy suburban property lead him on a
search to determine their veracity as snuff pornography, a project also driven by Rilke’s own haunted
(tormented/troubled) past and disturbed psychology. Rilke’s vulnerability drives the need to exorcize this ghost,
this woman, who is associated with many of the women he meets. Rilke might be disturbed by his own
behavior. This allusion to Rilke’s past functions, then, to emphasize an unsettled unconscious, which in turn
might be making a comment on Glasgow’s own repressed urban psychology. Indeed, Rilke’s distinctive appeal
in the novel lies in his criminal links to the subterranean city, a connection reinforced by his mysterious
persona/personality/character and his vampiric appearance: he is referred to as “the Cadaver, Corpse, Walking
Dead”. Rilke is masculine, hard drinking and happy to use his fists when necessary. He is promiscuous (having
many sexual relationships), and he is homosexual. Rilke is characterized by his solitary outlook and his ties to
a masculine urban criminal underworld, which explain his uncanny, obscure charisma. As Welsh herself puts it,
he is a “night surveillant (vigilante),” who “walk[s] alone in [his] society.
The protagonist’s name connects him most obviously to the Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, who explored in
his writings the unease and estrangement produced by an increasingly technologized urban life, and whose
semi-autobiographical novel Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) also sees the narrator suffering from an acute form of
vertigo. Likewise, Rilke confronts a large number of unsettling, giddy (disorienting/confusing) urban
experiences and complains of a fear of heights, a loss of balance, breathlessness, and a “trance”-like or
“surreal” consciousness of his surroundings (pp. 18, 43, 172, 224). The suburb’s “green leafy” surroundings
and “petty respectability up front” (front) function as a camouflage, meant to disguise “intricate cruelties behind
closed doors”. Rilke’s travels through the city further extend this uncanny aura (atmosphere). Repeatedly, the
façade (exterior, face, aspect) of a building or the demeanor (attitude, appearance, conduct, way of behaving)
of those with whom he is meeting indicates something other, something concealed, hidden under the
reputable(highly regarded/well respected) appearances. As he puts it at one point, commenting on the generic
porn shop and its place within the globalized city, it’s as if the everyday shopper doesn’t see the dreary
storefront, the unwashed window that displays nothing, nothing at all. But if you are sympathetic, if you have
the motivation, you can be in any town, any city, in the world, a stranger on your first day, and it will sing to you.
Here, the focus on a shared secrecy common to “any town, any city in the world” reinforces the
wickedness/evilness of a global sex market. This passage makes evident the transnational, anonymous quality
of Glasgow’s pornography business.
In the conclusion of the novel, the “transcript” exposes Glasgow’s part in the global sex-trafficking market, tying
it to the horrific experience of one particular trafficked woman.
In a chapter entitled “The Nature of Pornography” Welsh denounces the capitalist culture and focuses on the
most economically marginalized. Walking along Argyle Street, one of Glasgow’s major shopping thoroughfares
(avenue), Rilke witnesses school children making their way between piles of cardboard boxes (cajas de
carton) filled with rotting vegetables”; a group of Sikh pensioners being insulted by a passing woman on the
basis of their ethnicity; and later an “old man” creeping (walking quietly) among factories in ruins near the quay
(muelle). The portrayals involve a pointed reference to the city’s more vulnerable urban communities: the
working class, migrants, and the elderly, whose ongoing experience of poverty, exclusion, and disaffection is
here plainly evident. Welsh is pointing out the unequal distribution of wealth between rich and poor and the
violation of basic rights. Welsh’s novel focuses on the most economically marginalized that suffer “the dark
side of capitalism. This impression of urban inequality becomes stronger as Rilke continues into the heart of
the city. He sees a policeman handling a suspect stumbling as if drunk, or too tired to care, and later
“newspaper stands revealing a child’s drowned body and the promise of full details on the murdered ‘vice girl’”.
These are clear reasons for urban despair.
Welsh’s novel frequently plays with the alienating (cause someone to feel isolated or estranged) effect of
crowds on the solitary narrator, who likewise responds by positioning himself in the role of observer: “I wear my
mirrored aviator’s shades. The black of the lenses is like the eyehole gaps in a skull. Instead of my eyes, a
mineral reflection of the crowd”.
The feminist dimensions come through (are acquired) most directly in the conclusion of the novel, where, by
subverting the conventional terms of the crime genre, the text draws overt attention to the contemporary plight
of sexually victimized women and connects this plight (difficult/unfortunate situation) specifically to Glasgow’s
urbanity. Thus, despite initially reaffirming the crime drama’s traditional patriarchal values by drawing attention
to the tortured female body—the dead and bloodied corpse of the woman in Rilke’s photograph—and seeing
this body as a locus of investigative anxiety, the conclusion of the novel instead undermines this fascination by
substituting the female victim with a genre-defying instance of successful self-defense. Here, Welsh plays with
our generic expectation that Anne-Marie [a burlesque/striptease dancer whom McKindless visits and
photographs] requires someone to save her, and that—if Rilke or the police are too late—she will be found
butchered/murdered/slaughtered, in a combination of sex and gore (blood that has been shed). Instead, it is
McKindless’s body that now lies bleeding on the floor, all the more surprisingly as he has until this point been
thought dead. In toying with reader anticipation in this way, Welsh rejects the crime genre’s traditional
patriarchal violence and shifts the focus to the generic objectification of female bodies as a source of urban
male pleasure. Correspondingly, the novel supports/reinforces the danger of the sex market’s globalized
expansion, highlighting a feminist awareness of the fact that turning persons into objects is killing them.
The pseudorealist transcript contained in the novel’s appendix, wherein Welsh grants a voice to a particular
(fictionalized) Eastern European sex worker, Adia Kovalyova, further strengthens this message, accentuating
the Jekyll-like perversion that such a supposedly “normal” global city is capable of extreme cruelties. In other
words, the text reveals Glasgow’s contemporary urban public as a city having a split personality, the
respectable on, on the one hand, and the sex trade business on the other.
The novel’s concern with this urban problem is at once a reflection on feminism’s contemporary social urgency
and a comment on Glasgow itself as a globalized city, where even here, in a place so apparently removed, the
violent implications of the global sex trade are visible/clear. Leslie, Rilke’s criminal friend, makes reference to
the problem but tries to make light of it by saying:
Glasgow likes to think it's a hard city but compared to London or New York, fucking Paris probably, we're a
peaceful wee haven.
Here, his reassurances to Rilke turn out to have misjudged the city’s criminal reality. Adia Kovalyova’s
testimony against Trapp exposes the lie or misjudgement of Leslie’s opinion, making explicit Glasgow’s
substantial involvement in evilness and depravity.
However, The Cutting Room’s judgment on contemporary is not entirely negative. Instead, the novel evokes a
more complex awareness of the fine line connecting conventionality and deviance/perversity. As in The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the doubleness in the novel does not establish or fix the boundaries
of good and evil, self and other, but reveals the ambivalence of identity and the fluctuation of social and moral
codes. In other words, Welsh’s novel, much like Stevenson’s, undermines the established social principles that
make up the modern-day urbanity—the surface corporate sanity and patriarchal authority—and turns on its
head (reverses/questions/subverts) any secure notion of urban respectability. The result is a Gothic critique of
the monstrous behaviors at the urban core. Yet, on the other hand, the novel also celebrates transgressive
identities, which play a key role in redefining Glasgow’s urban experience.
Rilke is our guide to the hidden backrooms. In this sense, Rilke’s own links to a queer community offer an
important defense of deviant/transgressing pleasure, making evident the illicit behaviors Glasgow also
celebrates.
Thus, the city’s statue of John Knox, which points “down at us sinners from his standpoint/viewpoint on the hill,
stand as reminders of the threat of Presbyterian social–sexual conventionalism, their menacing/intimidating
statures/heights as institutionalized hatred. The novel makes explicit the function of these sites not only
through Steenie’s demented/insane pamphlets but also, more forcefully, through Rilke’s journey across Kelvin
Way, where “God is Gay” is graffitied over the central fountain. The fact that the city’s authorities have abandon
this location financially, and that they merely devote attention to it in the form of sexual
surveillance/monitoring/inspection/policing, makes clear its abandoned status in contrast to more established
spaces. In other words, this queer ground, abandoned by local powers, is a symbol of unattended violence.
In other words, the novel’s interest in the queer and the Gothic adds an important element of dissent to its own
urban society, registering a formal disregard for established rules and boundaries.
Indeed, the exposure of violence in an indictment of the norm, and the supposedly dangeroud queer
subculture emerges here as more morally legitimate. Nevertheless, the indictment of the city’s violence does
not entirely dispel the danger of the city or leave unattended the violence that persists undercover. Instead,
what emerges finally in The Cutting Room is a Glasgow alive with threat and possibility, a city heavily loaded
with the illicit but still attentive to what transgressive cultures might offer.

Bowery Auctions is close to bankruptcy/financial ruin when its expert but jaded/exhausted auctioneer is offered
an opportunity that will save it from the ruin, clearing a house packed with precious objects. Rilke agrees to do
the job despite the owner’s insistence that it must be completed within a week and that only he must deal with
the attic (roof space) which he finds full of rare pornographic books. Rilke is not a sensitive man (his own
habits are somewhat promiscuous) but the discovery of photographs depicting sexual torture and what may be
a murder committed many years ago appalls/shocks him. Despite the urgency of the job he begins an
investigation that takes him into the gloomiest/darkest/threatening areas of Glasgow in search of the truth. In
this novel, set in Glasgow inhabited by eccentrics and narrated by the quick-witted/bright/clever Rilke, Louise
Welsh explores the depths of human depravity drawing her novel towards a shocking and sobering (creating a
more serious, sensible, or solemn mood) ending.

The Cutting Room is, in essence, a crime novel, though an unconventional one.

Sex is graphically described in the book.

Rilke is an auctioneer who finds himself caught up in an unpleasant web of pornography, abuse and murder.
Called to remove the final belongings of the deceased Roddy McKindless, a welthy resident of Hyndland,
one of Glasgow's prosperous/wealthy suburbs, he finds a hidden collection of old black-and-white
pornographic photographs. McKindless is pictured in most of them, but the ones that concern Rilke are those
depicting the brutal murder of a young woman.
Is the murder staged or is it real? Rilke quickly becomes obsessed with finding out: hints of something
disturbing in his own past are given, and he is drawn into a bizarre world of amateur photographers,
transvestite clubs and the drug business.
Rilke is an interesting creation: masculine, tough, hard-drinking and happy to use his fists when necessary,
and characterized by his promiscuous homosexuality. All heroes have an Achilles heel, and it is Rilke's
rejection of intimacy itself that points to weakness. That's not an unusual character trait for amateur detectives
who prefer to play it alone, but the reasons for his emotional isolation give him added depth.
Welsh's feel for the Glasgow’s landscape is also enriched/reinforced/complemented/boosted by Rilke's
singular viewpoint.
The hero, Rilke, is a house clearance expert. He is hired by the ancient Miss McKindless, who is near the end
of her life. She wants him to dispose of/get rid of her dead brother's accumulated belongings, and Rilke thinks
he's found the good stuff that every auctioneer logs/yeans for: the overused items and antique evidence of
luxurious/sophisticated living. Hidden in the old devil's study, though, is the real stuff - the rare dirty books from
Olympia Press and the obscene and offensive photographs slipped inside a buff envelope. These photos
depict the sexual torture and murder of a young woman some time in the past. The photos are in black and
white, and the glimpses of soft furnishings suggest Paris.
Glasgow is a place full of its own perverse delights, however, and Rilke is our guide through its hidden
backrooms as he becomes a detective. The girl in the pictures has bewildered and frightened him. His amateur
investigations into her decades-old murder is an attempt to make amends; Rilke feels implicated somehow in
the world that exploited and killed the girl.
The amateur detective, the wandering observer, the queer auctioneer and his dubious/unreliable friends: it's
the kind of set-up that makes the reader anticipate further adventures for Rilke and his friends; his crew of
rough trannies/oppression, corrupt police officers and Merlot-drinking women.
Welsh understands that every fictional detective is committed. Like the best genre heroes, Rilke has very
idiosyncratic adventures. He's following a trail of clues, examining excluded/dropped evidence. While Rilke
sorts out the objects and clears the house of the dead, he is faced with pornographers who hide their true
business behind layers of obfuscation/obscurity/confusion.
The book is full of stuff: erotic ivory netsukes hidden in jacket pockets, etc. We see a transvestite being filmed
in a bar, grinning and displaying receded gums and nicotine-stained teeth. Rilke’s reactions are
compassionate. He's a fascinating lead/protagonist/star, taking us where each character is filled with their own
preoccupations, corrupted by their connections, and pushing us further into a the mysteries of the city, and
ultimately to the white slave trade.
The final revelations: when we actually find out who was dead and who wasn't and who was killed in the first
place, we feel a bit void/disilussioned. We want more evidence.
When Rilke, a promiscuous auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of violent and highly disturbing
photographs, he feels compelled to discover more about the deceased owner. Soon he finds himself in an
underworld of crime, depravity and secret desire, fighting for his life.
Louise Welsh’s writing combines aspects of a detective story with shades of the gothic.
So the mystery begins in the attic. Going through the dead man's belongings, evaluating his library for sale,
Rilke finds an envelope full of black-and-white photographs. They depict heterosexual pornographic scenes,
shocking and grim. Rilke's interest is expert, forensic; he can date the images, roughly, from the clothes:
''Suede shoes with high, thick heels. Postwar, but only just.'' The photos themselves appear to be taken in mid-
century Paris, with “Soleil et Desole” written on the back of one to mark its provenance (source/origin).
But behind these first images is something worse: a handful of photographs from the same period that depict
the sexual torture and death of a young woman, a snuff murder. Rilke is possessed (inexplicably) with a need
to find out what happened to the girl. His search will take him into the city's darkest corners, to sex shops and
clubs where men pay to take Polaroids of naked girls. Rilke is already familiar with a secret world of sex
through his own meetings in nighttime parks and public bathrooms.
The pornography trade and a half-century-old murder drive the plot of The Cutting Room. The narrator of this
“noir thriller” is a gay antiques dealer working for a Glasgow auction house perpetually on the verge of
insolvency.
A man who has learned to keep his expectations low, Rilke is surprised when the house provides several fine
antiques. But his wonder turns to horror when he discovers, among a vast collection of pornography, a series
of photos depicting the torture and a presumptive murder of a young woman. His attempt to uncover the truth
about the photos quickly becomes an obsession that leads him on a journey into a subterranean
(secret/concealed) sex market far different from the gay underground (in secrecy or hiding) of clubs and sites
that he frequents.
In Rilke, Welsh has created a complex, convincing character. Writing in the first person, she provides the
reader with seemingly uncensored access to Rilke’s mind, while the character himself reveals little awareness
of the reader’s presence; he neither justifies nor expresses guilt for his sexual activity. Still, the novel conveys
a strong moral message, defining pornography in terms of violence and degradation and demonstrating the
virtues of tolerance and respect for those who do no harm others in pursuing their desires.
The Cutting Room has much to offer besides a compelling plot and engaging narrator: a colorful cast of minor
characters, and a wealth of elegant phrasing.
In "The Cutting Room," Scottish writer Louise Welsh tackles a very nasty subject without provoking a trace of
moral suffering in the reader. Welsh's subject is snuff porn, one that has been used for both moralistic
condemnations of the sex trade and, in the guise of moralism. Welsh's credit that she never once lingers on
the subject in a prurient/degenerated manner. She never uses it to excite us.
In "The Cutting Room," the hero is Rilke. He's in his early 40s, and he's a gay auctioneer for one of Glasgow
auction houses.
Called to the mansion of an elderly spinster whose brother has just died, Rilke finds a collection of the kind of
antiques he didn't think existed anymore. Sensing a windfall for his company, he agrees to the old woman's
demand that the three-story house be completely cleared in one week, a third of the time it would normally
take. She also tells Rilke that her dead brother, a lifelong bachelor, has a private study that she wants Rilke
alone to attend to. "I would appreciate your discretion," she says.
What he finds is something that might be expected to cause embarrassment to an old lady: a collection of
erotica, including valuable editions of Olympia Press's Traveler's Companion series (the real-life line of books
that mixed works like "Lolita" along with specially commissioned (produced specially to order) porn. But there's
more -- a collection of photographs portraying people (including the dead man) having sex and a series
involving a young woman who, in the final photographs, is unmistakably dead, her throat cut.
"Let's just say I can't leave her there," Rilke explains, and it's all he needs to say. The clear implication of
Rilke's quest is to make sure that the dead woman is more than just another item to be stored among the junk
of the past.
Rilke is encouraged by nothing more than his sense of decency. It's a way in which Welsh avoids any
trace/indication of genre familiarity. Rilke is not the typical sentimental figure of hardboiled fiction -- the lone,
good man who cares. He's a cynic. He takes a seen-it-all attitude toward the professional scavengers (a
person who searches for and collects discarded items) who inhabit the city's auction houses, understanding
them as creatures who feed off/on carrion. If he doesn't condemn them it's only because he knows he's in the
same trade.
But Rilke's also a humane/compassionate/benevolent cynic. He doesn't deny people's good impulses, and he
doesn't delude/deceives himself about what people are capable of.
After Rilke, the most prominent character in the book is Glasgow itself. Life in "The Cutting Room" feels like a
conglomeration/variety of well-kept secrets.
"The Cutting Room" is further proof of the reappearance of Scottish fiction. You can find traces of morality
tales, urban fiction, crime stories and Gothics in "The Cutting Room" without finding any single point of
comparison that mirrors the book's unique voice or hardened humanism.
Much of the book’s success is down to Welsh’s incredible narrating character, Rilke. A cadaverous, gloomy,
gay auctioneer, he is an intriguing figure. Rilke discovers some disturbing old photographs while clearing out
the house of a recently deceased old man, and as he tries to find out more about them he is implicated
in/involved in a murky/dull/dim/gloomy world of pornographers, rent boys (a young male prostitute), drug
dealers, transvestites and more, as events unfold dangerously out of control.
Welsh’s skill to characterize is brilliant, both Rilke and the cast of supporting deadbeats/disreputable friends
that populate the pages. But perhaps even more impressive is her depiction of Glasgow, as the city becomes a
character in its own right; Gothic, dismal (gloomy/lugubrious/miserable), decaying and frightening in equal
measure. Using the crime novel format, Welsh employs the novel’s background to examine society’s
reaction to so-called sexual deviation, suggesting that what is and isn’t acceptable is never a black and white
issue, but rather a spectrum of shades of grey.

Glasgow has its own personality evoked/expressed/which manifests itself in scenes of Gothic suspense as
Rilke moves through the city. The characters are an uncanny/sinister/mysterious/terrifying/scary/creepy
mixture of the charismatic and the devious (dishnest/immoral).

Louise Welsh says that images of sex and violence are used cheaply in our society. Pictures of women’s
bodies are displayed high along/in every Main Street in the western world advertising anything. The solving of
an unnatural death is regularly early evening entertainment. It surprises me that I have written a book where
the central construct is the sexual exploitation and possible murder of a young woman. The Cutting Room is
an attempt to examine the way in which we look at women and the unchanging nature of pornography and
sexual exploitation. Discussing what you hate without reproducing it is a real challenge. It mattered to me that
people be disturbed rather than amused/excited by the photographs. Whether I have succeeded is ultimately
for the reader to decide.

The Cutting Room is a dark murder-mystery set in contemporary Glasgow, the story revolves around the
discovery of a set of old photographs that apparently depict the torture of a young girl. The pictures raise all
kinds of questions: was the girl complicit? Was she acting? Has the narrator came across something rather
nasty/dreadful/horrible/repulsive/disgusting? Thus, Rilke begins a journey to the city's more
sordid/despicable/corrupt side. The Cutting Room's great strength lies in its extraordinary narrator, a gay 40-
something auctioneer called Rilke with a taste for casual sex and whisky.
Louise Welsh specializes in producing novels that pervades the mind by a state of unease. Her first book, The
Cutting Room, was published in 2002. It is the story of an auctioneer called Rilke who discovers a set of
hideous/repulsive/terrible photographs of a murdered woman. They awaken in him a morbid fascination with
sex and violence and lead him into a criminal underworld. Welsh is really skillful/talented at undermining genre
conventions of the generic crime novel and plays with traditions that include the gothic, horror and the old-
fashioned adventure tale.

Rilke investigate into the fate of the tortured woman in the photos he finds. Both he and the sexual predator he
pursues appear as conjoint participants in this urban background/location/scenario: Gothic doubles, each
guarding his own carnal secrets.

Snuff pornography: pornography that ends with at least one person dead. One person or a couple kill
someone else who was involved in sexual intercourse with them. A genre that appears to show scenes of
actual homicide.

BACKGROUND:
Before writing The Cutting Room, Louise Welsh had honed (refine) her skills writing short stories and plays
while running her second-hand and antiquarian bookshop, an experience which helped provide some of the
background for her novel. She had long had an ambition to write a novel and Strathclyde and Glasgow
University’s MLit (Master of Letters degree) in Creative Writing course finally gave her the confidence to begin.
In this unconventional crime novel, Welsh succeeds in summoning up a sordid, dark side of Glasgow which, as
several critics have noted, has an almost gothic quality in keeping with(consistent with/in line with) the dark
nature of the book’s subject (the examination of extreme depravity). Welsh has described writing from a male
point-of-view as “liberating” because she felt that a man “could go anywhere”, and with a female narrator I
would be constantly asking myself, "Would she really go there? Would she be safe? Would she be
comfortable? Instead, Rilke, her narrator, a hard-drinking gay actioneer with a wonderful knowledge of even
the most esoteric (mysterious/secret/hidden/obscure) antiquities, is indeed comfortably at home in the sordid
side of the city. He is a particularly complex character for his dry wit (hard cleverness), hard-drinking,
promiscuity and the moral dilemmas that trouble him rather than for his outward persona (external personality).
Welsh has said that he emerged as “a fully formed character” who “dictated his own terms” but that he was
influenced “by a long line of literary antiheros from Caleb Williams to Phillip Marlowe”, Raymond Chandler
being a particular influence.
With its graphic portrayal of promiscuity, inevitably sex proved to be the most controversial aspect of the novel
when it was published, provoking both strong criticism and praise for the novel’s honesty. Welsh has been
dismissive of the criticism explaining that “At the core of the book is a selection of horrifying photographs,
which may depict the sexual murder of a young girl. The close description of this photographs is at least as
detailed as Rilke’s sexual encounters. No one has expressed shock or disgust over them. I think sex is
important in novels as in life. Rilke is a downright gay man who has consensual safe sex with men over the
age of twenty-one. It’s hard for me to see any great controversy there. If people don’t like it they can skip a
paragraph or two.”
Welsh has said that her ambition is to write a novel “that will make people turn the pages and forget to do
things –‘I’ll just miss work today and finish this book’.” The Cutting Room creates an unsettling atmosphere,
portrays/develops a cast of interesting/fascinating characters and it’s idiosyncratic but likeable narrator.

About the author

Louise Welsh was born in 1965. She lived in Edinburgh during her teenage years but moved to Glasgow to
study history at university. She graduated from Glasgow University with a degree in history and worked for
many years as a second-hand and antiquarian book dealer. The Cutting Room is her first novel. It won the
2002 Crime Witers’ Association John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award and was jointly awarded the 2002
Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award in the same year. She is a regular radio broadcaster and
has contributed both articles and reviews to most of the British newspapers. She has published many short
stories and has also written for the stage. Louise Welsh lives in Glasgow.

Glasgow: a large city in central Scotland.

TITLE:
Definition of cutting room: a room where film or videotape is edited. It is a room where the separate pieces of
a film or television programme are put together and the pieces that are not wanted are removed. It is often
used figuratively and attributively in cutting-room floor to describe something removed or discarded (thrown
aways) as when editing a film.
In this sense, the title might be referring to the dregs of society, those who are discarded (as the pieces of fil in
a cutting-room floor), the people that is unseen or unnoticed, marginalized because they don’t add beauty to
society. This “invisible” people might comprise transvestites, victims of crime, delinquents, whom Louise Welsh
brings into the spotlight (the focus of public attention).
The “chamber” or camera could be interpreted as a symbol of the head, of the consciousness of people that
observe life as a dramatic representation and not as real life, viewing with an aesthetic eye and thus
disengaging themselves from pain and social realities. Photography could be a metaphor for depersonalized,
dehumanized social interactions.
The title, in this sense, may suggest a depersonalizing attitude toward others, based on the pleasures of
aesthetic contemplation.
It alludes to the selective “gaze” that we direct upon others.
The Cutting Room is part of a series of post-war Sccottish writing that focuses on personal relations.

CHARACTERS:
Rilke: Rilke’s distinctive appeal in the novel lies in his criminal links to the subterranean (secret/concealed)
city, a connection reinforced by his mysterious persona/personality/character and his vampiric appearance: he
is referred to as “the Cadaver, Corpse, Walking Dead”. Rilke is masculine, hard drinking and happy to use his
fists when necessary. He is characterized by his promiscuous homosexuality and by his solitary
perspective/point o view and his ties/connection/link to a masculine urban criminal underworld (the world of
criminals or of organized crime), which explain his charisma and powerful/mysterious attraction.
As Welsh herself puts it, he is a “night surveillant (vigilante), who walks alone in his society. The protagonist’s
name connects him most obviously to the Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, who explored in his writings the
unease and estrangement produced by an increasingly technologized urban life, and whose semi-
autobiographical novel Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) also sees the narrator suffering from an acute form of
vertigo. Likewise, Rilke confronts a large number of unsettling, giddy (disorienting/confusing) urban
experiences and complains of a fear of heights, a loss of balance, breathlessness, and a trance-like or
“surreal” consciousness of his surroundings (pp. 18, 43, 172, 224). Welsh’s novel frequently plays with the
alienating (estranging/isolating) effect of crowds on the solitary narrator, who likewise responds by positioning
himself in the role of observer: “I wear my mirrored aviator’s shades. The black of the lenses is like the eyehole
gaps in a skull. Instead of my eyes, a mineral reflection of the crowd”
All heroes have an Achilles heel, and it is Rilke's rejection of intimacy itself that points to weakness. That's not
an unusual character trait for amateur detectives who prefer to play it alone, but the reasons for his emotional
isolation give him added depth.

Rose Bowery: Rilke’s employer. If Maria Callas and Paloma Picasso had married and had a daughter she
would look like Rose. Black hair tied back that cleared her face, pale skin, lips painted torture red. She smokes
Dunhill, drinks at least one bottle of red wine a night, wears black and has never married. Four centuries ago
Rose would have been burnt at the stake (hoguera). This conveys the idea that Rose has/posseses the traits
of a witch: she defies conventionts, she causes misfortune and injury to others by non-physical and uncanny
(‘magical’) means (as to Inspector Anderson), she might be seen as an internal threat to a the
“respectable” community of Glasgow, and she is associated to antisocial attitudes and with malevolence, as
witches are.
They call her the Whip (látigo). It seems that she likes the name, she encourages it so/to call her by it. This
relates to the fact that Rose’s body language can be seen as a kind of sexual performance. From a broad/wide
perspective, these details make up the enigmatic, seductive, wild and even sadomasochist character of Rose.
Rose and Rilke have worked together since Joe Bowery, Rose’s father, died twenty years ago. Rilke have
never been so close to a woman. If it wasn’t for Rilke’s hosexuality, they would be together, be a couple.

Maria Callas (1923–77): American-born operatic soprano, of Greek origin/roots; born Maria Cecilia Anna
Kalageropoulos.

Paloma Picasso is a French fashion designer and businesswoman, best known for her jewelry designs for
Tiffany & Co.

Roddy McKindless/ Mr McKindless

Madeleine McKindless/Miss McKindless

Leslie: Rilke’s criminal friend

James Anderson/Inspector Anderson

Derek: the aspiring young filmmaker who Rilke befriends (becomes a friend to). Derek sees the snuff photos
and talks of them in terms of special effects and the dreadful/repulsive beauty he compares to images from
classical art. "We're trained to enjoy these images," he says. At that moment, Rilke there's a
hint/suggestion/faint sign in this decent young man, being detached detachment from violence, developed the
profile of the actual killer.

Trapp: the partner in the transnational pornography business.

Anne-Marie: a burlesque/striptease dancer whom McKindless visits and photographs. Anne-Marie’s

burlesque Camera Club allow for transgressive sexual performances in a space of relative safety.

Chris (Anne-Marie’s brother)

Jenson (colleague?)

Edinburgh lain: He is at the scene at Gilmartin’s.

Dodgy Steve: Dealer (a person who buys and sells goods) in antiques. Dodgy Steve has to be seen, to be
believed. His hair is thick and dark and parted on the left. He has a new Zapata (Mexican revolutionary)
moustache. He is at the scene at Gilmartin’s.

Arthur: Dealer in antiques. He is at the scene at Gilmartin’s.

John: Steenie’s brother. Bookseller.

Steenie: John's brother. Bookseller. Religious person. Member of a religious order. He attends the
Presbyterian Crurch.
Presbyterian church/ Presbyterianism: A form of Protestant Church government in which the
Church is administered locally by the minister with a group of elected elders of equal rank,
and regionally and nationally by representative courts of ministers and elders.

Moira: waitress at Gilmartin's

Rita: a diminutive/short for Marguerite. She is a drug addict.

Jimmy James: colleague. Jimmy James is slow, unrushed, creeping man, he lives at a relxed/leisured pace.
He views the world as a bad place where the devil concealed himself in any good fortune. Only the power of
drink could move him. He was too old for portering (doorkeeper/door attendant), too poor to retire.

Mr Grieve: the gardener of the Mckindless.

Niggle (colleague?)

Professor Sweetman

Ferrie: Victor Gilmartin’s friend. Dealer in antiques. He helps Victor decorate the bar.

Soleil et désolé

Gilmartin’s: Pub. Gilmartin's is a quarter-gill shop three blocks away from the saleroom. Victor Gilmartin
opened it twenty years ago when he decided to retire from the building trade. The genesis (origin) of
Gilmartin's is a story Victor loves to tell.
Quarter gills is a measure for whisky.
Gill: A unit of liquid measure, equal to a quarter of a pint.
SETTING:
The novel is set in contemporary Glasgow. The novel is set in the contemporary period in a Glasgow radically
altered by the changes brought about by globalization, particularly with respect to the increased damaging of
interpersonal relations.

STRUCTURE:
The novel consists of/comprises/is made up of/is composed of 23 chapters, each accompanied by an
epigraph.
An epigraph is a literary device in the form of a poem, quotation, or sentence, usually placed at the beginning
of a book or chapter. They have a few sentences, but which belong to another writer. An epigraph can serve
different purposes: it can be used as a summary, introduction, example, or an association with some famous
literary work, so as to draw a comparison, or to generate a specific context for the piece.
An epigraph is a very sophisticated form of literary device that can really embellish and even add depth to a
story.
The use of epigraph in a work can create something very intriguing. It can be used as a thematic entry/door, by
taking section/passages/fragment from influential authors to introduce people to certain ideas. It can be used
in the form of quotations, proverbs, lyrics, lines, or verses, or even parts of a conversation. It can also be used
to set the mood of the readers in the very beginning, in relation to the prose they are to read next.
A writer can also give readers a preview of his notions and inspirations through an epigraph. The role of an
epigraph can be very instructive. An epigraph deepens the readers’ interest in the narrative. It can also be
used in places where the writer wants to highlight a particular point.
Moreover, a hybrid text that includes epigraphs presents itself as self-conscious.
For example, chapter 5, entitled “Leslie”, is accompanied by the following epigraph:

One foot in the grave, the other on a banana skin. James Pryde, Head of the Clan Macabre

It could be read (according to Fiction, Crime, and the Feminine, by Rédouane Abouddahab, Josiane Paccaud-
Huguet) as Louise Welsh’s refusal to take the genre of the thriller story, and even her own distortions of it,
seriously. This epigraph is an apocryphal one (of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being
true).
James Ferrier Pryde (1866–1941) was a British artist.

Epilogue: Soleil et Désolé

Epilogues are an inherent part of any story or poem and are essential to the structure of any written form. The
epilogue is an important literary tool that acts as the afterword (a concluding section in a book) once the last
chapter is over. The purpose of an epilogue is to add a little insight to some interesting developments that
happen once the major plot is over.

DEVICES:

Epigraphs: a short quotation or saying at the beginning of a book or chapter, intended to suggest its theme.

Metafiction
A term relating to fiction that self-reflexively and self-consciously announces itself as fiction. It typically draws
attention to the use of narrative conventions and techniques and hence/therefore parodying or criticising them.
Although metafiction is nothing new and examples can be found from the eighteenth century, it has been
closely associated with postmodernist fiction.
Example:
The pseudorealist transcript contained in the novel’s appendix, wherein Welsh grants a voice to a particular
(fictionalized) Eastern European sex worker, Adia Kovalyova, further strengthens this message of concealed
violence, accentuating the Jekyll-like perversion that such a supposedly “normal/respectable” global city is
capable of extreme cruelties. In other words, the text reveals Glasgow’s contemporary urban public as a city
having a split personality, the respectable on the one hand, and the sex trade business on the other.
Intertextuality: a term referring to the way in which any one literary (or other) text might refer to another text.
It can also refer to the way in which any individual text relies on the existence of all other texts – that a novel or
poem cannot exist in isolation, and part of its meaning relies on the fact that other novels and poems exist. The
term has tended, however, in literary studies, to refer more generally to the way texts allude to, reflect back or
parody another named text.
Parody: Produce a humorously exaggerated imitation of (a writer, artist, or genre)
The Cutting Room is full of allusions to the Romantic and late Victorian periods: not only Hogg and Stevenson,
but also Poe, Blake, Keats, Verlaine, and Rimbaud. These authors position Welsh’s Glasgow within a distinctly
decadent European cultural history. This literary device can be appreciated in the fact that the villain
(villainous) McKindless’s library contains a large collection of the Olympia Press, a 1950s’ Paris-based
publisher known for its avant-garde erotic fiction. These references reinforce the decadent association,
connecting contemporary Glasgow to an aesthete Europe of eccentric inclinations/tendencies/habits.
There are references to Keats, Verlaine, Blake, Poe, Rimbaud. Even the hero’s name is that of a poet.

THEMES:

Photography
The emergence of photography took place at the beginning of realism.
The invention of photography in 1839 had an immense effect on the way people looked at the world and
existence in general. Here was precision; the scene, the fact, the episode were faithfully recorded. Thus, from
a realistic perspective, photography is the portrayal of life with fidelity. Although the photograph involves a
reduction in proportion, perspective and color, we still understand that the photograph is a representation of
reality. In this sense, photography in the novel might be considered a path to reality and truth.
However, photographs could also be considered from the perspective of postmodernism, which is the literary
movement to which the novel belongs. Postmodernism points out that those entities that we experience as
‘natural’ (or in this case, as real) are in fact ‘cultural’; made by us, not given to us. Even nature, postmodernism
might point out, doesn’t grow on trees.
Keeping in mind that postmodernism undermines and subverts the conventions of the past , it seems
reasonable to say that, from a postmodern perspective, the dominant features of photographs might be de-
naturalized. In this sense, perception is not just the brain’s response to stimuli, but is also an interpretation
based on memories and various cultural cues (sign/pieces of information). Interpretation is learned through
living in a particular culture. If reality is historically and culturally based there cannot be an “ultimate reality” but
instead highly variable and subjective realities. It would follow that perception and our notion of truth is also a
product of such factors and hence not reliable. The static state of the photograph allows us to study it. In a
photograph, the vision of a lens is fixed. If we have a new insight into the reality framed in the picture, it is not
the photograph that changed but us and our perception. (no) That is to say, photography might not be
altogether real after all. In that case, the protagonist would be trapped in a constant, eternal, endless search
for justice and truth, without sense of relief.
In either case, achievable or not, this search for truth seems to coincide with a spiritual quest that Rilke
pursues. The photographs might have acted as a trigger for his inner search or not, but there is an obvious
parallelism in the two searches: a factual truth and a spiritual, psychological, moral truth are interconnected.
Perhaps investigating what really happened will give Rilke a certainty over his good moral and lift it, improve it,
raise it.
The snapshots discovered by Rilke, an auctioneer, while clearing a wealthy suburban property lead him on a
search to determine their veracity as snuff pornography, a project also driven by Rilke’s own haunted past and
disturbed psychology. Rilke’s vulnerability drives the need to exorcize this ghost, this woman, who is
associated with many of the women he meets. Rilke might be disturbed by his own behavior. The photographs,
then, reveal an unsettled unconscious (the part of the mind which is inaccessible to the conscious mind but
which affects behaviour and emotions).

Patriarchy, feminism, pornography:

Patrarchy, broadly, is the control by men of a disproportionately large share of power. Patriarchy is a society
controlled by men in which they use their power to their own advantage.
The US court penalized spousal abuse in 1962 for the first time.
Beginning in the 1970s, a novel tendency regarding the social expectations about what the ideal female figure
should be started to emerge. This trend meant – and still means – that women are to spend their lifetime
exercising, starving and/or undergoing cosmetic surgeries if they want to meet the imposed standards of
beauty, for it is almost impossible to naturally achieve the required Barbie doll-like style.
These situations are examples that constitute forms of domination of the female body and contributed to the
perpetuation of the patriarchal system. However, our society is plagued with/full of instances of abjection
(deamining/dishonoring) of the female body.
Abjection: The condition or process of degrading or being degraded.
There still are abundant expressions of patriarchal dominance and oppression, and they mostly coincide with
the abjection of female bodies. In other words, it can be argued that patriarchy is still in force, and that it is
palpable in the way practices such as pornography, prostitution, rape, beating7gression/violence and trafficking
degrade and dehumanize the bodies of millions of women around the world.
Within feminism, we find conflicting, opposite stances:
Radical feminists claim that there is nothing like well-intentioned pornography. For them, terms like domination,
degradation, submission and abuse are inseparable from pornography.
Liberal feminists, on the other hand, believe that pornography is the explicit artistic depiction of men and/or
women as sexual beings and they defend it on the grounds that it is a way of promoting women’s freedom.
In The Cutting Room, pornography is considered in its strictest sense. The novel seems to point/claim that this
industry has increased the amount of cruelty and degradation involved in its products. With the emergence of
what is known as hardcore (very explicit) porn, sadomasochism and brutality have become commonplace/an
every day thing/ordinary.
In The Cutting Room, Louise Welsh seems to be making a detailed, feminist, and sharp critique of these
cultural phenomena by making them visible.