Irvine Welsh and Alison Bechdel look back

The Guardian interviewed two modern authors whose work remains impactful ... in ways they didn't exactly expect.

Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, is a bit dismayed at how his novel is digested thirty years later.

It was written as a warning about heroin use, but nowadays, Welsh says, many young people don't have anything to lose if they do become addicted.

The book "almost becomes some kind of inspiring clarion call: let’s do (expletive) drugs, man. We’re (screwed) anyway. Let’s just go for it," he told the Guardian.

Things are a little rosier for cartoonist and author Alison Bechdel, though.

Her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For has been revived as a star-studded audio production.

And one reference from it — the Bechdel test — has endured to this day, to its creator's great surprise. 

"I didn’t ever intend for it to be the real gauge it has become and it’s hard to keep talking about it over and over, but it’s kind of cool," she told the Guardian. 

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