AYE WRITE!
the spotlight for a decade but William Mcllvanney has been hard at work, finds Doug Johnstone.
he publication of William Mcllvanney‘s
novel Weekend was like welcoming an
old friend home after a very long holiday. and finding that the time away has left them in extremely rude health.
After ten years out of the spotlight. Mcllvanney’s latest work met with universal critical and public acclaim. and his gregarious appearance was one of the highlights of last summer's Edinburgh International Book Festival. All of which was something of a relief to the man himself. who had been worried that the world might have forgotten him.
“There was a strong possibility that folk no longer knew I existed. or thought I was dead.‘ he chuckles in his sonorous. west coast accent. ‘It always amazes me how many folk are aware of my work. You‘re working blind when you write something. writing into the void. You never know whether it speaks to people. so it‘s good to get such positive responses.‘
The 70-year-old writer is being overly modest here: he has been one of the most important voices in Scottish contemporary fiction over the last 40 years. In the current publishing climate of fast turnover and fleetingly celebrated young authors. ten years without a book is an inordinately long time. but Mcllvanney wasn‘t sitting around doing
nothing until the publication. last year. of
Weekend.
‘lt was a long time between books. but most of what I write is not visible to the public. which is possibly a blessing.‘ he says. ‘My attempts to write are like an iceberg. nine tenths are never visible. 1 write an awful lot for the clarification of my own sense of things. and hooks eventually emerge from that. I‘m a
Mcllvanney's third novel IS an unsentimental tale of the hard knock life of an uncompromnsnng father who dreams of
20 THE LIST 15 Feb — 1 Mar 2007
He might have been out of i
WILLIAM Member
8 better life. HI
brilliant starter of things. but a terrible finisher. I‘ve got ten books started which will probably never be finished. It‘s like the laboratory of a mad scientist. with incomplete Frankenstein‘s monsters lying about. waiting for a lightning bolt to animate them. Somehow. Wee/(end reached a point where I thought there was something there. so I went for it.‘
Superficially. Weekend seems like a very different book from Mcllvanney"s usual hunting ground. dealing as it does with Scottish machismo and working class values. Mcllvanney uses the plot of a weekend university study trip of lecturers and students to brilliantly weave together a subtle. multi— voiced narrative dealing with the theme of the constant struggle between humans‘ ability to reason and our baser animal instincts.
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'l think it’s an extension of what I was doing before.‘ says Mcllvanney. ‘Some people seemed surprised about it. saying that now I understand women characters. whereas I think I‘ve understood them pretty well in the past. I‘ve been around. and I‘ve tried. you know‘.’ That‘s a misunderstanding which has [taunted me somewhat. The Big Man [his l985 novel. which was made into a film starring Liam Neeson] was meant to he a dismantling of machismo. yet people said it was a celebration of it. That sort of thing can be really dispiritingf
Over the last four decades. Mcllvanney has always been a tirelessly inventive writer. trying new things and never resting on his laurels. As well as the novels there have been four books of poetry and two non—liction works. which.
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