We Remember, Willie

William McIlvanney November 25, 1936 — December 5, 2015

I see we've lost quite a few legends recently, so I'm betting there's quite a time to be had upstairs now. Today is the anniversary of the late William McIlvanney's death and I often wonder how he'd feel about who we've become since. I like to look at pictures of Willie in laughter, he laughed a lot, made me laugh a lot, and I'm ever grateful for the memories. He didn't waste much time wondering how he'd be remembered, though, as the extract below from one of my interviews with him shows, but remembered he is.



TONY BLACK: How do you think you'll be remembered? 

 
WILLIAM MCILVANNEY: First of all, I'm not sure I will be remembered. I mean, I can't quite believe in posterity because I'll not be here — it's a bit idle to say, will I be remembered? In a way a bit of me doesn't give a monkey's because I'm not going to be here and I think often of the writers I love, who have vanished from the spectrum, so I don't trust posterity. I don't trust it at all. 

The point is you're not going to be there, what's the point of getting seriously upset about it? Somebody once said to me, 'Who are your readers?' and I said unknown people in unknown rooms. If some woman or man sits in a room and says, 'Yes, that explains a bit of my experience,' that's it. It's not reviews or the judgement of posterity because posterity's made an arse of it already with a lot of writers who I love that are never heard of anymore. So you can't trust that, you have to be kind of stoic about it and say that I'm going to write the best that I can and some people somewhere will read it and it will make a difference to them and that's it.


TONY BLACK: Do you think you've written enough?

 
WILLIAM MCILVANNEY: No. Maybe Shakespeare's written enough but I don't know if you ever write enough. I think, if the compulsion dies — stop writing. I write from compulsion and it comes intermittently and is a very strange phenomenon. If that goes, and I don't worry about it, but I think I'll write again. But if I don't, then at least I tried.

:: The full article, originally published in The Highland Times, can now be read at Tony's Substack

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