William Mcllvanney and the Provocative Witness: Resistance in the 'Laidlaw' Trilogy

Abstract

My paper proposes the continuing centrality of McIlvanney’s body of writing to the purportedly new trends and generations in Scottish prose fiction. Where, in Remedy Is None, A Gift from Nessus, and Docherty, McIlvanney makes use of canonical (English) intertextual devices to promote the centrality of his Scottish, working class communities, in Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch and Strange Loyalties, McIlvanney turns more directly to the American canon. His chosen author, Raymond Chandler, a fairly recently ‘recuperated’ writer in the United States, has held a long and forceful sway among British readers across class and academic boundaries. McIlvanney’s intertexts from Chandler and Vidal are demonstrable (in spite of the slight critical treatment of them) in both the novels and the aesthetic ‘manifesto.’ Such mimicry is far from slavish, especially given the cultural politics that provide the most pertinent context for the works. Kennedy, Burnside, Warner, Welsh, McLean and Galloway are significant and important prose stylists. Their newness, however, is principally a repetition for a slightly different cast(e) of audience than that developed by William McIlvanney.