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Well, I think it's safe to say that last weeks inaugural 'In Defence of Short Stories' was a success - it attracted way more views than I've had on this blog before (admittedly, not a hard record to break) and I've had lots of interest from other authors wanting to pitch in since then, which is great. Although I deliberately started with Alain and Neil (of whom more in a minute) as I knew they'd write something good to kick things off, I knew that after that I wanted to find some writers who were new to me.
But onto this week's contributor, the fabulous Neil Schiller. Regular readers of this blog [insert your own 'both of them' joke here] will know Neil's name - his book of short stories 'Oblivious' was the first indie ebook I bought, and boy did it set the bar high. Put it this way, in his blurb Neil compared himself to Raymond Carver, and after I'd finished his book I didn't think he was a twat for doing so. High praise. Oblivious is available on Kindle (UK & US) as well as paperback. Please give it a whirl, particularly as it looks like Neil will be sleeping on the sofa for the next few days...
Take it away Neil:
My other half doesn’t like short stories. She tells me they
end too abruptly, just as she’s getting into them. Don’t tell her, because it’s
more hassle than it’s worth, but I completely disagree. My favourite books all
share one thing in common: an economy of style. Very rarely do I read anything
that looks like it will be over five hundred pages, because I immediately think
“oh no, another Umberto Eco”, the writer who by his own admission just can’t
help himself and has to follow every single tangent that his mind suggests to
him.
Short stories, to me, are often more powerful than novels.
Because they have a focus that can really deliver. To take an analogy (probably
a lame one), it’s great to wander about in the sunshine, of course, but it’s
only if I concentrate that light via a magnifying glass that I can set fire to
shit. That’s obviously my inner pyromaniac talking. I’ve just spent the best
part of a decade writing short stories because I was experimenting with the
idea of looking at things intensely. It didn’t matter that I was representing
only moments in a character’s life because I could (hopefully) make those
moments resonate without having to worry about narrative continuity and plot
twists. And you have to give the reader some credit. He or she is not a moron.
If you do it right they’re already filling in the gaps for you, the backstory,
the future, mopping up the bits that you’ve left spilling off the page.
As a reader, I love doing just that. One of my favourite
short stories is by Richard Brautigan. It’s two sentences long. I won’t quote
it because I don’t want to breach copyright, but it is essentially one image –
that of a woman being led away by the police because she just couldn’t stand
anymore living in a small apartment, in the middle of summer, with a man
learning to play the violin. I know the rest, Brautigan doesn’t have to tell
me.
The best short stories are evocative and demand more of you as
a reader than an epic that spells out every single idea on your behalf. Not
everybody likes those demands, and that’s fair enough. But I do. They make me
feel like more of a participant in the process. The writer is letting me forge my
own meanings, and I think that’s a satisfying mental exercise.
To switch to poetry for a second, the classic poem covered
in the first year on just about every literature degree course is ‘The Red
Wheelbarrow’ by William Carlos Williams. I’m sure it’s in the syllabus to deliberately
challenge young students. What does it mean? Is it poetry? Nothing is resolved.
We’re told a wheelbarrow and some chickens are all that matters. What is it all
about? It always divides opinion. Personally, I love the poem. I love Haiku, I
love single images or hypothetical snatches of hyperbole that challenge you to
make of them what you will. Don’t give me an answer, I don’t want your answers,
they will most likely be subjective nonsense anyway. Give me a pinprick
instead, a trigger to my subconscious that can then lead me off on a path of my
own.
At the end of the day, isn’t that what art is supposed to
do? You’re not there to receive wisdom, you’re there to
think about things for yourself. A great short story writer like Raymond
Carver, like Chekhov, like Brautigan, always reminds me that this is the case.
I’ll keep coming back to them again and again because without them my
imagination would probably just shrivel up and die.
Going back to my missus – sorry love, you’re entitled to
your opinion, of course you are, but it’s a shame you’re wrong. (Seriously,
don’t tell her I just said that, I don’t like sleeping on the couch…)
