Recommendation: (Slight Return) by Neil Schiller

I first came across Neil Schiller's fiction when I read his debut collection, Oblivious. And what a debut it was: dark, brooding tales of people dealing with (or failing to deal with) everyday life, written with such an eye for detail, both physical and emotional, that saying things such as he's like a British Carver didn't seem entirely stupid. Or, if you prefer a more genre-related comparison, he's like a Gary McMahon without all that supernatural stuff.

Schiller's new collection, (Slight Return) is a set of stories based around music, with nearly all taking their title from a song, usually from the 90s (you can listen to a Spotify Playlist of them all here). If you think this might mean these stories are more hopeful and upbeat than those in Oblivious then, um... no. Not noticeably in most cases. While music might provide temporary release for some of the characters here, it's also a source of frustration for failed musicians, an indication of the lack of communication between father and daughter, a reminder of a lost and irrecoverable past.

If this all sounds to bleak, then it's worth pointing out that it's all wrapped in prose as insightful and gorgeous as this:

"There's something exciting about waking up in a city. Not the suburban sprawl that most of us spend our lives in[...] I mean right in the middle of a proper city—clattering heels, laughter, fast-moving traffic. The clamour of the stirring sheets reverberates; it echoes back from the municipal stonework and spirals up into a vast empty sky [...] I've felt this every time I've opened my eyes in London, no matter how grey and dirty the bed or couch or floor I've been on, and I feel this way now."

I guess if that doesn't convince you to buy this book (and Oblivious, if you haven't already) no further words of mine will. So I'll just end this review with one of my favourites of the title songs from this brilliant collection of stories. Play on:

(Slight Return) (UK | US)

Eleven Facts, Eleven People, Eleven Questions

So, I've been nominated by Martin Cosby (a new weird fiction author who I suspect you might be hearing more of...) for one of these blog thingies; it's called a Leibster apparently, and I have to:

a) reveal eleven facts about myself
b) answer eleven questions from Martin
c) set eleven questions for eleven other people

So without further ado, eleven facts:

1. Six days out of seven I will be wearing a Fred Perry polo shirt. 
2. As I type this I am listening to the song Wonderful Excuse by The Family Cat. I also own a cat called George (or as much as anyone ‘owns’ a cat, at any rate). 
3. I have never broken any bones. Well, not my own. 
4. I suffer frequently from déjà-vu. 
5. I once dressed as ‘boy from Kes’ for a film themed fancy dress party. This involved hasty manipulation of a rubber glove, some shoe-laces, and a kestrel I coloured in with felt-tips on some cardboard. 
6. I run the Headington Shark Appreciation Society (new members welcome). 
7. The first film I ever saw at the cinema was The Empire Strikes Back. It was a double-bill with the first film but my parents got the times wrong, so I saw them the wrong way round. I suspect this explains a lot. 
8. My favourite cocktail is a Whisky Sour. 
9. I am 89% sure that my life is not a Truman Show style hoax. 
10. I contend that the best album of the 90s is Giant Steps by The Boo Radleys. 
11. I suffer frequently from déjà-vu.

Martin's questions for me: 

1. Do you write your first drafts by hand?
Yes I do. Writing by hand has lots of pluses (more speed, less distractions) and few negatives. I know some people would view having to type it up the first draft as a negative, but for me that's a plus too: it means going over every single line of prose again at least once.

2. Do you follow more than 10 blogs?
Yes - see sidebar >>>>>>>>

3. Do you play a musical instrument?
No. I'd love to be able to play guitar but I tried a few times as a teen, and good Christ I was bad. And not even bad in a sounds-cool-feedbacky kind of way, but just bad.

4. Given the choice, which opera would you attend?
Ummm, I know nothing about opera. Nothing. What was that one Mark Twain compared to an orphanage burning down? I'll go for that one.

5. e-book or paper book?
Both. I don't care if it's against the rules - both!

6. Do you use an electric blanket?
No. I don't know how to expand on that answer to make it vaguely interesting, sorry.

7. Do you write in cafes?
No, but I'd like to. Life isn't that luxurious at the moment.

8. Is there a film that has influenced you greatly? 
The Empires Strikes Back - see above.

9. Do you keep a diary?
Not a personal one, but I do have a 'writing diary'. Like so much else in my life it is sporadic, partially illegible, and woefully behind schedule.

10. Which foodstuff do you like the least?
I had something in France - the name escapes me - I love most French food, including snails and the like, but this was vile. It stank to high heaven and ruined a perfectly good piece of fish beneath it. When we looked up the translation, it just said it was a dish consisting of 'innards stuffed with innards'.

11. Do you listen to music while you work? If so, what?
Yes, all the time unless I'm doing final editing of a story. Favourite artists include The Auteurs, Laura Marling, Bob Dylan, EMA, Pavement, Viva Voce, Radiohead...

And now, my eleven questions for eleven fine people:

Alan Ryker, Iain Rowan, Robert Dunbar, Cate Gardner, Dan Holloway, Colin Barnes, Victoria Hooper, Greg James, Anne Michaud, Luca Veste and Neil Schiller.

1. Who’s the most underrated author out there that you know of? 
2. You need to pick one song to be used to torture unpleasant terrorist types, by playing it to them full volume 24/7. What do you pick? 
3. As a writer, what is your own personal definition of success? 
4. How do you like your steak? 
5. A genie grants you get an extra hour every day, meaning your days are 25 hours long. The condition is you must use this hour to take up a brand new hobby. What do you pick? 
6. What’s the most overrated piece of writing advice you’ve ever been given? 
7. If you were in a band, what would your band name be? 
8. Oxford Commas – yes or no? 
9. What’s the most embarrassing typo or mistake you’ve ever found in your work after publication? 
10. Who’s your favourite Muppet? 
11. Will you write me a haiku?

In Defence Of Short Stories #2: Neil Schiller

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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…)

Oh, and just to show that two can play at this guest blogging game, please check out this piece I've done for the fabulous and infamous Andre Jute's blog. It's about DH Lawrence and his poem The Mosquito.  It's kind of about me too, but since nearly all of DH Lawrence's literary criticism was as much about himself as who he was writing about I don't feel too guilty.