Seconds of Pleasure: Stories

by Neil LaBute

Overview

In Seconds of Pleasure, acclaimed award-winning director and playwright Neil LaBute, brings to the page his cutting humor and compelling take on the shadowy terrain of the human heart. Best known for his controversial plays and films, his short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Playboy. Seductive and provocative, each potent and pithy tale in Seconds of Pleasure finds men and women exploiting — or at the mercy of — the hidden fault lines that separate them: In “Time Share,” a woman leaves her family at their vacation home after discovering her husband in a compromising situation; a middle-aged man obsesses over a scab on the calf of a pretty young girl in “Boo-Boo”; and a vain Hollywood actor gets his comeuppance in “Soft Target.” LaBute infuses Seconds of Pleasure with his trademark wit and black humor, and unleashes his imagination in stories that offer unflinching insight into our very human shortcomings and impure urges with shocking candor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802142122
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	08/23/2005
Edition description:	First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.25(h) x (d)

Editorial Reviews

In a steady stream of movies (Friends and Neighbors, etc.) and plays (The Mercy Seat, etc.), LaBute has honed his singular ability to depict self-interested, acid-tongued and deeply flawed characters. In this debut collection, he applies his fierce, disturbing energy to 20 short stories. Not surprisingly, echoes of his screen and stage characters populate these pages-men and women engaging in adulterous affairs, voyeuristic fantasies, doomed interactions. The playwright's rapid-fire dialogue vividly captures provocative moments of conflict in some stories; others employ first-person, free-associative monologues ("She's been going at it, this talking stuff, I mean, for around three hours straight, seriously, without a pause, and it's really getting me down. I almost feel sad inside, or lonely...."). LaBute is a master at crafting shocking situations and nasty characters, but this ungenerous view of the human heart can make for a dark and brutal read. In "Ravishing," the narrator describes an encounter with a prostitute that ends with the making of a snuff film. In "Maraschino," a woman knowingly-but incomprehensibly-seduces her drunk ex-stepfather. Sharp dialogue and grim imagination aside, LaBute's microfictions rarely delve below the surface to offer insight into the nature of the human condition; the collection as a whole feels a little sadistic, the act of reading it a kind of complicated masochism. Agent, Suzanne Gluck. (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

The 20 stories that make up LaBute's debut collection all revolve around a moment of pleasure. Sometimes those moments are disastrous: in "Time Share," a man's wife catches him with someone else, while in "Loose Change," a woman discovers a round indentation in her husband's wallet. Some instances reveal a moment of insight, as in "Opportunity," where a woman thinks back on the disappearance of her sister, or in "Perfect," which features a man who notices a blemish on his wife's shoulder. Known for controversial films like Your Friends and Neighbors, writer/director LaBute is able in a short space to flip the direction of a situation. Some of the twists lead to the bizarre, as in "Maraschino," featuring a man who should recognize the woman with whom he is sleeping. All in all, expect the unexpected as some simple truths are revealed during these seconds of pleasure. Terse and potent with sharp, realistic dialog, these stories reflect LaBute's harsh and often unnerving view of human nature. Recommended for larger public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/04.] Joshua Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. Syst., Poughkeepsie, NY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The dark prince of the American stage and indie cinema debuts with 20 baleful vignettes. Only LaBute would call these "seconds of pleasure," even ironically. Inches beneath the rambling bonhomie in the monologues and dialogues is the unflinching brutality of their casual betrayals and taboo-busting. "Anyway, it was good to see him again. Really, it was," concludes a young woman after luring the father who abandoned her family into a motel room and seducing him. When he's in a sunny mood, LaBute gives the patron whose car battery has run down outside a strip club a helping hand ("Open All Night"). When he's coasting in neutral, he remakes fables like Hawthorne's story "The Birthmark" ("Perfect," in which a wife's tiny imperfection drives her husband crazy) or Eric Rohmer's film Claire's Knee ("Boo-Boo," whose narrator can't rest till he's touched the scab on the heroine's leg). More often, he's thought of his own fiendish ways to unmask his characters' slimy pretensions as they humiliate each other. A college student sweats to break up with his girlfriend on a tight deadline ("Spring Break"). A traveler flirts with a stranger in an airport knowing he's going to have to ditch her within minutes ("Layover"). A flight attendant spots her current lover's wife on a transatlantic flight ("Whitecap"). An amateur filmmaker recalls the first time he and a buddy screen-tested a prostitute for a special video ("Ravishing"). LaBute's whiplash command of the ironic distance between his heroes' self-excusing blather (only a Hollywood actor's uncomfortable reunion with the "girl-slash-woman" he'd bedded and forgotten strikes a false note) is so uncanny that every story stings. There's precious littlemoral sense ballasting the unrelenting cruelty. Only a sadist, or a masochist, would read this poisoned volume through at a sitting. But, as LaBute might say, doesn't that include us all?Agent: Suzanne Gluck/William Morris

Kirkus Reviews