Seconds of Pleasure: Stories

by Neil LaBute

Book 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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802142125
• ISBN13: 9780802142122
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Stunning, Brilliant, but not consistently so

Some of these stories floored me. The dialogue is realistic, the sparse language is somehow powerfully evocative, the plots are refreshingly acidic (like savory sour candy), the character insights are penetrating. The best of these stories are twisted, dark, full of bitter pathos--and unbelievably powerful. But some of the stories in here (as other reviewers have noted) are flat, rather pointless, and dull. All in all, I would say 1/3 of the collection is outstanding, another 1/3 is very, very good, and the bottom third is a little below average in terms of short-story quality. Anyway, if you enjoyed "In the Company of Men" (as I did) you will undoubtably get more than a few seconds of pleasure from this collection. The uneveness of the the collection does not detract from the brilliance of its best stories.

Sharp and Disturbing, Deceptive and Sly

Fans of Neil LaBute's mean-spirited films such as "The Company of Men" and "Your Friends and Neighbors" will not be disappointed with his collection of short fiction, "Seconds of Pleasure." There is plenty here to shock and stir-up controversy. Take the story "Ravishing," for instance, about a man's encounter with a prostitute that ends with the making of a snuff film. Or "Maraschino," where a young woman knowingly picks up her drunk ex-stepfather and seduces him. For the most part these twenty short stories are terrifically written and provide insights into the male ego: its vanity, secrets, and desires. Many are constructed as scenes and could easily have been done for a beginning playwrighting class, setting up characters and conflict: an adulterous couple breaking up at a train station in the collection's title story, a married man flirting with a single woman at an airport restaurant in "Layover," a married couple arguing at a diner over eavesdropping in "Some Do It Naturally," a wife catching her husband in a compromising position with a neighbor in "Time Share." Luckily Labute's writing skill elevates his set-ups -- he has a Hemingway-ear both for quick, sharp dialogue and capturing the sly elusiveness behind deception. The most interesting stories, however, are the unpredictable ones when Labute stretches himself into unexpected territory, such as "Switzerland," a lovely tale of a man's obsession with a Johnny Quest lunch pail, or "Opportunity," where a woman remembers her younger sister.

One of the best books I've ever read...

I finished this book about three weeks ago, and this book has stayed with me ever since. It's probably too soon to say this, but this is one of the two best books I've ever read. The way that I read this book is that I read each story twice--After I finished a story, I started it again. They say that if a short story is a good one, then the second time through will be better than the first and this was the case for every one of his these stories. I recommend this approach of reading them twice to everyone. These stories are so good and have so much in them that if you've only read them once then you'll miss so much. The two hardest types of writing are the short story and the play. It's very interesting that Labute crosses over into the other hardest type of writing, and makes something this incredible. While I was reading this, I thought, "Labute is just showing off here." Showcasing, I think is what they call it in sports. For me, it was kind of like being able to rewind time and see the greatest moves of Michael Jordan. It reminds me of the dirty joke about the dog, which has the punch line of "Because he can." And, I wonder why Labute writes this stuff and writes it so well. Is it simply because he can? This book also allayed my fear about Labute, which is that he's eventually going to run out of material. I've read most of his plays now, and I've been kind of afraid that he would eventually run out of material because some of the themes are starting to cross. I now realize that as long as darkness lurks in the hearts of men, that Labute will never run out of material. These stories are haunting and dark. Some of them are so horrific that I would be unable to describe to a friend what they are even about. Somebody said that one story in particular left him in the fetal position, and for the life of me, I'm not sure which one that would be, because about half of these stories did that to me. Some of these stories have a surprise twist, and some of them don't. I found it really interesting how they were mixed up. And if you think the point is just the twist, read it again. These stories are much more complex than just mysteries. And, I love the title of this book. It begs the question of "What lengths will people go to for only seconds of pleasure?" It's a very multi-faceted title also, because it's a lot more than just that question--one of the stories is called "A Second of Pleasure," and gives a different take on the title. If I ever meet Labute, I'm going to ask him these questions: "Where did you meet these people?" "How did you get to know them so well?" He's clearly going above and beyond just writing from his own experience here. These people are so amazingly different and he brings them to life. I know these aren't real people, but they seem so real in this book. If anyone who is reading this didn't like any of the stories, then go back and read the one you didn't like just one more time...you'll apprecia

Stories That Shock And Awe!

While I would not say that these stories bring "seconds of pleasure" to the reader, they certainly shock and awe. Mr. Labute with sparse language and crisp dialogue creates little stories that provoke us with their relentless look inside the human heart. He is the master of the shock effect. You are reading along, and suddenly he gives you a body blow. Although these stories all are about the conflict between heterosexual men and women, some of them go far beyond the cynical treatment of women by men as seen, for example, in "In The Company of Men," Mr. Labute's best-known movie. Here an unnamed narrator recounts the making of a snuff video and muses on what will happen to the soon-to-be dead woman's child: "OK, we hear about the kid, that seems fine, few days from now she'll get passed on to welfare, adoption agency, who knows what." Then a woman many years after the fact remembers providing her father with an alibi when he murdered her big sister. Finally a woman picks up her very drunk father or stepfather-- we aren't sure which-- in a bar and beds him. He is completely oblivious as to who she is. Before we send the author to the literary dumpster for his cynical, dark view of mankind-- particularly the man half of mankind, perhaps we should ask ourselves if he is accurate in his assessment. A day or so after I finished this little volume and was wondering if the human male could be so completely insensitive and ugly, I caught on television the prosecutor's opening statement in the trial of the actor Robert Blake, accused of murdering his wife. The comments about the victim she attributed to Mr. Blake could have come straight from the pages of this book. I rest my case. This one isn't "The Sound of Music" but it's a collection of short stories you won't soon forget.