Seconds of Pleasure : Stories

Rating:
Summary: too scratchy to be brilliant
Review: neil labute's collection of short stories plumb the extremes. at times, sparklingly insightful and at other times mind-numbingly cliched. the author delights in devious and dark tales populated by characters that one can hardly empathise with. the writing is always sharp and edgy but not always entertaining or enlightening.

a lot of the stories have a trademark dark twist, but soon one tires of them. the 20 stories collected here are, sadly, a bit too single tracked. one wishes that labute had provided enough variety in characters and situations. and while one desperately wishes to come across characters that are adorable, nobody can complain that they are dull.

in all, one fels that the editor lets her author down here, probably not adding enough variety to the collection. neil labute shows glimpses of his ability to stun and shock the reader, but the trick tires quickly. part magical madness, part mundane mayhem. a half-way performance.


Rating:
Summary: Inconsistant at worst; brilliant and insiteful at best
Review: This is one of those "There's good news and bad news" type situations. At least it is for me, and as is the custom I'll start with the bad news.

I've been a fan of Neil Labute's work for about four or five years now. I have read/seen most everything that he has put out. His work is always solid and is always thoughtful, however the big problem with this, as is with some of his other material, is that his reputation preceeds him. The book by the way is a short story collection which is of course a very difficult medium to succeed in - Stephen King once made the comparrison/contrast between short stories and novels as being the difference between an affair or a marriage compared to a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger - inevitably they are never as satisfying. But you treasure them anyway. In anycase, as I was saying the main problem with Labute is that he's kind of dug himself into a hole. You go into each story expecting some sort of vindictive twist to it and nine times out of ten you get it. It is however the other one out of ten that will bother people. Endings that don't seem to do anything, stories that don't really go anywhere. I'm not saying that that is the case, but by comparrison they don't have that rough edge that the others do. A fair comparrison would be if you went out and rented In The Company Of Men for the first time, loved it and then rented Possession as a follow up. It's not bad and we all know that everything that's in there is in there for a reason and even the most lackluster of stories give you something to think about. The fact that most of the stories are written in the present tense/first person will annoy some people and make them feel like they are simply reading a script written in impropper format, however for most us real Labute fans, its the content that we're looking for above and beyond all things. The message. We ask ourselves, what cold vein has this literary madman tapped into now.

But I digress. The goods news is exactly what all fans of Labute's work had hoped for. Yes, although there are some slow stories in here, he clearly hasn't lightened up in his older age. His eye is still turned towards the subject of everyday evil, obsession, misogyny and all of the other things that we love him for. His stories range from poignant to terrifying and there's one in particular in here that will make most want to curl up in the fetal position and rock back and forth for a few hours. I know there are some out there who will negate the shock of his work as being any kind of driving factor in his work, and in many ways they are right. But for me atleast it is in large part the fact that he doesn't shy away from going all the way, that he will really zoom into the ugliness and dig into the dirt of man, that I read him. I can get the same messages from other authors/filmmakers if I need to, but the fact of the matter is that some people just wont go where Labute will, and it's exciting to watch him break down socially accepted barriers on almost a bi-annual basis. There is a line but Labute either can't see it or simply doesn't care. And for that reason alone I will continue to read whatever he writes. So yes, if that's what you're interested in, weather you like to admit it or not, you will be more than happy with this purchase. If you're looking for moral insite, well it has that too. Just don't expect the affair - as said - these are kisses in the dark. Nothing more. Nothing less.



Rating:
Summary: Stories That Shock And Awe!
Review: 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.