Room

Rating:
Summary: What a disappointment
Review: After Requiem for a Dream, I thought the Room would be a good book to read. I was expecting an emotionally disturbing, but thought provocking book, much like Requiem, but the Room was not like the well know Selby novel. Room is a wandering and discusiting book, with discriptions of rape and tourute that seem to come from the mind of a sick and twisted man. Unlike Requiem for a Dream, Selby is not shocking yet intriging, in the Room, Selby is just sick. The plot is weak, and there is no sticking moral message in the book. It was promising at first, but left me very disapointed. I highly recomend not reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Writing is good therapy...
Review: but not always a good book. The room, has an interesting premise, maybe for a short story. But for a novel it gets tiring quick. It doesn't seem to have much of a point other than to offer up two different fantasies of an inmate: one very violent and disturbing, then other benevolent. Whatever, they both get old. Some of the writing is the most disturbing I've ever read, which is fine, if it has a point. I don't believe it does. I have read two other Selby books, Last Exit and Requiem.. both are far superior to Room, Requiem is a masterpiece! So if you haven't read any selby go to one of those two first.

Rating:
Summary: Brutal, exhausting... harrowing...
Review: First off, I'd like to briefly address previous reviewer Haseeb's warning for the dog lovers out there. The 'dog' scenes do not involve dogs, but rather the main character's antagonists in the role of dogs. The main character fantasizes of training these human beings to be 'obedient dogs'. There is no animal cruelty here (except for an unfortunate rat), but rather human cruelty. Don't go runnin' to the SPCA on this one.

As for the book, it takes a strong will to read, but it's also like a car wreck that you just can't take your eyes off of. It is truly a harrowing read, the protagonist ceaselessly dragging us down with him into his endless cycle of neurotic despair and obsessive fantasies. There is something here about a damaged soul refusing to take on responsibility for itself... about refusing to internalize his locus of control. Everything is everybody else's fault, everything bad in his life happens to him, not because of him. The only responsibility the protagonist is concerned with is fantasizing about getting his pound of flesh, getting back at 'those who screwed him'. He obsesses over getting back at the cops, and the system, to a point that reality simply does not exist anymore, and when he does eventually have to deal with the outside world again, he is at a total loss as to how to deal with it.

It is a despairingly bleak novel, and if my review seems a bit disjointed and rambling, wait until you read Selby's book, as it's got nothin' on that. I recommend the book, but as one other reviewer said, only for those who are ready for it. If you're one of the happy shiney people out there, you probably won't get much out of it, but if on the other hand you're one who has at one point or another wondered why you just can't get a break, or why someone you've known just wouldn't 'buck up and get a grip', you should check out The Room.

Rating:
Summary: Truly Horrifying
Review: I read this book directly after reading "Last Exit to Brooklyn," which I enjoyed greatly. "Room" is, as I said, truly horrifying--its descriptions of torture, rape, and murder are far more horrendous that any other Selby book.

Rating:
Summary: I Have Mixed Feelings
Review: On the one hand this book does a pretty good job delving into the tedium that a prisoner must experience and it does a pretty good job exploring in a realistic manner the fantasies in which a criminal pyschopathic personality might engage. But to tell the truth, I got bored with the book. Maybe that's one of the points--incarceration in not an exciting thing.

Basically, the main character, the prisoner, engages in two alternating fantasies. In the first, he dreams about using his intellect to blow the cover off of the corrupt law enforcement system. In his mind he becomes the hero of the oppressed and the hero of reformers making it all the way to capital hill to regale the senate with his misfortunes. I don't doubt that many criminals engage in self-deceptive ego trips, but after 10 or so pages of redundant self-aggrandizement the reader gets the idea. The second line of fantasies involves the brutal torture of the two police officers that arrested the prisoner. In his mind he dehumanizes the policemen in almost every way imaginable. Again, I don't doubt that many convicts engage in this manner of perverse self-pleasure, but it does get somewhat monotonous as every last detail of the gruesome fantasies are laid out time and time again.

This was my first Selby book and it is obvious that he is a talented writer. I am going to give his other books a try.

Rating:
Summary: Only a super hero could finish this tedious novel
Review: T/F Huber Selby Jr. is a grounbreaking writer. True
T/F The Room is his worst novel. True
T/F The Room is the worst novel, period. True
T/F You should read something else, ANYTHING else. True

Wow, good score. Read "Last Exit to Brooklyn," it is a masterpeice. Stay far away from The Room, okay? If you just want to read a disturbing novel just to be, well, disturbed . . . than go ahead and give it a shot. Its hard to know which is more torturing though, incarceration of reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Lord...
Review: The writing style in this book was so tedious to read, i had to give up 4 chapters in. If you like reading random thoughts jotted down all ou of order, this is the book for you...

Rating:
Summary: a Selby masterpiece
Review: This is definately a Selby masterpiece since the story's setting is the perfect arena for his style and ideas. Its difficult to recommend this book,though,due to the explicit brutality, surpassing anything I/ve read. Its beyond gut-wrenching. But there is an interview with the man which gives much insight into the book and puts alot of its content into perspective.

www.centerforbookculture.org/interviews/
and scroll down to the second interview with him. Its very long but well worth reading and he starts talking about THE ROOM in depth about 1/3 of the way down the page.

Rating:
Summary: The Pit....
Review: Whenever you read something by Selby you have to wonder how sick and disgusting the human mind can get. Do not misunderstand me. I think Selby is brilliant and everyone should read his works when they are ready for it. But not until then. Indeed, with Room that hole into the soul of humanity is so deep that if you were in the last level of hell, you would still be looking down...a long, long way. This book has been the worst experience of my life. I would highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Dark, darker, Selby...
Review: While this may not be -arguably- Selby's best book, one has to remember what his other books are mostly like: masterpieces. The "Room" only falls short because its "trick" might wear thin eventually, but this is by no means a certainty and it really depends on whether you allow it to wear thin.

What the room is, is the mind of a very troubled and very concerned man. This man is concerned because he's confined in a cell with a possible heavy sentence awaiting (his trial pending). What we read throughout the whole book is only what goes on in this man's mind. There is no contact with anyone outside of this man, and all the dialogue to be found happens in his mind as well.

We are treated to a barrage of fantacizing as he imagines the tremendous measures of revenge he will take on those who caused him to be incarcerated, but we are also given a rather incoherent flow of thoughts and fantasies, much like we'd get if we could glimpse into anyone's mind. The uniqueness of this person's mind is that basically anything that breeds in there has the signs of brutality written all over it.

This is obviously not a book for the stomachically weak. Alone the fantasy with the dog training is one of the most brutal descriptions you'll come across in any book, and it spans across several pages. But this is by no means the only "scene" that will make for a gut-wrenching read. This guy has clearly got some issues, and as long as he remains locked up, the only he can work them out is in the confines of his own brain.

Selby delivers the goods in top form, the language is (as usual in his books) very strong and merciless, and while on the surface it looks like one fantasy has no connection oncesoever with the next, the grotesque imagery, and the pattern that keeps (admittedly) slowly developing is akin to a perverse attraction. But, as some will know, perverse attractions have always been succesful.

I don't know of many writers in Selby's league, and that in itself is an understatement actually. I also don't know many writers who'd be succesful even trying to copy him. His talent is multisided, but his strongest asset is how deep inside he gets in his characters, even when he's not speaking directly through their minds.

However, if this would be your first Selby book, i'd advise you not to start from here: it's a rather "difficult" one to start from. Start instead from "Last exit to Brooklyn" or "Requiem for a dream", both will "ease" you into the Selby-oid type of writting and the "Room" will become all the more accesible after that.

A dark, very dark book, that clearly qualifies as one of the gems in the domains of ultragloomy literature.