Seconds of Pleasure: Stories [Hardcover]

Neil LaBute (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 31, 2004

Neil LaBute is best known for his controversial films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, and his plays The Mercy Seat and The Shape of Things—which he also adapted for the screen. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Harper's Bazaar, among others. Now, in his debut collection of stories, he brings to the page his cutting humor and compelling take on the shadowy terrain of the human heart. Seductive and disturbing, the stories in Seconds of Pleasure are not for the faint of heart. Each potent and pithy tale finds men and women exploiting—or at the mercy of—the hidden fault lines that separate them: a woman leaves her family at their vacation home after discovering her husband in a compromising situation in "Time Share"; 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." Infused with LaBute's trademark wit and black humor, Seconds of Pleasure unleashes his imagination in stories that offer unflinching insight into our very human shortcomings and impure urges with shocking candor.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

LaBute has a knack for exposing the unseemly side of human nature. In this debut story collection, named after an Elvis Costello song, the controversial writer-director, whose credits include films (In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors) and plays (The Mercy Seat and The Shape of Things), presents men and women engaged in precarious trysts of fate. From a family man's seemingly innocuous flirtation in an airport cafeteria to a sex-obsessed actor who gets snubbed by a wannabe star, LaBute's brief, biting stories reveal a bounty of dubious behaviors motivated largely by lust. In the title story, an adulterous wife is wracked with guilt at the sight of her cereal-slurping spouse. In "Full Service," a female mechanic plays mind games with an overly confident customer, and in "Perfect," a husband goes ballistic over a growth on his wife's flesh. Traveling the same rocky emotional terrain as the late short-story master Andre Dubus, Labute's smart, edgy offering delivers pleasures well beyond the time frame his title suggests. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (August 31, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802117856
• ISBN-13: 978-0802117854
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,968,572 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Neal LaBute's most recent works for the stage include This Is How It Goes (Faber, 2005) and Fat Pig (Faber, 2004), which won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off Broadway Play.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sharp and Disturbing, Deceptive and Sly, July 4, 2005

By 

Jon J. Warren "jjnca" (LA, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seconds of Pleasure: Stories (Hardcover)

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.

4.0 out of 5 stars Hours of fun!, January 28, 2012

By 

BraMaster - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seconds of Pleasure: Stories (Paperback)

Neil LeBute is back with a vengeance in this collection of sassy, sexy, sordid stories! Actually, maybe none of them are sexy, unless you're into that sort of thing. If you're a fan of his films, I'd recommend picking this up. The stories are dark at times, disturbing at others, and sometimes you just may have a good laugh or two.

It's a pretty short read, and most of the stories are hits with only one or two "meh's". A couple of the stories I couldn't quite get a picture of what was going on as he doesn't really set up scenes, and just tosses you in the middle of the action and the characters thoughts. Not a bad thing, as it usually works quite nicely as you're kind of drifting from one characters thoughts to another from story to story.

Also, be careful where you read this book, the cover looks like some sort of weird steamy romance novel.

3.0 out of 5 stars too scratchy to be brilliant, December 8, 2004

By 

madhu m (Chennai, India) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seconds of Pleasure: Stories (Hardcover)

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.