Customer Reviews

Waiting Period

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was critical towards The Willow Tree, Selby's 1998 comeback, but compared to Waiting Period, it reads like Requiem For A Dream. After all, The Willow Tree still not only retained some of Selby's Naturalism, but also magnified the compassion that was always present in his work but was often somewhat difficult to see. And upon having read it, I thought that, its perceived weaknesses aside, perhaps Selby mark II, having spent twenty years in literary silence, would develop this kinder side further, that he hadn't lost the plot but merely changed it. Then I saw a blurb describing Waiting Period, learned that it tells the tale of a deranged veteran whose depression leads him to become a serial murderer, and became somewhat apprehensive, to say the least. Then I actually read the thing. Unfortunately, my fears were confirmed. Waiting Period is by far Selby's worst book. Crime And Punishment it definitely ain't.

Selby's style has not changed at all since Last Exit To Brooklyn came out in the sixties. That lack of quotation marks and that abundance of run-on sentences that made Requiem For A Dream seem so feverishly vital are now just motions to go through. Waiting Period's only accomplishment is to dilute it to a stream of broken thought fragments, depriving it of any power it still had. Selby even plagiarizes himself at times - that "cops and robbers" bit on page 185 is lifted straight from Selby's 1971 novel The Room, word for word, and those depressed rants at the beginning are mighty similar to some of the ones in the aforementioned novel. Except The Room, difficult and often vicious as it was, _never_, _ever_ demanded that the reader approve of its character - on the contrary, it was a portrait of self-abasement of the lowest kind, and made sure to underscore it.

Waiting Period, on the other hand, revels in it. Consider the fact that the main narrative - a stream-of-consciousness first-person monologue from the point of view of the main character - is occasionally interrupted with little paragraphs in italics that say things such as this: "Wonder upon wonder. The man is not only without fault, he is with virtue. His nobility brightens the night sky. Oh my son, my son, what joy you awaken in me and thus the world." (167) Then, a bit later, we get: "You are the aurora borealis of my life." (179) This delusional viciousness could have come from a Chuck Palahniuk novel; in fact, it's what fuels Palahniuk's entire career. It's bitterly ironic, since hacks like Palahniuk have made names for themselves aping, among other things, Selby's own The Room and The Demon. But you know how it goes - the student becomes the teacher, and they both ride home on the kindergarten bus. Or something. It occurred to me that these interludes were meant as some kind of Ironic Attack upon religion - the dedication ("To the Inquisition"! Oh, how _clever_!) seems to support this - but if so, it lacks any depth whatsoever. Much emphasis is placed on the fact that the murderer only murders those who "truly deserve" to die. Why - that's exactly like Raskolnikov, except without the whole point!

At its worst, the writing is not only derivative, but just plain bad. "Feel like any moment now I/ll be so focused on the process that I/ll become a part of it and just flow through the ether and become a part of every atom, every proton and quark and resonate through the Universe...all of it...all, all... ...Oh, what a sublime thought, to float free of the body and mind, just a pulse in space...but it would be _my_ pulse, _my_ awareness, awareness of freedom, free from the vice-like oppression that has crushed me all my life..." (36-7) Every quark, eh? Right. I never thought I'd live to see the day when Hubert Selby Jr. would start sounding like a chapter in a self-help booklet, but there it is, right before your eyes. Honestly, I found myself looking at the spine of the book to make sure that this was really written by Selby. I mean, for crying out loud, this is Hubert Selby! This man wrote not one, but two triumphs of Naturalism! This man was one of America's outlaw poets! What happened?

I don't recommend Waiting Period to anyone. Go read Selby's Requiem For A Dream. It's emotional, raging, dramatic and powerful, and it has much to say to you. All Waiting Period has to say is that it's over.

This book had the makings of something, at the absolute least, interesting:

Suicide, paranoid delusions, rednecks, improvised explosives, revenge killings, mafioso, religious grandiosity, TV dinners, existential crisis, firearms, and lots of misplaced self-hatred.

This book was so flat, so completely devoid of substance. There's absolutely nothing here. I have never walked away from a novel so completely unaffected (and I've read some real trash, trust me). Could this possibly be from the same guy that wrote Last Exit to Brooklyn, Requiem for a Dream, and The Room? I loved all of those, especially The Room, which shares numerous stylistic parallels with Waiting Period (although the Room was a million times more interesting and engaging than this). How Selby could create something so dead and uninspiring escapes me.

I won't go into an in-depth review of the book... go elsewhere for that - I can barely string 2 sentences together, let alone a coherent dissection of the literally merits of this book. But I'll say this: if you're a Selby fan and read over the brief description of Waiting Period and it seems interesting, don't fall for it. Skip this one.

Really.

Don't get me wrong the general idea is very good, its a great topic. But the whole book is clearly a rant. At the begining i really enjoyed it but as i went on, the ranting never stopped. The story line is enjoyable. But the on and on and on and on and on rant-style of the book
gets a little old.

Hubert Selby Jr. is easily one of my favorite authors, yet his latest offering, The Waiting Period, seems to lack the potency of his previous works. What made me a fan of Selby in the first place was his ability to create characters and stories that affected a change in me--writing that made me step back in emotional exhaustion, hardcore material the way only Selby could write it. In The Waiting Period I find almost none of the dark zest that permeates and saturates such Selby masterpieces as The Demon and Requiem for a Dream--in its stead have been placed the stagnant and annoying bickerings of a bitter old man.

No, it's not Selby's best book--I doubt that he intended it as his masterpiece. It's also true that the style has changed little since *Last Exit to Brooklyn*, with its stylized paragraph indentations, idiosyncratic punctuation, and phonetic spellings, and I agree that such conventions seem to work best in the world of *Last Exit*.

Perhaps if it had been longer, it would have been a bit much, but I considered it a fun read. This short novel functions well as a portrait of an angry old man, crushed by bureaucracy, in a world whose very bureaucracy serves to impose the "waiting period" during which he "realizes" the "meaning" of his life--to kill the fat-cats whom he perceives are holding him down. I though it was, at the very least, Selby's funniest book (albeit in a twisted way) and definitely worth the time spent to read it.

"Waiting Period," Selby's final novel after his comeback, and new-found enthusiasm with a new generation of readers looking in on outsider fiction, is an uninspired, flat, and short-plodding piece of fiction. Having read "Requiem..." , "Last Exit to Brooklyn," and the short stories collection "Song of the Silent Snow," I was pretty enthused to read "Waiting Period." Figuring it to be a rather quick and exhilarating read into another character's maddening state of paranoia, depression, and all things gruesomely-Selby, I dove in with an ecstatic fervor that wore out rather quickly.

At it's core, "Waiting Period" is sounds like somewhat of Stephen King short story, with a Chuck Palahnuik witty cynicism. Instead of killing yourself, why not take your revenge on those that drove you to it? Based on the nightmarish mirth and mayhem that Selby was able to deliver, so brutally and precisely in his previous novels, I couldn't wait for the horrific twists, and bold prose of "Waiting Period."

Inside, however, I found none of this. Long draw out scenes of contemplation. Dull rambling thoughts from a character Selby fails to build up into anyone we should care about or believe in. Strange scenes of pointless violence, either imagined or real pop up out of nowhere. "Waiting Perid" is a flat-out disappointment that doesn't really go anywhere. Unlike his other works I've read, getting through this short novel was a never-ending chore, that failed to pick up. Avoid at all costs.

Even if you haven't read any of Selby, Jr.'s previous works, you should know you are reading one of the true masters of contemporary (20th century) fiction. Selby has always been uncompromising, since his very first novel that caused such outrage and impact (Last Exit to Brooklyn (An Evergreen book)).

'Waiting Period' focuses on the huge frustration and anger that we all feel about the "forces" in our life (read: bureaucracy, institutions, conventional thinking, endless forms to fill in, a demanded subservience to authority). There are several powerful reasons to read this novel: one, is that it speaks up for thsoe who are most often made silent - the vast majority of the wasted, used, exploited, unemployed, unknown. The narrator of the story speaks directly to you, which is powerful enough in itself. But then you find through his narration that he is one of the many neglected, ignored underclass - he has served the government, he has done his duty - and all he is left with is the endless arbitrage with dealing with government bureaucracy as a war veteran.

Ultimately, being ignored over too much time, and feeling, in conclusion, desperately suicidal, he decides to buy a gun and kill himself. But there's a glitch in the computer system, and the few days it takes for him to get the gun, makes him completely re-interpret his purpose and - well, r'aison d'etre.

There are many wonderful, incredible highlights about this novel: not least, that you are drawn in, as a reader, from the outset to the end, to the narrator's own viewpoint; you have no other. He decides, instead of killing himself, he should kill at least the principal figure who controls the finances of the government administration and who, automatically, continues to deny him his rightful claims to support. Most especially, because you are reading the novel from a deeply personal, angry first person point of view, you are left with no choice as a reader but to determine the truth/fiction of his claims/anger et al, according to what he is writing. Selby's genius, is that he enables you to experience the sheer anger, deprivation, frustration and anxiety of a Vet, while at the same time "hearing" the narrator trying, always, to rationalise his behaviour, so that he does the "right" thing.

The intensity, and sheer, unrelenting power, of the narrative, frankly only draws you to one conclusion: inevitably, frankly justifiably, you side with the narrator as he fantasises and commits acts of - how shall we call them - "death"?; "execution"?; no; frankly, you side with him to the point where you think he kills rightly for justice - from the fascistic deniar of rightful VA claims, to genuine racists who have killed and since glorified their actions in yearly festivals. The intensity is comparably to Louis-Ferdinand Celine's fiction, but Selby goes far beyond that. He takes no prisoners; if you read him, from the very first page, you are ultimately drawn - and rightfully compromised/justified - in his viewpoint to take revenge.

An amazing novel - incredibly focused, relentlessly first person, overwhelming, powerful, deeply moving. An important novel that is part of the despair, anxiety, alienation and frustration expressed towards the powerful, institutions and society in general that Celine first articulated in the 1930s onwards and, with Selby, we have a writer who has continued Celine's legacy. Should you read this novel you will, I promise, never forget it.

I lumped in this book with a large book order, not giving it much thought. The premise seemed interesting so i picked it up and began reading.

The first thing that bothered me was the fact that there are NO chapters. This book is basically one painfuly long internal monologue with no page breaks at all, which gets stale very quickly. As a result, its very hard to stay ontop of the story's timeline and other matters going on outside of the character's head.

What annoyed me the most... the writing style. Now, the idea of the writing style is really clever, the thoughts of a deranged person, but it was not very well executed. The best way to describe it is... random, rambly, and patchy. I know that it's supposed to be like that in a way, but reading it becomes annoying after about 20-30 pages.

Finally, theres one more thing. No doubt, youve read the synopsis already. So you know theres a change in the plot where the character stops wanting to kill himself, and starts wanting to kill others. Naturally, thats should be a HUGE point in the book! It wasn't. That character's MAJOR internal transition was expressed through ONE SENTENCE!!

All in all, I was extremley disappointed with the way the author exectued this book, but it's a really good idea for a story. Which is why I gave it two stars instead of one.

Selby is a poet who writes from experience. The experience is ugly - the poetry masterful. He lets his flag fly. That's a lot more than most others do. Read for yourself. Read all his books.

Hubert Selby Jr has a style all his own. Sometimes it works, sometimes it seems like art imitating art. In his most recent book WAITING PERIOD, Selby constructs a 200 page story entirely based on interior monologue. There is action except in the mind of the narrator, a character who has about as much charisma as a putrifying egg. But that's the point, I think, that we are placed inside the mind of a misfit who seeks to resolve his victim role in life (after rejecting the plan of suicide) by killing those people who represent the bureaucracy of America. For example, his first victim is a benefits counselor at the VA hospital who refuses our narrator his benefits. When Selby infrequently steps out of the monolgue into a Greek Chorus moment of commentary we hear "...a sacred plea from the man as he experiences the anguish of the human condition. Have you not seen it everywhere, most especially within yourself? It is simply part of the dilemma............he is but a man."

Reading this book can become boring and repulsive unless you take it in small bits. But again, I think this is the genius of Selby, for what are our minds when they go sour if not grounded by an intermittent dose of reality? WAITING PERIOD refers not only to the time between purchasing a gun and being able to use it: that PERIOD can also represent the time from the inception of a foul thought to the premeditated acting out. And if you've the stomach for that then this book will excite you. A well written experiment with words that is perhaps just too frightening to admit that even our own minds can conjure such tales!