Hubert Selby Jr, author of
Requiem for a Dream,
Last Exit to Brooklyn,
The Demon,
The Room,
The Willow Tree, and
Song of the Silent Snow published
Waiting Period in
2002 through
Marion Boyars Publishers, adding another provocative
novel to his
repertoire of amazing
literary achievements.
Although the book is quite good, and a very fast read, (something like five hours after I bought it I was finished) it doesn't quite live up to the
profoundness of some of his earlier
accomplishments. The
central character in the book remains
unnamed throughout the story, much like the
main character in
Fight Club. This actually adds to the
dramatic elements of the story, as the man could be someone any of us know, yet never give a second thought to; He is the man you see everyday in your local
coffee shop, or the man you accidentally bump into in line at the
county fair.
The story is that of a man who is about to kill himself, but is
forced to postpone his
suicide when he is unable to buy a gun due to a
computer glitch. While he is waiting for the glitch to be fixed he has an
epiphany, instead of killing himself, he will exact
revenge on the people who have caused him to want to end his life.
I don"t want to throw out any
spoilers, because that would ruin a great book, instead I"ll focus on why I don"t think it was up to
par with Selby"s past works. The story is told through a
stream of conscious that takes you through the emotional ups and downs of someone who is
suicidal, and eventually becomes a
murderer. It is an
inspired story, keeping with Selby"s tendency to look on the dark side of human life, but it never quite reaches the raw emotional level of Requiem for a Dream, or even Last Exit to Brooklyn, both novels that really had no main character in the
traditional sense.
The character in Waiting Period rants and raves about the people he thinks should be dead, and the
reader will probably agree with the drawn conclusion that the world would be better without them. The reader however never fully
identifies with the man himself, which results in the
aforementioned lack of emotional power. Perhaps it is the fact that this man is so
deranged that keeps us from identifying, but I don"t buy that. In the past Selby has warmed our hearts with everything from
heroin addicts to
transvestites, so a depressed
serial killer should be a
piece of cake.
Besides the problem with identification, the book gets started like a
coal train, only really speeding up in the last
quarter of the book. Then once the story starts picking up momentum and drawing the reader into the murder plot, Selby begins skipping around, leaving out details, which the first three-quarters of the book were filled with. Many of the gaps in the
timeline I can understand as being necessary, but it just seems off to write one way for
150 pages and then suddenly switch up near the end, even if the reader is ready for the
change of pace.
This, however, by no means makes the book bad.
All in all the book is a must read for any
fan of Selby, and is a great point to start from if you"ve never read any of Selby"s work before. Even though this was last
endeavor in Selby"s long history of
publication, I liken the differences between it and his other works to the differences between
William S Burroughs first novel
Junky and his other '
cut-up' works.
Waiting Period comes highly recommended, just be warned of what you are (or aren"t) getting into. 8/10