Overview

In this highly polished and slightly twisted moral tale, a man pulls back from the brink of suicide when his application to buy a gun with which to shoot himself is delayed. Instead of throwing his life away, he decides to spend all his time and effort disposing of those who he feels deserve to die. Targeting a bureaucrat in the Veterans' Administration, he devises an ingenious method of murdering people without trace. With a renewed zest for living he embarks on a joyful killing spree, having found the true purpose of his existence. Told with Selby's customary formal daring and stylistic elan, Waiting Period may not offer any answers to the meaning of life, but it sure poses a lot of interesting new questions.

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9780714530710

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Reviews

'When Selby decides to attack, it is with the shock of a practised mugger and with the speed and economy of a poet' Los Angeles Times

A near-unreadable rant from Selby (best known for Last Exit to Brooklyn, 1964) about an anonymous loser who fails to commit suicide and goes on a killing spree to make up for it. Selby's failing this time out isn't his trademark grossness (The Willow Tree, 1998, etc.) as simply self-indulgence. The narrator is an obviously demented character who sounds like Henry Miller on amphetamines ( Country of idiots. It's not a moral degeneration. A case of becoming amoral. Immorality is tangible. It is a tangible perception of life and the actions needed to beat life at its own game. It is not fuzzy feelgoody. Fundamentalists have a very definite agenda they pursue and it is tangible. Concrete. The boob tube softens the suckers up for them ) and seems to have no one to talk to. He decides to kill himself, but the gunsmith he tries to buy a revolver from is unable to waive the waiting period and he goes home empty-handed. Too bad, too, because instead of getting himself permanently and quickly out of the way, he begins to think things through and concludes that the world would not be better off without him-it's the other guys who need to be eased off the scene. So he begins to murder enemies of humanity, beginning by poisoning Mr. Barnard, the bureaucrat at the Veteran's Administration who denied his claim for benefits. Then Jim Kinsey bites the dust-the man who killed two black doctors in the 1960s and was set free by an all-white jury. Still very much in evidence, he's the guest of honor at an annual barbecue ( Freedom Day ) celebrating his release. There are some goombahs in Little Italy who get bumped off also, but the reader is unlikely to last long enough to care very much about them or the rest of this silly mess. Tedious, pretentious, awful. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Hubert Selby Jr was born in Brooklyn New York in 1928. After a career in the merchant marine cut short by illness, he achieved international recognition for Last Exit to Brooklyn. His other novels include The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree and a collection of stories, Song of the Silent Snow, in 1986, all published by Marion Boyars. Darren Aronofsky's film adaptation of Requiem for a Dream, starring Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn, was one of the independent film hits of 2001.

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