American exceptionalism and godforsakenness in Hubert Selby jr.’s novels

Abstract

American author Hubert Selby Jr. develops the topic of painful addictions and moral and physical degradation. Although the author declared he was not religious, his novels are filled with biblical motifs and allusions emphasizing the opposition between justice and mercy. Selby’s characters – urban marginalized people – lose their own vision of life and existential control in pursuit of the deceptive “American dream”. Selby’s favorite artistic device – stream of consciousness and parenthetically broken writing style, create the effect of authenticity and aim to demonstrate the functioning of consciousness. The article analyzes the little-studied novels “The Room” and “Waiting Period”, which differ in time of writing but are related thematically and stylistically. The type of the central character – an unnamed middle-aged American who suffers from arbitrary government, bureaucracy and societal restrictions, also unites the novels. The characters punish those they consider malevolent by the available means: the prisoner in “The Room” does so in his dreams, the computer specialist in “Waiting Period” – in reality. Messianic ambitions allow them to consider themselves entitled to destroy the “enemies of humanity” – mainly the servants of the law. The characters seek support from higher powers, constantly crying out to God: the prisoner does not receive an answer, while the murderer constructs one himself, but both find themselves in a state of categorical godforsakenness.