Neil LaBute

The American playwright and film-maker is turning his hand to fiction with his first collection of short stories, Seconds of Pleasure. He tallks to Jonathan Romney in The Independent.

The stories depict little epiphanies of perdition, in which people blow their chances of redemption on the slimmest gratifications. Hence Seconds of Pleasure: such ruination, and in exchange for what? An orgasm, or the relief of making a catty remark. The title came from a song by Elvis Costello, to whom the book is dedicated. LaBute borrowed it because "it reinforced that notion of what people were longing for, and willing to throw everything away for."