The Room is a novel written by Hubert Selby, Jr. (Last Exit to Brooklyn; Requiem for a Dream) published in 1971. Regarded for its extremely graphic content, it is often named as one of the most disturbing books ever written.
The book follows a nameless criminal locked in a remand cell, awaiting trial for a crime he insists he did not commit. Written in the stream-of-consciousness style consistent with Selby's other works, it delves deep into the darkest recesses of the human mind. Confined to his cell, the man dreams up elaborate revenge fantasies. Some of these involve him exposing the two officers who arrested him as corrupt, making them look foolish while acting as his own defense attorney, and taking his case all the way to congress and being hailed as a hero. Others involve him torturing the officers in violent ways.
Has nothing to do with the 2003 film, the 2019 film or the mobile game series sharing its title.
The Room contains examples of the following tropes:
- Depraved Bisexual: Possibly the protagonist. He fantasizes about women and recalls sexual encounters at various points in the novel, but his imagined torture of the two cops veers unmistakably into sexual territory, with him sodomizing them with cattle prods and forcing them to have sex with one another. Unlike the sexual fantasies he has about women, however, it is never outright stated that these ones give him that sort of gratification.
- Dirty Cop: Fred and Harry, the two officers who arrested the protagonist, are regularly portrayed in his fantasies as corrupt, using their position to bully others, and to rape a female motorist whose car they falsely claimed was reported stolen. They never actually show up in the story in person, and we never get their side of it, so it's unknown if this portrayal of them has any basis in reality, or if it's just another case of the man's persecution complex.
- A Fool for a Client: Subverted. While the man is fantasizing about acting as his own lawyer against the cops who arrested him, he commits numerous violations which would absolutely not fly in a real trial, but since it's his own fantasy, he is successful at defending himself and the two officers are made to look like idiots. Played straight towards the end of the book, where in the midst of a mental breakdown, the man fantasizes about acting as his own lawyer again and this time he ends up being the one looking foolish.
- Jizzed in My Pants: Near the end of the book, the man fantasizes about having sex with a woman in a church, causing him to ejaculate. Unfortunately for him, this happens right before he has to go to the mess hall to eat, and having to walk there from his cell with semen in his pants causes him great distress.
- Minimalist Cast: The protagonist is the only character who actually appears in the book, with others just being part of his fantasies.
- Never My Fault: While it's ultimately left ambiguous whether or not he truly committed any crime, the protagonist has a habit of blaming other people for things.
- The Nondescript: We don't learn a whole lot about the protagonist, beyond the fact that he is an adult male, and white. The only other identifying feature we're told about is a pimple forming on his cheek that is alluded to several times over the course of the story.
- Self-Serving Memory: Implied. Every single transgression the man recalls has somebody else at fault, and he demonstrates a massive persecution complex throughout the novel.
- Unreliable Narrator
- Villainous Breakdown: The entire novel arguably functions as an extended one, as the man becomes angrier and more unhinged as it progresses. After the church sex fantasy, however, is when things really take a turn for the worse.
- Villain Protagonist: The main character is a petty criminal detailing violent revenge fantasies. It's ambiguous whether or not he's guilty of the crime he's supposed to have committed, but he's clearly not a good person by any stretch of the imagination.
