Last Exit to Brooklyn (Evergreen Book)

This novel is an extremely powerful novel that portrays Brooklyn the way it really was "back in the day". The book contains a series of short stories which are vaguely connected and which paint a picture of a crime ridden 1970s Brooklyn which was really nothing more that a hell hole. I gave the book 4 stars because the stories that were good, were powerful and phenominal, while the ones that werent so good were simply boring, but with this book the good clearly outshines the bad. Just as a warning, this book is extremely graphic and violent. The author writes in a very gritty style and parts of it are extremely intense. This book can certainly be upsetting to those who are not desensitized to graphic violence. The story breakdown is as follows:

Another Day, Another Dollar (5/5)- Portrays a street gang who causes trouble by robbing military personal staioned in Brooklyn. The story is a powerful view of the level of violence and the lawlessness of Brooklyn at the time. This story is quite violent, and is very gritty and dark, it also shows the level of police corruption and apathy inherent in Brooklyn at the time.

The Queen is Dead (5/5) - portrays the life of a transvestite prostitute and his life mingeling with the tough street punks of Brooklyn. It is an interesting almost darkly comical view of how the most macho men in Brooklyn were more attracted to transvestite prostites than they were to their own women. It also protrays the distorted and horrific family life of a homosexual in the 1970s and the the level of disdain and unacceptance at the time. Finally this story gives a glimpse of a perscription drug party an the associated consequences.

And baby makes three (1/5) - This story is about a girl who was impregnanted by a motorcycle mechanic. It portrays her alcholoic father and how he tries to force himself to accept her and her decisions. This one was pretty slow and really went nowhere, I truthfully feel it did not belong.

Tralala (5/5) - The story of a young Brooklyn prostitute and her life picking up military sailors and than robbing them. The story is about her own rapid downward spiral and her deeply depressing life. This story is very violent and the end is extremely notorious, graphic and intense. This story should be avoided if you are unable to handle horrific, upsetting details.

Strike (5/5) - My favorite story in the book. It follows a factory worker who later becomes a union official during a strike. It portrays his corruption, his wild use of union funds, his excessive drinking and partying with his punk and his attraction to the transvestite prostitute from the second story. In this story, he also hates his wife, and has an absolute disdain for her, looking to hurt her physically and emotionally in any way possible. At the end he makes the biggest mistake of his life and he pays in a fitting way. Phenominal ending on this one!

Landsend (1/5) - Random intertwined stories from a specific housing project in Brooklyn. This section is pointless, unnecessary and consists of nothing more than random arguing, yelling and general idiocy. It is a day's view of a Brooklyn housing project from the eyes of an insider.

Last Exit to Brooklyn, Selby's full-length literary debut, is structured more like a collection of stories than a novel. It consists of several episodes that involve completely different characters, have nothing to do with each other, and are structured pretty much the same way - a brief one-page exposition, followed by a buildup of violence all the way to some kind of unspeakably terrifying crescendo whose onset and cessation resolves absolutely no conflict but merely serves to mercilessly cut off the narrative. The last chapter is a series of short, disconnected vignettes that take place in one apartment complex; though they aren't as frightening, the events depicted in them are so uniformly grotesque as to be even more hopeless, even if they're completely banal. For instance, Selby's Naturalistic depiction of the time-honoured pastime of picking one's nose while gossiping is liable to turn one's stomach inside out. You can imagine, based on this example, that Last Exit to Brooklyn is not the most accessible (or even readable) book ever written.
Selby's own voice is not present in the writing; for the most part, the author functions only as a dispassionate chronicler of events that, for the most part, are all completely believable. There are no asides, no motivations, no interpretations - what one sees is very much what one gets, and so one is forced to confront what one sees. It isn't very pretty. However relentless his 1979 masterpiece Requiem for a Dream is, it's much more readable than Last Exit to Brooklyn, mainly because it at least features a "Dream" of some kind. The hapless characters of Last Exit to Brooklyn, however, have no dreams (unless, like Harry Black's, they're about evisceration). Selby himself once characterized this book as an attempt to describe "a world without love," and I think that this appraisal is absolutely accurate. Even the "love" felt by "Georgette" in the first big episode of the book (following a brief introduction that serves to establish what kind of world this is) is a grotesque parody of same. There is no human interaction in this book that does not feature some sort of casual brutality - even the striking workers, who are supposed to stand together in solidarity, in fact have no solidarity or togetherness whatsoever. This lack of love extends to every single member of society - the union leaders and the corporate officials are equally corrupt, the homosexual men and heterosexual women equally selfish, the police and the thugs equally violent, the black people and the white people equally isolated, and no one seems to ever sleep well. Sex is not only just another instrument of violence, it's almost always the instrument of choice. And while people who do bad things very often do get their comeuppance (in truly horrible ways - the robber/prostitute is raped to death, the closet homosexual beaten beyond recognition, et cetera), there is no sense of justice served since everyone is guilty.
Why read it, then? Well, Selby does harbour compassion towards these so-called human beings, but that's more visible in his later books; here, his own choice to recede into the shadows doesn't really show it. Only in the last chapter is it somewhat visible, when he describes a doddering old widow who wonders why no one seems to smile and who is probably a precursor to Sara Goldfarb in Requiem for a Dream. Still, his silence must not be confused with approval, since not only does he not sneer in the book, but his silence seems due to his being overwhelmed by grief. Another reason is that it, assuming the mantle of Naturalism, claims to depict a kind of truth - people can argue about how true it is, but they owe it to themselves to learn it first. But then again, one might quite legitimately ask if there is any value to a truth that is so grimly non-human. Third, one might want to appreciate this book simply based on the writing, and the writing is powerful indeed, but hardly refined enough to place Selby among the stylistic masters. In the end, what it comes down is this: if outright war between reader and writer is what you like, you'll never find a better book; otherwise, you'll have a hard time getting through it once. Also, in either case I would advise you not to eat before reading it.

After reading 'Requiem for a Dream' I was enthusiastic about reading this highly rated book. Like 'Requiem for ...', all of the characters in this novel do not do any introspection and are either unable or unwilling to see themselves objectively largely because of their environment. Basically this book takes us into the minds of the powerless; those who live on the fringes of society; the people looked down on by society at large. We see things from their eyes, we walk in their shoes and experience what they experience.
The idea that the playing field is level and anyone can do what they want if they just work hard is just plain .... Although I didn't grow up in the inner city, I was not completely sheltered and hence can understand how a person's environment shapes who they are and their opportunities in life. After reading this book, I became even more educated about life on the fringes in the inner city. I've met people from the inner city who've told me that I can't understand where they are coming from since I haven't 'experienced' what they have 'experienced'. Regardless of what people say, I think reading Last Exit brings one closer to experiencing life in 'the other america' and forces us to really appreciate our lives more.
The sad thing about books like this is that the people who really need a dose of it turn their noses up and ignore the message.

As an exploration of personalities damaged by the hardships of living in Brooklyn at the bottom of the pack following WW2, and a raw, no holds barred observation of the desperate where the natural and spontaneous language of the characters reflects the stresses of the time and the latent cruelty in all of us if thrown into those circumstances, I thought this a masterpiece.

Violence, rape and brutality are of course not ends in themselves for authors but from the Iliad to Cain and Abel in the Bible to the guillotining in A Tale of Two Cities, they appear and yet serve, in sensitive hands, to reveal the good and the evil that are as much made on Earth as they may be judged in Heaven.

Selby confines himself to Earth and the downtrodden yet in that he opens a window into the souls of the unsung.

Hubert Selby's first book, "Last Exit to Brooklyn" was published in the 1964. It was subject to an obscenity trial in England although it escaped U.S. censors unscathed. The book was reissued in 1988, coinciding with the release of a movie loosely based upon it. The book's dark vision remains with the passage of time. It is not a book for the squeamish, faint-hearted, or for the conventional.

The book consists of a series of loosely related stories of varying length taking place in the tenements of Brooklyn. Many of the incidents center around an odious local bar known as "the Greeks" and its patrons. The longest story, "Strike" is about a long and ugly labor dispute and its effect on Harry, a worker and the strike organizer, on his marriage and on his sense of sexual identity. The story is detailed, sordid, violent, and fascinating. Other stories explore the world of cheap hookers, transvestites, drug users, petty crooks and drunks. The stories are raw told in a crude language of the streets appropriate to their subject matter.

The book reminded me of the early work of probably my favorite novelist, the Victorian writer George Gissing, in its concentration of the underlife in our cities. There is little of the express vulgarity and sexual crudity in the Victorian writer, but I think Gissing and Selby would have understood each other nonetheless.

This book is a disturbing picture of low life, partly written in the language and mores of its times but transcending that. There is little in the way of hope or love in the book and I think that the author wants to show us the consequences of a lack or hope and love. It is a book that in a materialist age can teach compassion in a language and style that pulls for attention. It is very sad, but the book invites and demands reflection. It shows us what is missing. This is probably a book that will be remembered in the literary history of America.

Robin Friedman

They don't come much better than this. Urban decay and the rough times of just getting by are incredibly documented in this fantastic novel. It will make you laugh and cry at the same time. I know that sounds cliche but it's more true with this book than most others. Every story chronicled resonates with a gritty street authenticity I've yet to see duplicated in any other novel, except for perhaps Richard Price's "Clockers."

The Modern Library recently came out with their opinion of the top 100 fiction works of the last century; the crime of the century was their complete exclusion of Last Exit to Brooklyn. It's surely the most underrated book I've yet to come across. That could be because it tells a story about the American nightmare which too many people choose to ignore.

Read this one. It's the kind of book you can't get off your mind for days after you've finished.

This book is a remarkable act of love and courage. Selby practicaly invented modern American fiction with this novel, an intense, honest look at life on the edge in the Brooklyn of the 1960's, when Charlie Parker and drag queens and benzendrine were just starting to signal the end of the 1950's and the start life as we know it today. There is also an excellent movie of the same name, but there is no substitute for the original. I wish this book was required reading in every American high school, though our nation is too narrow and frightened and dishonest to let a book like this into a high school library. Brief, intense, and violent, it stands with the best American classics. If you are serious about literature, or culture, or the human heart, I highly recommend this book.

Feel the disease, to paraphrase Depeche Mode. This is a compelling read if only for a peek at pre-Stonewall gay life in Brooklyn. I, like one of the other reviewers, felt that the drag queens were a little to "out" for the early 1960's, even if it was Brooklyn. I had trouble identifying with any of the characters, they were all such a mess. I don't know a lot about recreational drug use, but in the story "Queens", the titular queens were popping "bennies" like M&M's...is that possible, or wouldn't you OD on them.
I really wasn't sure what to make of Harry in "Strike", Selby alternated between making you feel sorry for this poor closeted schmo and then made you hate him for various acts of brutality and/or cowardice. The violent ending didn't make sense in the context of Harry's character, it also reflected the homophobic myth that gays are also child molesters. This was probably function of the times in which it was written.
Those who have seen the movie, the book is quite different. Not so much a story as a pastiche of different scenes, none of which are really contected.
The best of the bunch is the last story which follows a slew of housing project denizens through their various dreary lives. Some of the passages are funny, some are heartbreaking, and all are engrossing. I liked the rhythm of the narrative and the way Selby portrayed each character from his or her own point-of-view.

it is greatly unfortunate that those who gave this book a 1 are merely judging it in this fashion because they have an inability to relate. One such person said "none of the characters are likable", Oh, im sorry i didnt know the appeal to reading a novel was to find it relevant and or the characters likable. It is this sort of judgmental banter that tends to convince others to not partake in certain experiences. Hopefully those wanting to read this book will not subject their motivations to buy it to be swayed by this pointless propaganda. These stories are blunt, they are real, and they are written in a fashion that doesnt displace its agenda, an agenda to explore the darkest of the dark. It does have some violent issues, and i think they many of those giving this book a low mark find it offensive because it holds some relevance to their own lives. It will upset... but in some ways every novel tends to upset us in one way or another.. just hold this book for what it is... dont try to relate to it... and dont read it if you dont want to...

Selby paints a motley cast of characters including drag queens, hookers/johns, sailors, and union workers. Their lives are drowned in booze, bennies, and debaucherie. As worlds collide, things spiral out of control. Emotions run high. Paranoia. Violence. Degradation. A haunting reflection of cultural rebellion. It is intriguing yet sometimes hard to read, with the crazy punctuation that peppers the book. At times it is even repetitive, slightly boring, but never for long. Interesting case study in human nature.

THOUGH THE BOOK SADLY BECAME FAMOUS THROUGH ITS ATROCIOUS FILM ADAPTAPTION, IT IS ONE OF AMONG MANY OF SELBY'S MASTERPIECES -DARK DARK DARK AMID THE DARKNESS OF BRUTALITY AND DESPAIR. A MURDERED CORRUPT TRADE-UNIONIONIST, DRUG-ADDICTED TRANSVESTITES/ TRANSEXUALS, THE MOST HORRIFIC MASS-RAPE SCENE SCENE ON RECORD, AND YES, A BOOK THAT EARNED THE AUTHOR A TRIAL FOR IMMORALITY IN BRITAIN IN 1964.

I emphatically believe in the reading and writing of honest truth. As a reader, I much prefer the harsh, brutal and basic version of a story rather than it's rose-colored fantasy. 'Last Exit' Certainly belongs in that category; But, there is a fine line between the telling of the truth and the exploitation of it, and in his first novel, Selby crosses that line.
The book is a collection of short stories about a variety of people coexisting in the ghettos of Brooklyn post WWII. Homosexuals, Drug users, drag queens, a gang of thugs that steal, beat, rape and murder, child molesting union officers, Nazi-like tenants, baby killers, rednecks and white trash; this book has it all. I liked the fact that it was realistic and gave you a perspective from very different parts of this sub-culture. The author did an excellent job of conveying the energy and anger that everyone who lived in these projects must have felt on a daily basis. I think that JR. Selby shows the potential for becoming an excellent writer on society as it exists, but I don�t think he has perfected the craft in his first novel. Controversial subjects and explicit details were rehashed and drawn out simply for shock value, which is where this novel falls short. �Last Exit� was so constantly sadistic that it became a little boring, I felt like he was trying to hard to disgust his readers and show people that he had the guts to write this way, and not enough time perfecting his talent as a writer. Although I wouldn�t put this on my list of favorites, I still look forward to reading other works by Selby.

Few books have aroused so much strong feeling as Last Exit to Brooklyn, with reactions ranging from the highest admiration, through horror, pity and disgust, to the blind fury of those who are opposed to the exposure of social evil. Its merits, challenged first by private and then by public prosecution, have been tested in the courts. Those who have spoken for it, both as an original work of modern fiction and as a true documentary account of life in a section of Brooklyn, leave us without a doubt that it is one of the most important books of the post-war period.

The characters who inhabit the book are unforgettable: Harry, the strike leader, who during his weeks of power discovers something of his true nature; Tralala, who rejects the only love she is offered and sinks swiftly to the lowest level of prostitution; Georgette, the 'hip queer' with pathetic aspirations to culture; Abraham, the 'cool ass' black stud, with his girls, his 'bigass' Cadillac, and his undernourished family; the debris of American civilisation, for whom the author ultimately makes us feel a profound compassion.

Last Exit to Brooklyn was found obscene at the Old Bailey in November 1967, a decision which was reversed by a historic Appeal Court judgement in July 1968. Now this 'honest and terrible book', as Anthony Burgess descrbes it in his Introduction to this new edition, can take its rightful place as one of the major books of our time.

A friend of mine gave me this book to read, you never really borrow books unless the lender threatens you that your life depends upon its return. I believe Mr. Selby first published this book in 1964 so its a little dated but for the time it was shere madness which even today you have to admire how much profanity can be fit into so few sentences. I enjoyed the book, it kinda makes ya feel dirty but, ya can always take a bath if ya want, unlike many of the characters.Read the book it stands the test of time, Mr. Selby does not understand the concept of built in obsolescence. It reminds me of the time when I lived in Lizton Indiana and my brother Charles Chadwick and our buddy big John, Roscoe and Joe, all gathered to watch Charles pogo stick over the creek behind our house.We had taken some scaffolding left over from our new home construction and laid it across the creek, it was about twelve inches wide and reinforced with 2 x 4's on each edge. 5/8" plywood and 2x 4 's...Charles as I recall had the most confused look on his face when he made it about two hops across the bridge and then fell about five feet into a gravel creek bed, a great look, I think he said "Wha happen"? He laid in the gravel, pogo stick still in position and at that moment I think he realized that not everything works out as planned.He lost interest in this stunt real fast, unlike you will in Huberts great Novel.

About this time we were reaching an age when my folks felt we were old enough to be left alone for short periods of time while they went to Air-Way and such, these opportunities we seized carpe diem style! Empty the two car garage and stage indoor short track races on our dirt bikes, sure we would leave tire tracks on the concrete, sure the nobby tire marks on the walls were tell tale signs of mischief but my folks where young and inexperienced and did not suspect that we would race motorcycles in a two car garage.We would put the garage back together and other than the lingering two stroke haze, and the above mentioned clues, none was the wiser. Best I can remember I always won these races because I was the superior rider. How we managed not to hit the water heater and tear it from the wall proves there is a divine being watching over us. Which also reminds me of how my da showed me the hot water release valve on the water heater for what reason I dont know, but I retained this knowledge. Unfortunately for Elmo and Myrtle our beagles I had just enough knowledge to cause them great pain. You see Elmo was a walk up dog who adopted us as was myrtle, the two quickly became lovers and engaged in Hubert Selby style liaisons as often as myrtle was in heat.They often became stuck and we all know the best way to separate two beast who are stuck is to throw cold or is it hot water on them? At the time I thought it was hot so one evening while my folks were at Air-Way our two beagles became stuck and were in obvious pain, one faced north the other south and like a compass in a tempest they changed directions in a passionate union. I went to the water heater and filled up a glass with water directly from the unit just like me da showed me and threw it on the two lovers, and contrary to my expectations the two just yelped like scalded wild animals. Eventually they separated on their own.They were fine no burns and such but shortly there after Mrytle took up with the neighbors German Shepherd and Elmo hit the road, never to be seen again. Kinda like a Hubert Selby character. I miss my dogs and I miss dominating the two door garage indoor short track circuit. Enough for now, read the book its dirty.

They don't come any better than this. Urban decay and the rough times of just getting by, are incredibly documented in this fantastic novel. It will make you laugh and cry at the same time. I know that sounds cliche but it's more true with this book than most others.
Every story chronicled resonates with a gritty street authenticity that I've yet to see duplicated in any other novel; except for perhaps Richard Price's, Clockers.
The Modern Library recently came out with their opinion of the top 100 novels of the last century, the crime of the century was for them to exclude LETB. It's surely the most under rated book I've yet to come across. That could be because it tells a tale of the American nightmare that is all too real for much of the United State's population.
Read this one, it's the kind of book you can't get off your mind for days after you've finished...

Fifteen years ago I was busted out, suicidal, and 60 days off the juice. I hated all living things. Especially myself. One day I stumbled on to Last Exit To Brooklyn at a used book store in Venice.
I believe it was Kafka who said that a good novel should have the same effect as a blow to the head. Last Exit To Brooklyn had that impact on me. I was never the same after the first page.
Said plainly, Selby is a master at exposing his guts. His truth and the truth of the human condition screams and bleeds from every page. Every endless sentence.
Last Exit is the finest thing of its kind I have ever read. Maybe the best novel in the last 50 years. It tore my heart out and made me beg God to be a writer.
Today, when I look in the mirror, I still see the same two heads looking back but I know for certain that there's at least one other whackjob like me witnessing a similar event. I owe the end of my isolation from the human race and my birth as a writer and my love of books to Hubert Selby Jr.
Great stuff. Thanks Cubby.

I had always heard people speak of Selby's, "Last Exit to Brooklyn", yet it was not until recently that I picked it up. This novel takes you to another time, although not another world. The places Selby speaks of are real and the people could be the guy next to you on the subway. Perhaps it is the language used that makes this novel have the ability to transform the world around you. You are taken into the everyday lives of working-class individuals, and are shown a side of people that most of us will never see. A side that people like to keep hidden to themselves, for if anyone knew what they were really like, the consequences could be fatal. It makes you wonder what you do alone, that would scare others. What you hide as a human being, from all the rest of us...

This is my first book review so please excuse the format. After reading this book I felt dirty... like a peeping tom or like I just read someone's diary. That is a credit to Selby's writing style. It flows like real conversation and real thoughts. I live a very sheltered, somewhat isolated life. I'm lucky in a sense but the downside is that I don't have much "life experience" which is mostly self-imposed. I've never dealt with drug or physical abuse or seen street life first hand so the voyeur in me likes to watch from a distance. I kinda hate that I have the urge to watch shows like Intervention and that a sick part of me enjoyed the movie Requiem of a Dream. That movie really disturbed me but I still researched it and found out that Selby was a well regarded author. After reading the reviews I decided to read the book even though the reviewers gave ample warning. So, after reading it, would I recommend it? The answer is no unless you want to torture yourself. It's really painful to read. I know that life is hard and horrible things happen in the world but this book really takes you to a dark place mentally. The world the book speaks of does exist which is the scariest part of all. I'm pretty sure that this book has a place in the world because it's so real but I think I'll stick to Stephen King. I'm giving it a 3 because Selby's writing style is very unique...Lots of run-on sentences and the brooklyn accent is literally spelled out so that you can understand what the characters sound like.

Seldom has a collection of words so irritated me. I wrote a review over on GoodReads, check that out if you care to read the rant this embarrassment to real books inspired.

I will add this: "Brooklyn" is as much art as Jackson Pollock's splatter-crap. Pretty much made in the same fashion, too - throw some shiit and see what sticks. Now, if this statement offends thee, or you're shaking your head at poor avgJones and his no-class ways, please, by all means, read the damn thing - you deserve each other. For the brave few, unafraid to call a turd a turd, save your money, your brain cells, your self-respect. There's more good books, REAL good books, than you have time to read - move on, waste not another moment here.

Hubert Selby Jr. first caught my eye with Requiem for a Dream. His disjointed, stream-of-consiousness narrative fits perfectly with his subject matter, lending a simultaniously manic and insightful voice to his myriad characters.

As Selby's premier novel, one critic aptly described Last Exit to Brooklyn as an "urgent ticker tape from hell". This book will grab you by the throat and drag you, willingly or otherwise, into Selby's Brooklyn.

The first story, "Another Day Another Dollar" is a short tale of the violent exploits of a street gang that resides within the Brooklyn neighborhood. This group shows up again in a few of the following stories, and functions as a sort of metaphorical and physical dark angel, a manifestation of the backlash of the characters' vices.

The second story, "The Queen is Dead" details the exploits of Georgette, a drag queen, and her friends. Georgette is one of the most pure characters, in a sense, because she searches for true love, while the others would have physical satisfaction.

In "Tralala", a young, hateful prostitute seeks attention and gets it, dying as she lived: in a dirty back alley, covered in the shame of her customers. Lacking the ability to understand the love shown to her, she continues to seek the only approval she has ever known: men's appreciation of her body.

The fourth short story, "Strike" involves Harry Black, a union official running a strike at a manufacturing company. His struggles at home, at work, and with his own sexuality allow the reader to simultaniously despise and hate him.

The final short story, a coda titled "Landsend", about what the possible fate of the gang members could be once they marry and settle into a government housing complex.

Selby's ability to write these otherwise dispicpable characters with compassion is what makes his novels so intriguing. If you were a fan of Requiem for a Dream, this will more than satisfy any craving for Selby's unique cocktail of American naturalism and European existentialsm.

*hubert selby jr. is my favorite writer of all-time, specifically for his brutal honesty

-all of selby's work will be regarded in my eyes as genius,but l.e.t.b. just was not his best work in my opinon

+ + +what i liked

*several short installments (good for readers who dislike selby's quick, non-stop pace)

* "Tralala"-my favorite section of the novel, not too short, not too long, despicable yet intriguing character

- - - Dislikes

* "The Strike"-agonizing at times and quite tedious, an overdose of selby's trouncing darkness

I can only imagine how shocking this book looked when it was first written. It still appears to be shocking to me now, 50-some years after its creation. Yet, when you take away all the filth, gang rapes and knife fights descriptions, there's little left. That's not to say that there's no talent on display here, its just that its buried under descriptions of filth and degradation. While its not a complete throwaway/garbage, its not a claimed masterpiece either, at least in my opinion.
Still, a lot can forgiven when you know that this was his debut novel. One can only hope that his subsequent works were more focused than "Last Exit".

Selby is a talented fiction writer. Even in the lackluster stuff, that talent shines through. Unfortunately, the lackluster stuff is the majority of the book, viz., "The Strike", "The Queen is Dead", "Another Day, Another Dollar", and "And Baby Makes Three." There is one good story--actually a series of interweaving character vignettes--called "Landsend", and one story that I'll probably never forget: "Tralala." The latter is remarkable: Selby creates a completely unsympathetic character, who suffers the apotheosis of human degradation...and becomes sympathetic in a transcendent way. There is no volte-face, there is no redemption, but there is the underlying humanity--good, bad, evil, whatever--that is undeserving of such a fate.

I recommend the book on the basis of this one story--only about twenty pages. Skip the rest and you won't be missing much--a lot of faggotry and proletarian filler.

Having grown up on the very streets of Brooklyn (albeit a decade and a half later) where Mr. Selby's storys take place, I am puzzled as to why drag queens populate every chapter of this book. You would think from this book that every adult male in Brooklyn wants to sleep with drag queens. Mr Selby took me in with his believabilty in each chapter only to lose me with his harping on gay lust. As I said, I grew up on the streets of Brooklyn in the late 60's and early 70's and with the exception of characters like Georgette and Alberta and Goldie all of the characters are REAL to me. He ruined a perfectly good book with his sexual obesessions. I wish he had written more about a greater cross-section of characters. This could have been a GREAT book, and alas, is only mildly interesting.

Clearly this book was written to shock and disgust the reader. It largely succeeeds.

The overriding weakness of the book is that all the characters basically act, sound and view life in the same way. After reading a couple dozen pages I noiticed that you could simply insert the name of one male charater into the place of another and not really notice any difference.

All the men are ignorant, physically abusive and shiftless drunks (of somewhat varying degrees). (...)

I wonder if this work would have been more interesting if Selby took one of the stories in LEB (...say..."Strike"...) and provided more depth about the character's history and motivations.

This work suffesrs from the same fatal flaw as Richard Wright's "Native Son" (although a much different work): the main character(s) is (are) simply unlikeable and repellant; the reader has no reason to care what happens to them.

I know this is considered a breakthrough literary classic of some kind, and I gave it my best shot. I stuck with it as long as I could, but no thank you. I was expecting a great story about Brooklyn .... don't laugh at me ! The book is dated, disturbing, sad and so awfully vicious. It's quite a sinkhole in fact.
The gratuitous cruelty of the characters to each other was too much for me. I bailed out after the first long section. I didn't need my nose stuck in this mess. Somebody tell me there was one glimmer of human spirit in there, later, and I just didn't get to it.