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Loading... Last Exit to Brooklyn (original 1964; edition 1957)by Hubert Selby Jr.
Work InformationLast Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr. (1964)
  
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 Kuszma | Jul 2, 2022 |   archivomorero | Jun 25, 2022 | I started the book once quickly out of curiosity to see how long I’d last, but I soon restarted it to concentrate more deeply on each story as I found this book provocative and well-written. It had been praised by other authors such as Allen Ginsberg and Anthony Burgess. It packs a powerful punch, but it is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. It is dark, misogynistic, depressing, and savage. The writing moves along at warp speed with each paragraph starting strangely at a random place and each paragraph containing multiple conversations lacking most punctuation. It is quite off-beat, colloquial and unusual in its grammatical form. I was pretty amazed at this book. It was a slice of life in the seediest, most downtrodden parts of Brooklyn. Surprisingly, though, I found it easy to read. The story I liked the best was called “Strike” and was about Harry Black, a leading union man, although a good-for-nothing otherwise, and the company who refused to cater to union demands unless Harry Black could be removed. This story seemed as if it went on forever, perhaps much like the length of time the workers were on strike. In reading afterward about this novel, I learned that it was part of a genre called transgressive literature, along with such works as Vladimir Nabokov’s [Lolita], Chuck Palahniuk’s [Fight Club], Ryū Murakami’s [Almost Tranparent Blues] and Irvine Welch’s [Trainspotting]. As in those novels, [Last Exit From Brooklyn] might have had just a thin line separating its literarary value from obscenity...or was there a line at all? (  )1  SqueakyChu | Mar 17, 2022 | Let's see, what I learned...what I learned.... Transgenders can be gold diggers as well? And prostitutes can be loved? ( ) ennuiprayer | Jan 14, 2022 |  ) jaydenmccomiskie | Sep 27, 2021 |
 The problem with the subsequent notoriety of the book, and its status as a cause célèbre of British anti-censorship, is that this has overshadowed Last Exit itself – the visceral power of its prose and the profundity of Selby’s moral universe. Selby’s narrative style, a form of typography that ‘would work as musical notation’ – a direct development of his love for classical music – dispensed with the conventional formalities of dialogue. Selby had a profound dislike of the simplistic and unrealistic ‘he said, she said’ device. Selby’s characters speak with an idiosyncratic flow. Each can be identified by their own rhythms of speech. The form and structure of dialogue is specific to the feel and flow of emotion that shapes each character’s inner life. Scorching, unrelenting, pulsing. As dramatic and immediate as the click of a switchblade knife. Selby has an unerring instinct for honing our collapse into novels as glittering and as cutting as pure, black, jagged glass. Drops like a sledgehammer. Emotionally beaten, one leaves it a different person—slightly changed, educated by pain, as Goethe said.
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML:"An extraordinary achievement . . . a vision of hell so stern it cannot be chuckled or raged aside."??The New York Times Book Review A classic of postwar American literature, Last Exit to Brooklyn created shock waves upon its release in 1964 with its raw, vibrant language and startling revelations of New York City's underbelly. The prostitutes, drunks, addicts, and johns of Selby's Brooklyn are fierce and lonely creatures, desperately searching for a moment of transcendence amidst the decay and brutality of the waterfront??though none have any real hope of escape. Last Exit to Brooklyn offers a disturbing yet hauntingly sensitive portrayal of American life, and nearly fifty years after publication, it stands as a crucial and masterful work of modern fiction. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Hubert Selby Jr. including rare photos from the author's e No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.84)
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Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr. (Bowie's Top 100 for July)
Wikipedia in English
1
Iszonyatosan kegyetlen, mocskosul naturális regény. Nem is értem, vajon miért akarták betiltani anno. Hisz alig elképzelhető olyan szöveg, ami jobban elrettentené az embert ettől az egésztől. Hogy a létezés eme pokoli segglyukában kössön ki. Nyilván Selby olyan dolgokat is tollhegyre tűz (1964-ben!), amelyekről addig senki nem beszélt – és ugye amiről nem beszélünk, az nincs is. Aprólékosan ábrázolja a homoszexualitást - magával az aktussal együtt -, az erőszak pedig ebben a világban a mindennapok elidegeníthetetlen része, tulajdonképpen a problémamegoldás egyetlen lehetséges eszköze. A létezés, amit leír, zsigerileg taszító – tulajdonképpen meg is köszönhetnék neki a konzervatívok, hogy ilyen csodás ellenreklámot csinál a nagyvárosi szabadosságnak.
Hogy itthon miért nem jelenhetett meg a rendszerváltás előtt, az persze világos. És nem csak arra gondolok, hogy akkoriban milyen kevésbé tolerálták a cenzorok a trágár beszédet és az agresszió ilyen nyílt ábrázolását. Hanem mert bizony ez a regény baromi távol áll attól, amiben a szocializmus hinni akar. Itt szó sincs osztálytudatról. A munkások, a szegények nem viselik méltósággal sorsukat, hanem vadállattá teszi őket a nincstelenség. Nem fognak össze, hanem csak kínozzák egymást: férj a feleséget, szülő a gyereket, fehér a feketét, egyik részeg a másikat. A munkáltató persze tetű, de a szakszervezet se sokkal jobb, kész maffia. Nincs menekvés, nincs lehetőség kimászni a szarból. Csak el lehet feledni egy picit, hogy ez az egész szar, ha benyomsz hat sört meg három benzedrint. Vagy ha ez se elég, akkor elintézed, hogy másnak még nálad is szarabb legyen, és az úgy jó.
Egy ideig.
Aztán másnap kezdődik minden elölről. (