Last Exit to Brooklyn

This book is shocking. It describes the lives of a collection of Brooklyn residents in the 1960s and will leave you wondering how on earth anyone survived there at all with any semblance of sanity left. These are rough characters. On the one had I could talk about their actions as survival techniques in the 'eat or be eaten' atmosphere, or I could talk about their callous gleeful anger and infliction of violence upon each other. I think I'll talk about something different instead.

This book was hard to read, but I kept going because of the post script by the author. I was about to abandon ship, the constant sadness and hardship and faithless violence was too much for me, so I read the post script as a farewell. And in it Selby talked show more about leaving his mark, contributing something to this world when he thought he had not much time left on this earth to do so. He wanted to leave his legacy, yes, but he also wanted the voices of the people in his neighbourhood to be heard. This is where the power of the book lies. Goodness only knows how many people live like the people in this book- scraping together money from anywhere for alcohol or drugs, fervently seeking validation from peers by being the toughest or the cruelest, desperately craving that buzz from impressing someone with your latest conquest/hairstyle/round of drinks, living in fear of having violated some rule of the neighbourhood and having the local thugs raining their fists and boots on you, the children locked in apartments while their parents yell and scream and worse at each other. It is not pretty, these lives are out there being lived, and my take is that Selby wanted to have their experiences documented. In their own way, all the people in the book are seeking happiness (companionship/acceptance/love). Their ability to find it is seriously hampered by the ways they go about it, and their complete lack of empathy for others.

The bigger chapter in the middle section of the book on the union leader unfolded spectacularly, and although I read it with foreboding, and the ending was not such a huge surprise, it took me to a place I couldn't have reached on my own. This guy was seriously damaged and had no concept of how he was seen by others, or how he was being used, or how he was using or abusing others. That lack of insight can (I suppose) explain the actions of a lot of the characters. As a sociological account it is incredible, as a reading experience it is difficult and upsetting. show less

I can picture this book being read in college literature classes. I am sure that it deserves its place in modern American Literature and I am also sure that this book and Selby have their fans. I won't dispute his genius. My rating is not based on the "merit" of the book, but on whether I liked it and the truth is that I found this book to be repulsive and nauseating. I think that I was expecting it to be sort of like Kennedy's Iron Weed (which I liked) but much darker but Last Exit isn't dark---it is more like wallowing in a sewer and I kept reading only by hoping to see what Selby was trying to say to the reader. I kept looking for insight into the human condition. I must confess that in the end I just didn't see the point. I found show more the loosely related stories that make up this "novel" to be repetitive. Follow a repellent and completely repulsive character around, watch them victimize people, and then watch them subjected to extreme violence at the hands of other equally repellent and repulsive characters. As much as I hated reading this book one thought never left my mind. I felt sorry for Selby. He must have lived with a terrible darkness inside him to have written this book. The scary thing is that as bad as this book is, his novel The Room is supposed to be much darker. Looking at the reviews I see one person stating that they felt like burning their copy---and they LIKED the book! That's a common thread. Even the people that give his books 5 stars didn't enjoy reading them. show less

Amikor Fenyő Miklós felhúzta a csőnacit, és belőtte magának a kacsafarok-frizurát, aligha voltak információi arról, Brooklynban hogy megy ez. Mert bizony az ottani jampik nem önfeledt limbó-hintózással vezették ám le a feszültséget. Az önszórakoztatás eszköze náluk a mások fél- vagy egészen holtra verése volt, miközben úgy ették a benzedrin-tablettát, mint más a szőlőcukrot. Ha szerelemre vágytak, nem Marina után sikoltoztak az utcabálon, mint szegény becsületben megbolondult Szikora Robi, hanem megerőszakoltak valakit. Ha pedig elfogyott a pénz, akkor simán kerestek egy matrózt az utcán, akit kirabolhattak – és összekötve a kellemest a hasznossal, mellesleg félholtra is verték. Jó, show more aláírom, bizonyára voltak tisztességes lilazakós jampik is, akik számára a szabálysértés maximum azt jelentette, hogy túl hangosan éneklik az „iminimi-szeminimi- juváp-csuvaminimi”-t, de ezek a brooklyniak, nos, ezek brutális arcok voltak. És Selby olyan közel hozza őket, hogy érezzük áporodott szájszagukat, és el tudjuk képzelni a félelmet, amit azok éltek át, akik összefutottak velük valami sötét sikátorban.

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. show less

This is a raw and brutal set of stories about a group of people who lived lives centering on violence, sex, alcoholism, and drugs in 1960s Brooklyn, New York. The stories are self-contained although they have some characters who appear in more than one story. I would guess these were probably based on people the author knew in his youth.

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 show more 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? show less

It seems like whenever I hear about the 1950s people tend to talk about how wholesome and pleasant it was. One would think that nothing untoward or degrading ever happened. We all know that isn't true, and if you don't believe me read Last Exit to Brooklyn. It is more than just a story about a neighborhood in New York; hell, I wouldn't even call it a novel. It is more like a synopsis to impoverished, urban American culture in general. It is a string of interconnected characters moving tangentially yet chaotically out of control.

I've read some pretty rough, crude, scary stuff, but this one takes the cake. It has everything: neighborhood ruffians/criminals; cross-dressing, drug-addicted prostitutes; sluts; rapists; closet homosexuals that show more sink so low as to molest children; wife beaters; child neglectors. I mean, this book is really sick.

I wasn't sure I liked the book until the final part, the coda. When I began reading this, I finally understood the method to Selby's madness. This part is a day in the life of the projects. Moving from individual to individual and family to family, the reader meets, parts from, and re-meets people and sees their situations and circumstances. None of them are good. This book takes those wholesome images and shoves them right up the reader's ass, twists, and then leaves them there. Truly, you don't leave this book quite the same person. show less

Ok so...this book makes Raymond Carver look like a stand up comedian next to Hubert Selby Jr. It is grueling. The characters are all a little depraved and desperately flawed. Most of the time, they seem to possess no idea of just how frighteningly misguided they are. The men are all misogynistic sadists whose wives should run before they are raped and murdered with their unattended babies falling off of ledges. The men that do work are despicably lazy. These are the criminals and underworld druggies, wifebeaters, and transvestites that existed long before Brooklyn became the trendy indie rock scene it is today. This is the life in the projects and it seems quite real and graphic. The rage these characters feel is like glimpsing into the show more mind of a sociopath.

This book was banned for a time and tried for obscenity in British courts when it was initially sought to be published there (Selby is a NYer). It was the inspiration for Trainspotting (a novel I found far more complex politically and therefore more worthwhile) and the baseness of the characters definitely makes the two novels touch upon similar issues and levels. Much as Irvine Welsh does (and there is a forward from him in my copy of this book), Hubert Selby Jr. writes in the vernacular of the working-poor class characters so you can vividly sense their stream of consciousness and dialogue. You can actually hear them pretty easily as one does with Welsh's Trainspotting characters.

However, where Welsh succeeds, Selby seems to fail. Welsh presents a dose of realism but he also ties this in with politics in a way that looks at religion and history of Scotland vs. Ireland vs. England. This makes Trainspotting far more complex and successful on other levels. Selby shows a glimpse into a cruel world, which also becomes a document for a time when Brooklyn wasn't regentrified as well as when racism and homophobia was much more rampant. It wasn't a time in American history one can feel particularly proud of and I can't help but feel relieved I wasn't born during this time into a Brooklyn project because I doubt I'd really survive that (especially with any of these male characters as fathers).

But the problem I have with this novel is that I don't really get a deeper message from it. There aren't any solutions offered here and I just ended up feeling really depressed and angry. I'm not really one of those people that just wants to read happy books all the time. I like an intellectual challenge but I already know there are psychopaths in the world. I know there are men who beat their wives and children and even molest children. I am well aware that evil exists and that it's not exactly a new phenomenon, which leads me to wonder why I should rate this book any higher. I will say I thought the author's story was interesting-that he decided to become a writer after being diagnosed with a lung disease and given a poor prognosis (he outlived anyone's expectations). I also found it interesting that he studied or was mentored by Gil Sorrentino but I have to say that I found his afterward a little irritating...his assumption that he'd contributed and left the world something makes an assumption I'm not sure I'd agree with myself. But I'm sure if aliens were to find this novel as the only item left to explain the human race, they wouldn't regret destroying our planet for a second. show less

Not for the faint of heart. Hard to imagine this work was published over 40 years ago. Reading Last Exit left me feeling emotionally drained. The book depicts a group of vile low-life criminals, hookers, drag queens, dealers and addicts. It's a relentless journey into America's underbelly post WWII. The prose is raw, crude, hellish and dark. I'm not sure why I even kept reading. I did though. The second and third read years later allowed me to appreciate the fact that this was Selby's debut novel. Within Selby's nightmare is something beautiful and raw. If you haven't read any of his other works, read this one later.