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Aug 19, 2010

A.K. rated it:

Rare is the book that leaves me so disoriented and raw-nerved. When I finished this I sat slack-jawed for a minute letting my cigarette burn out and trying to fix my mind on something/anything. This is an excruciatingly penetrating vision of the total dregs; a narrative of self-delusion, rough trade, addiction and thanatos thanatos thanatos. Selby, Jr. never seems to slant toward exploitation or pulp and strangely enough, in spite of the godawful hopeless hate-filled suckers that populate his wr More...

2 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jul 26, 2011

Megan rated it:

Good God, this is a brutal book. The writing style's brilliant, but the stories are so vivid that the pain of the characters is visceral. It's not a novel so much as it's a series of short stories that tie together to portray the hell-hole that was 1950's Brooklyn. There was a whole obscenity case about this book when it was published in the early 1960's: the story that received the most attention for being obscene, however, was not the one I found most painful. The most infamous story was " More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2010

Evan rated it:

HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION!
Grabbed this from my stash Saturday evening and started blazing through it, rapt! Could not put it down. Finished Sunday...

Uncompromising portrait of petty slothfulness and violence in grim Brooklyn in the 1950s. The 1989 Jennifer Jason Leigh film was fine and disturbing, but it can't capture the earnest immediacy of this book and the machine-gun style of expression of the colloquialisms and the stream of consciousness. This is masterly, it seems to have More...

8 comments like (5 people liked it)

Aug 05, 2008

Robin rated it:

One of the best books I have ever read, hands down. I discovered it at a time where I was aching to find the style that best suited me as a reader, the genre above all others that roped me in and never let go. Selby helped me find it.

After reading the inside of the box for the film, "Requiem for a Dream", I was compelled to find this book that Darren Aronofsky, the director, adored so much. He was from Brooklyn, and the Brooklyn that is described here, so it certainly has More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 14, 2011

Lou rated it:

Nitty gritty of inner city, a set of stories of individuals in a concrete jungle. In this novel you will not find grand story telling, the writing is lacking punctuation marks and grammar which some readers will find annoying. You will find darkness in mankind, some dysfunctional characters and behaviour, take a look around nowadays and you see theses characters are strife. The novel did not really hook me as it was not one story really leading any where and more just day to day accounts of hust More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 27, 2008

Andy rated it:

Gritty, raw prose about New York street life that's in a class by itself. Everyone gets punished in the end, whether it's the drag queen in "The Queen Is Dead" or the slut in "Tralala" or the striking lathe worker who comes out in "Strike". I loved this book but the "punch" line is in New York City you're gonna take a beating for being different.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 06, 2008

rinabeana rated it:

This book was chosen for my book club. It didn't sound like my cup of tea, but I thought I'd give it a try (you can't like ALL the books you read for a book club, can you?). To say I did not enjoy this book would be a vast understatement. I detested the writing style. The dialogue was not separated and quite difficult to follow. This presupposes that I actually wanted to know who was speaking anyway. The subject matter was utterly bereft of anything good. The characters were mean-spirited, lazy, More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 26, 2009

Vincent rated it:

There are two books that every wholesome American boy and girl should read: The Grapes of Wrath and The Last Exit to Brooklyn. This is quintessential Americana mixed with broken hearts and broken teeth.

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 03, 2008

Jorge rated it:

I was banging back and forth from a rowhouse in Philly to a second floor flat in Jersey City, to an apartment in the Peter Stuyvesant Town of the East Village. This was my context for this book. We were poor, but not starving. We did our best to minimize the impact those aroud us could have.

This might be the most beautifully written novel that I know of at this time. the dialect and characters are astonishing. Too bad it was set where the worst instincts of humankind run rampant More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 09, 2011

Ryan added it

The first time I had heard of Hubert Selby Jr. was when I first saw Requiem for a Dream. The movie was very visceral and an intense experience. The impression left by the movie encouraged me to seek out the author of the book and read some of his material. I had heard only good things about Requiem for a Dream the novel, and very good things about his debut, Last Exit to Brooklyn. Curious what Selby would document about working to lower class culture in the 1950s I picked up his debut. In More...

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Aug 22, 2011

bobbygw rated it:

Controversy has always surrounded Selby, Jr.'s writing. From the start, with Last Exit (being his first novel), his original UK publisher Calder and Boyers, faced government prosecution in 1967, under the 1959 Obscene Publications Act. It was a major trial, especially as it was originally found guilty of being `obscene', and because, more importantly, the Appeal in 1968 overturned that decision and paved way for a much more open-minded interpretation of literature as to merit.

In some i More...

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Aug 14, 2011

Steph rated it:

Fascinating depiction of the life of the every-day masses in post-war America.

The book consists of numerous independent, but often inter-connected, portrayals of life within Brooklyn in the years following from the end of WWII. Rather than sticking with the traditional "stars and stripes" uber-patriotic view of this era, the author actively tackles the darker social issues affecting many including drug use, prostitution, domestic abuse and alcoholism.

The author More...

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Jun 09, 2011

Jeruen rated it:

Now, after reading this book, I realized that transgressive fiction is not for me. I read this book after borrowing it from my sister, and all I could think of is when this book would end.

So what is this book about?

This is a book that is divided into six parts, and basically, every part can be read independently. It deals with bizarre and weird characters, mostly stemming from the not so desirable sector of society. This book is about thugs, criminals, homosexual prostitutes, More...

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Dec 17, 2009

Unbridled rated it:

A blur of pain, violence, bile, excrement, blood, booze, sperm, nausea, and loathing - in mid (20th) century Brooklyn, before everything debased and original in America became commonplace and boring. And did I mention power? There is power there - lurid, rotten, roiling power. I couldn't place his voice - an American Celine? No, Celine is bitterly funny - maybe an American Genet? He invokes Genet and he is sordid enough - but no, in the end, what comes to mind (bear with me) is Sherwood Anderson More...

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Sep 10, 2009

Andre rated it:

I started reading this book and instantly thought that it read like a Tarantino film. Little did I know that Selby also wrote "Requiem for a Dream" - one of my favorite movies ever (if not one of the most depressing movies that I've ever seen in my life). I find a lot of similarities between Tarantino films and Requiem...

You know, this book ain't no picnic, bitch! (Yes, that was a Malibu's Most Wanted reference.) I swear there's a stretch of at least three pages where there More...

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Mar 22, 2011

Nate rated it:

I'd previously thought that recent authors chronicling amoral and desperate lives in blunt direct terms (say, Bret Easton Ellis and Irvine Welsh) owed a lot to Bukowski in particular. But Last Exit to Brooklyn both predates Bukowski's first novel and points most directly ahead to the likes of Trainspotting. Except this is more obliteratingly bitter, more deathly demoralizing. Selby's vision is positively apocalyptic, but only in the most frighteningly believable terms.

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Mar 12, 2011

Nicholas rated it:

This may be the best book that I've ever read in my life. I'm not sure at what point in my life that I became capable of truly appreciating a masterpiece such as this, but I'm glad that I can.

The book tells the stories of several denizens of a diner called "The Greek's" in Brooklyn. Among the characters we meet are a gang of young black men with little to do, a transgendered woman named Georgette who is in love with ex-con Vinnie, a prostitute with the unlikely handle Tralal More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 25, 2010

Jake rated it:

I grew up in Brooklyn, and I live here now- so people are sometimes impressed by the length of my tenure and my selection of "back in the early 1980s" stories. At least until they realize that I'm from Park Slope, which is like being from the Upper West Side of Manhattan- sure, it probably had its rough spots, but no one is ever going to give you credit for surviving the rough streets of Riverside Drive. This is particularly true when you run into someone else who grew up in Brooklyn More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2007

Xavier rated it:

Last Exit to Brooklyn is comprised by a series of vignettes of a Brooklyn neighborhood in the 40s or 50s. This is not the teary sentimentality of Frank Capra, nor is it the technicolored musicals of Hollywood. This stuff is downright bleak. I couldn't doubt for a second that Selby lived amongst the rabble infesting the book. I think that it offers a realist view of what it was like to live in the working class neighborhoods of Mid-century New York.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 20, 2011

MJ rated it:

A searing sift through the slurried slums of post-war Brooklyn. The only book that uses shock, violence and vulgarity to depict a world of tragic isolation that truly pierces the heart, gets you so deeply you feel you are THERE, in this boneyard of brittle bones and broken bodies, crying and fighting and fucking and SHOUTING AT YER FREAKIN KIDS TA SHUT THERE TRAPS.

Selby's editor on this book was Gilbert Sorrentino, who helped Selby refine his extraordinarily precise style, his pitch More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 20, 2011

No Remorse rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

May 25, 2011

Stephanie rated it:

Not that I talk in this manner, but this phrase kept popping into my head as I read this: "Damn, sh!t got real." There isn't much of a story here; not much of a take-away, at least. It's a lot of violence and anger and terribleness and perversion and what-not. I'm not sure if I was compelled to keep reading it out of a self-inflicted feeling of obligation (it's deemed a classic of sorts, by some; I live in Brooklyn, though a very different one than depicted here; okay, Joey Potter o More...

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Jul 28, 2011

Jeremy rated it:

Hubert Selby Jr.'s masterwork is just that: a masterwork. There are a range of joys to explore in this novel, including Selby Jr's use of style, his fragmented structure, his beautifully rendered characters who are often so fundemntally appalling and compelling at the same time. and the broken up mish-mash of bizarre moral edges, just to name a few. The pure, confronting nature of such ordinary evil and how it is presented is exhillarating and deeply depressing at the same time. What an explosio More...

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Apr 26, 2008

Jason rated it:

wow....
ok, i get it...
the main problem i had with this book is selby made his point on page 3 and everything afterward is horrific redundancy...
i recently wrote that betty smith's version of brooklyn gave off an awful stink, and i must now conclude that i didn't know what the hell i was talking about...
the premiere example of the ordeal novel...
selby was one messed up dude...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 27, 2011

Mary rated it:

"Liked it" doesn't really convey my feelings about this brutal, deeply disturbing book. I guess the question is whether this sort of thing should be the subject of literature. I found the book deeply troubling but also profoundly true. I just hope that each of the sad souls portrayed here had some small positive thing in their lives. But that wasn't Mr. Selby's purpose in writing this. Especially for its time, it was a bold reaction against the whitebread monoculture that was sold to A More...

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Jan 03, 2012

aL rated it:

I enjoyed Last Exit to Brooklyn. It wasn't what I had expected, but I don't mind. I like how Hubert Selby writes, it took sometime getting use to, (again, it's been awhile since I've read him) but I caught on really fast. The stories are very intriguing and they don't really relate to each other but some of the characters are used in several and will mention something in a different plot in a different chapter. I didn't expect it to be short stories, it was surprisingly good because you still ge More...

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Jan 13, 2012

Adam rated it:

Last Exit to Brooklyn is full of horrible, self interested, nonredeemable characters none of whom most readers will find endearing, relatable, or worthy of sympathy. Combine that with the style that the book is written - sloppy, minimal punctuation, strange formatting choices, weird structure, etc, and you have a book that, despite its relative shortness, is not an easy read.

So why is Last Exit to Brooklyn so widely proclaimed as a wonderful book? Well, in real life things don't alway More...

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Sep 24, 2009

Snotchocheez rated it:

I've seen Hubert Selby Jr.'s name bandied about as an influence for many contemporary writers, and I knew that it had been made into a movie, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Selby's style was immediately off-putting for me, and I just about gave up after about 30 pages. (He eschews literary conventions like quotation marks and apostrophes, not to mention coherent sentence structure.) Just as I was about to dismiss the book as garbage, he then changed his focus on another character, and start More...

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Dec 09, 2011

Kyle rated it:

Definitely not for the faint of heart or someone who wouldn't like to be continually shocked while reading this grotesque slice of life in lower income, late 1950's Brooklyn New York. I can only imagine how controversial and subversive it must have been at the time it came out nearly half a century ago. There is hardly one taboo topic this collection of interchangeable collection of wacky short stories doesn't touch on including: drug use, homosexuality, gang-rape, labor union corruption, alcoho More...

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Aug 29, 2011

Jay rated it:

Book Closing:
When you start “Last Exit to Brooklyn”, you’re suddenly struck with the notion that you, yourself have gotten off on an unfamiliar exit. The writing itself is odd - paragraphs that are nothing more than drops down to the next line, a lack of quotation marks and apostrophes, and the subject matter - drugs, transvestites, and violence - they all give you this feeling that you’re someplace different, someplace that maybe isn’t quite safe. Yet it is exactly the danger of what Selb More...

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