My rating:

add to my books

Last Exit to Brooklyn

by Hubert Selby Jr.

3.92 · rating details · 3,770 ratings · 364 reviews

The first novel to articulate the rage and pain of life in "the other America," Last Exit to Brooklyn is a classic of postwar American writing. Selby's searing portrait of the powerless, the homeless, the dispossessed, is a fiercely and frighteningly apposite today as when it was first published twenty-five years ago.

Paperback, 320 pages

Published January 13th 1994 by Grove/Atlantic, Inc. (first published 1964)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Cars on Covers

28th out of 100 books — 28 voters

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century

75th out of 104 books — 30 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 6,606)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Apr 23, 2009

A.K. rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: nausea swim team

Shelves: in-my-library, druuugs, queer, i-me-mind

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

like 9 likes

· see review

Jul 26, 2011

Megan rated it

· review of another edition

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

like 3 likes

· see review

Feb 04, 2010

Evan rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2009-reads, my-faves, tami-tomes, deliciously-nasty, __in-my-collection, gay-interest, labor, sexuality, transgressive, ny-ny, grove-press, favorites, evans-alternative-100

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

like 5 likes

· see review

Aug 05, 2008

Robin Branson rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: forever-favorites

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 ...moreOne 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 much more meaning for him. But after opening it and reading the first sentence, just as with Aronofsky, I was attached at the hip to this book, and have since read it many times over again, although only at times when my stomach and my faith in humanity are sufficiently reinforced enough to handle it.

Wholly depressing almost in its entirety, and yet somehow keenly fascinating, Last Exit to Brooklyn is a forage deep into a dark and ugly world, one where the light of the American dream has never pierced even one tiny ray of its brilliance upon the people within. The characters range from the greedy to the angry to the confused to the misguided to the utterly without hope. Almost all those with a good heart that appear fall victim to the protagonists' everyday stompings on morality.

However, don't be mistaken and think that the novel is without depth. Selby guides those special characters in the story, the ones you never thought you could care about, into your heart, quietly and covertly. He pulls the rug out from underneath you at the most unlikely possible moment, and instead of contempt, you suddenly feel pity, grief, despair, and on occasion (on a very basic level), empathy and understanding.

After more ravaging of your psyche then most minds can handle, just when you are beginning to wonder, "How could human beings end up like this?", one of the novel's most powerful images comes forth. The final section of the multi-layered work (full of characters that rarely intersect) depicts a housing project in Brooklyn, no doubt quite similar to the ones in which the main characters all grew up. Selby writes of children in the opening paragraph, frolicking among the betrodden edifices, pretending to kill each other with guns.

There is something so powerful and potent about the hard-hitting, brutal, grisly, painfully painfully REAL way that Selby writes. It is something that is certainly not for everyone to experience, but something that no one should dare ignore. The review on the back of my copy calls it "a vision of hell so stern it cannot be chuckled or raged aside." I'd say that pretty much hits it right on the head.

Not a read for children, adolescents, or even squeamish or sensitive adults. (less)

like 3 likes

· see review

Jun 14, 2011

Lou rated it

· review of another edition

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

like 2 likes

· see review

Nov 27, 2008

Andy rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: jazznbeats, gay-lesbian

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.

like 2 likes

· see review

Jan 06, 2008

rinabeana rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: book-club

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

like 2 likes

· see review

Jan 26, 2009

Vincent Kaprat rated it

· review of another edition

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.

like 4 likes

· see review

Sep 03, 2008

Jorge Fecklesson rated it

· review of another edition

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

like 1 like

· see review

Aug 09, 2011

Ryan Milbrath added it · review of another edition

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

· see review

Aug 22, 2011

bobbygw rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: literary classics, 20th century fiction, American existentialism

Shelves: re-read, fiction, literary-classics

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...moreControversy 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 interviews, and in one introduction to the novel that he wrote, Selby himself said that he when he was writing this novel (six years in the making), he `was only aware of the rage and anger within' (quoted from the QPB edition in 1994). He also acknowledged that, while he has no favourite among his novels, he singles out The Room, and then this novel, notably, because through it he `truly did learn how to write' (quote from same QPB edition).

Set in New York in the late 1950s, the story grabs you from the start, conveying an incredibly raw, visceral, yet always disturbingly poetic quality throughout. It is superb for its genuine grittiness, horribly grim reality and ugliness of modern inner city life - of thought, attitude, action and feeling - both projected outwards, as well as internalised, all of which is captured through numerous voices of the dispossessed, alienated, disenfranchised. Selby is in the tradition of naturalist/realist fiction, but he goes a significant step further, in that, often through his first-person character narratives/viewpoints, he achieves an hallucinatory quality whose intensity strengthens the realities he conveys.

One noteworthy critic, James R. Giles, in his excellent study of Selby's works, Understanding Hubert Selby, Jr., wrote `It is true that, while all the characters in the novel are victimized by a brutal environment, they are guilty of moral failures that make their victimization complete and irrevocable', and this is done by Selby's exploring without fear or judgement powerful themes that resonant as much today as they did on first publication in 1964 in the US: drug addiction, misogyny, violence of rape and beatings, prostitution, the relentless drudgery and alienation of most jobs as well as unemployment, without value or meaning and life in general that is suffused with hate and a distressingly dark, twisted humour (when not expressed through seething resentment or explosive anger).

I reckon, Dante would have regarded Last Exit as a worthy match to his own vision of Hell - especially through characters who represent the sick underbelly of the city: self-deluding, beaten-up prostitutes, incredibly violent youths and gangs, a desperately lonely, elderly woman who has no life other than pathetic memories of her dead husband and son, among others. As for disturbing, truly dark humour, one such example will give you a powerful sense of it: at one point, two women sitting chatting on a bench in a miserable New York housing project, joke about and look forward with sick, twisted glee to the prospect of a baby - crawling on an upper-storey tenement window-ledge - falling to its death: they're disappointed that it is saved in the nick of time).

In particular, the lives of a handful of individuals are portrayed with great psychological depth, narrated most often from the first-person viewpoint, in a stream-of-consciousness fashion that remains clear, coherent and compelling. These viewpoints capture their desperation, self-loathing, hatred and confusion about themselves and their environments: defiant yet self-deluding Georgette, a hip drag queen who is pathetically in love with Vinnie and convinced she can change him for the better and that he will truly love her; while he himself is a psychopathic and sociopathic gang leader interested in only in sadistic and often instant gratification; Tralala, a violently angry, predatory prostitute who ultimately is destroyed in the most horrifying way imaginable; Harry - interestingly, that name is ubiquitous among male characters in Selby's fiction, acting as a synonym for the type of man who is misogynistic, dispossessed, angry, self-loathing, and self-deluding - who is a trade union leader, loathsome, selfish, arrogant and boring, who is despised or at best tolerated by his co-workers - and, worse, whose misogyny is so genuinely convincing and disturbing, which we hear, being `inside his head', listening trapped to his banal voice, desperation, loathing and perspective, such that it makes Bateman's misogyny in American Psycho appear not only over the top, but utterly unreal (and never mind Ellis' darkly satirical intentions).

Selby has been described by the literature academic and critic, Josephine Hendin, as a `clinician of violence ... whose novels have the immediacy of art' Vulnerable People: A View of American Fiction Since 1945, which I think is true; likewise, he is a literary master of demonstrating through his characters a moral ugliness, misogyny and existential despair, and whose power as a novelist is unmatched and unprecedented in fiction (Sartre's famous Nausea (Penguin Modern Classics), for example, is a happy walk in the park compared to Selby's vision). He is a truly remarkable writer, and, while he wrote six novels in his lifetime, I believe the most powerful and compelling (while not the darkest), remains Last Exit. I cannot recommend it highly enough - it is a genuine work of art, but its power is dark and troubling, so I would likewise highly recommend you stay clear of this novel if you find yourself in a depressed frame of mind... (less)

· see review

Aug 14, 2011

Steph Perry rated it

· review of another edition

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

· see review

Jun 09, 2011

Jeruen Dery rated it

· review of another edition

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,...moreNow, 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, domestic violence, gang rape, and so on. Basically, I suppose Selby has taken the part of society that I am most distant from, and made a book out of it.

Now, I am not opposed to reading about the lives and activities of other sectors of society. However, they should have a point. There should have a purpose as to why I am reading this. However, this book didn't seem to have that. Every chapter didn't seem to have a plot: the chapter about Tralala for example is just about the life of a prostitute who takes money from drunk sailors and she gets gang-raped at the very end. The last chapter, Landsend, is just about the strange lives of the people who live in the public housing, known as projects. Is there a larger plot? Not really.

I was hoping that this was like Requiem for a Dream which is a story about drug addicts and their tragic and pathetic lives. I didn't read the novel, I just watched the movie, and when I learned that this is the same author who wrote that, I was a little excited, but reading this made me wonder what exactly is the point.

Is that what transgressive fiction is about? Is that all about shock value? I get the feeling that the main point of the author is just to shock me with the graphic and profane prose that this book used. While Requiem had a concrete story line, I couldn't see the story line in this book. For me, it was just a never-ending tirade of bad things.

So, would I recommend this one? No. Do I regret reading this one? Kinda, yes. I guess this would make me stay away from transgressive fiction for the time being. I read Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs before, and that was weird. If all transgressive fiction was like this, then I probably would not read it.

1.5 out of 5 stars.(less)

· see review

Dec 17, 2009

Unbridled rated it

· review of another edition

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

· see review

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

· see review

Sep 18, 2009

Nate rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Irvine Welsh readers

Recommended to Nate by: Maya, indirrectly by leaving it in the living room

Shelves: postwar-re-de-constructions

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.

like 3 likes

· see review

Mar 12, 2011

Nicholas Pell rated it

· review of another edition

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

like 1 like

· see review

Oct 25, 2010

Jake rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: novel

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...moreI 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, and play the "so what neighborhood are you from" game. In terms of hard-core-ness, pretty much every neighborhood beats Park Slope- except maybe Brooklyn Heights. Neighborhoods that do particularly well in this game include Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, East New York, the attractively named Gravesend, and Bushwick.

"Last Exit to Brooklyn" is a good illustration of why these neighborhoods win. It's primarily set at the edge of Sunset Park, by the Army Terminal, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and also in the Red Hook Houses. At first I was reminded of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, which also concerns the lives of the the lower class, but unlike Graham Greene, Selby doesn't show much empathy toward his characters, or bother to give them any redeeming qualities. That allows him to create a hell of sickening intensity- all trannies turning rough trade, street hustlers gang raping whores, and parents in the Projects neglecting their kids while practicing alcoholism and unsafe sex.

He is particularly acute on issues of sex, race, and class. The most searing story in the collection is "The Strike", which concerns an incredibly pathetic union organizer using strike funds to pay for his adventures with gay men. As in all the other stories, there is no hero: the protagonist is a wife-beater, a thief, and ultimately a child-rapist- and the other people he mixes with aren't much better. Which is to say that this isn't exactly an easy read, and it's made even harder by Selby's eccentric spelling and grammar. It's the kind of book that leaves you feeling kind of messed up and gives you bad dreams, but which seems important if you want to understand how the world (or Brooklyn) really works. (less)

like 2 likes

· see review

Feb 06, 2007

Xavier rated it

· review of another edition

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.

like 1 like

· see review

Mar 20, 2011

MJ Nicholls rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: novels, canadamericans

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

like 4 likes

· see review

Feb 20, 2011

No Remorse rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Homosexuals and child molestors

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. First chapter was good and had a group of friends beating the shit out of some military guys, and hustling out of jail time when caught by the cops.
The second chapter was very rough and almost made we want to put the book down. It was mainly about some faggot name georgette who is in love with a straight guy named Vinnie, who teases him and flirts with him. Leading vinnie back to a house to get high and drunk in the hopes of getting with him. He and his buddy end up fucking the fags friend...moreFirst chapter was good and had a group of friends beating the shit out of some military guys, and hustling out of jail time when caught by the cops.
The second chapter was very rough and almost made we want to put the book down. It was mainly about some faggot name georgette who is in love with a straight guy named Vinnie, who teases him and flirts with him. Leading vinnie back to a house to get high and drunk in the hopes of getting with him. He and his buddy end up fucking the fags friend in the bathroom, which I am not even sure if it was a guy or girl. I got lost in who is actually male and female.
Third chapter about some wedding and a guy named spook who really wants a motorcycle. Pointless...
Fourth chapter is an interesting one about a prostitute named Tralala. Sometimes beating sailors and taking their money with friends and getting a small cut, she moves on to pulling licks by herself, one incident she lures a drunk seamen back to a hotel and smashes a bottle over his head and takes his wallet and all the money in it. Later he finds her and begs for his ID back just so he can fly home the next day after being gone three years. Tralala and some locals at the bar severely beat the shit out of him. More stories of her having sex for money and robbing sailors when she can. She ends up getting extremely drunk and gang banged, passed out and covered in blood, urine, and cum.
Fourth chapter introduces Harry Black, a man who extremely hates his wife, who he later beats up, and his story of going on strike at work, soon he meets a tranny through Vinnie, and when he has no more money and is dumped by the fag he ends up molesting a little boy from his neighborhood and then he is severely beaten, with both arms broken, and eyes beaten shut. A long chapter starting and ending with some very sick shit involving children.
Fifth chapter covers a bunch of different random people and families, with the feel of scanning windows of a complex building, you get quick views and glimpses of peoples fucked-up daily lives living in the projects. Pure filth.

Notes:

* Each chapter has a bible passage under the title.(less)

like 1 like

· see review

May 25, 2011

Stephanie rated it

· review of another edition

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

· see review

Jul 28, 2011

Jeremy rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: literary, humour

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

· see review

Apr 26, 2008

Jason rated it

· review of another edition

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...

like 1 like

· see review

Aug 27, 2011

Mary rated it

· review of another edition

"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

· see review

Jan 03, 2012

aL rated it

· review of another edition

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

· see review

Jan 13, 2012

Adam rated it

· review of another edition

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

· see review

Sep 24, 2009

Snotchocheez rated it

· review of another edition

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

· see review

Dec 09, 2011

Kyle rated it

· review of another edition

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

· see review

Aug 29, 2011

Jay Winters rated it

· review of another edition

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...moreBook 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 Selby puts in front of you, the reader, that keeps you drawn to the story.

Selby’s prose, while unconventional, gives the whole book the notion and feeling of a fever dream. Selby may not use traditional grammar, but he is a master at communicating through the shattering of grammar’s conventions. His content makes you wonder what kind of a person could or even would, lay the ugliness of the human condition so clearly to bare.

This isn’t a book for the squeamish. Some of the images will cause even the most hardened reader to squirm and try to look away. Those images include gang rape, spousal abuse, a man defecating in an elevator, and much more. Yet the most disturbing image is the subtle nuance behind each of the 6 intertwined story/chapters - it is the disturbing image of what happens when we cease to treat one another as humans, and begin to treat one another as objects.

As a Christian reviewer, I can’t say enough about the clear image of sin that this book offers. Augustine wrote that sin is “homo curvatus en se”, that is, man turned in on himself. Selby offers us six stories of men and women who turn in on themselves, perhaps in the hope that we will turn and live for others.

Book Opening:
The other night I watched “Requiem for a Dream” for the first time and thought to myself, “I wonder how the book was written.” So I looked up the author of “Requiem for a Dream” and saw that quite a few people had recommended Selby’s other book, “Last Exit to Brooklyn.”
I’m kind of looking for another “Palahniuk” author who writes well with some pretty disturbing imagery, and from what I’ve seen, Selby seems to fit the bill.

When I picked up the book, I was additionally surprised to see my old friend Allen Ginsberg recommending the book on the back cover - so we’ll see how weird this gets.

That’s about it for opening this book - total experimentation.(less)

· see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 220 221 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
The Bookhouse Boys: Last Exit to Brooklyn Giveaway/Discussion	94	16	Feb 03, 2012 03:12am
Depressing yet Fascinating	10	42	Nov 09, 2011 01:04pm

combine
Other Editions (30)

More editions...

Genres

Classics

23 users

Novels

15 users

Literature > American

12 users

New York

9 users

Literature

7 users

Contemporary

7 users

Book Club

6 users

Literature > Banned Books

5 users

Classics > Modern Classics

5 users

Classics > Cult Classics

4 users

See top shelves...

Readers Also Enjoyed

About Hubert Selby Jr.

Hubert Selby, Jr. was born in Brooklyn and went to sea as a merchant marine while still in his teens. Laid low by lung disease, he was, after a decade of hospitalizations, written off as a goner and sent home to die. Deciding instead to live, but having no way to make a living, he came to a realization that would change the course of literature: "I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer...more

More about Hubert Selby Jr....

Books by Hubert Selby Jr.

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Pin It

Trivia About Last Exit To Broo...

1 trivia question

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from Last Exit to Brooklyn

“Sometimes we have the absolute certainty there's something inside us that's so hideous and monstrous that if we ever search it out we won't be able to stand looking at it. But it's when we're willing to come face to face with that demon that we face the angel.” — 44 people liked it

“... I started to die 36 hours before I was born, so dying was a way of life for me.” — 13 people liked it

More quotes…

Groups That Shelved Last Exit To Broo...

Transgressive Fiction

142 members

last activity Jan 29, 2012 05:00am

shelf: read

The Rough Guide to Cult F...

88 members

last activity Jan 18, 2012 04:47pm

shelf: read

The Bookhouse Boys

37 members

last activity 18 hours, 51 min ago

shelf: read

title link	preview: Last Exit to Brooklyn
avg rating	preview: Last Exit to Brooklyn Goodreads rating: 3.92 (3770 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/556149.Last_Exit_to_Brooklyn?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175776186m/556149.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/556149.Last_Exit_to_Brooklyn?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr.[/url]

Last Exit to Brooklyn

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Readers Also Enjoyed

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website