| Last Exit to Brooklyn | |
|---|---|
1st edition cover |
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| Author(s) | Hubert Selby, Jr. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Transgressive fiction |
| Publisher | Grove Press |
| Publication date | 1964 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 320 pp |
| ISBN | 0802131379 |
| OCLC Number | 18568386 |
| Followed by | The Room |
Last Exit to Brooklyn is a 1964 novel by American author Hubert Selby, Jr. The novel has become a cult classic because of its harsh, uncompromising look at lower class Brooklyn in the 1950s and for its brusque, everyman style of prose.[1]
Although critics and fellow writers praised the book on its release, Last Exit to Brooklyn caused much controversy due to its frank portrayals of taboo subjects, such as drug use, street violence, gang rape, homosexuality, transvestism and domestic violence. It was the subject of an important obscenity trial in the United Kingdom and was banned in Italy.
Contents |
Last Exit to Brooklyn is divided into six parts that can, more or less, be read separately. Each part is prefaced with a passage from the Bible.
Last Exit to Brooklyn was written in an idiosyncratic style that ignores most conventions of grammar. Selby wrote most of the prose as if it were a story told from one friend to another at a bar rather than a novel, using coarse and casual language. He used slang-like conjunctions of words, such as tahell for "to hell" and yago for "you go." The paragraphs were often written in a stream of consciousness style with many parentheses and fragments. Selby often indented new paragraphs to the middle or end of the line.
Also, Selby did not use quotation marks to distinguish dialogue but instead merely blended it into the text. He used a slash instead of an apostrophe mark for contractions and did not use an apostrophe at all for possessives.
The following is a typical example of the novel’s style:
She didnt need any goddamn skell to buy her a drink. She could get anything she wanted in Willies. She had her kicks. Shed go back to Willies where what she said goes. That was the joint. There was always somebody in there with money. No bums like these cruds. Did they think shed let any goddamn bum in her pants and play with her tits for a few bucks. Shit! She could get a seamans whole payoff just sittin in Willies. (page 111)
Last Exit to Brooklyn started as The Queen is Dead, one of several short stories Selby wrote about people he had met around Brooklyn while working as a copywriter and general laborer. The piece was published in three literary magazines in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Tralala also appeared in The Provincetown Review in 1961 and drew some intense criticism.
The pieces later evolved into the full-length book, which was published in 1964 by Grove Press, which had previously published such controversial authors as William S. Burroughs and Henry Miller.
Critics praised and censured the publication. Poet Allen Ginsberg said that it will "explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America and still be eagerly read in a hundred years."
The rights for the British edition were acquired by Marion Boyars and John Calder and the novel ended up in the hands of the Director of Public Prosecutions. The manuscript was published in January 1966, received positive reviews and sold almost 14,000 copies. The director of Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford complained to the DPP about the detailed depictions of brutality and cruelty in the book but the DPP did not pursue the allegations.
Sir Cyril Black, the then Conservative Member of Parliament for Wimbledon, initiated a private prosecution of the novel before Marlborough Street Magistrates' Court. The public prosecutor brought an action under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act. During the hearing the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate ordered that all copies of the book within the Magistrate's Court be seized. Not a single bookseller possessed a copy, but the publishing offices of Calder and Boyars, within the Bow Street Magistrate's jurisdiction, were discovered to be in possession of three copies. The books were duly seized, and Mrs. Boyars was summonsed to show cause why "the said articles" should not be forfeited.[2] Expert witnesses spoke, "unprecedentedly,"[3] for the prosecution: they included the publishers Sir Basil Blackwell and Robert Maxwell.[3] On the defense side were the scholars Al Alvarez II, and professor Frank Kermode, who had previously compared the work to Dickens.
The order had no effect beyond the borders of the Marlborough Street Court — the London neighborhood of Soho. At the hearing Calder declared that the book would continue to be published and would be sold everywhere else outside of that jurisdiction. In response the prosecutor brought criminal charges under Section 2 of the Act, which entitled the defendants to trial by jury under Section 4.[3]
The jury was all male. Judge Graham Rigers directed that the women "might be embarrassed at having to read a book which dealt with homosexuality, prostitution, drug-taking and sexual perversion."[4] The trial lasted nine days; on November 23 the jury returned a guilty verdict.
In 1968, an appeal issued by the lawyer and writer John Mortimer resulted in a judgment by Mr Justice Lane which reversed the ruling. The case marked a turning point in British censorship laws. By that time, the novel had sold over 33,000 hardback and 500,000 paperback copies in the United States.
In 1989, director Uli Edel helmed a film adaptation of the novel, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stephen Baldwin, Stephen Lang, Burt Young, and Jerry Orbach.