Last Exit to Brooklyn
OCLC 18568386 | | |
Followed by | The Room |
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Last Exit to Brooklyn is a 1964 novel by American author Hubert Selby Jr. The novel takes a harsh, uncompromising look at lower class Brooklyn in the 1950s written in a brusque, everyman style of prose.[1]
Critics and fellow writers praised the book on its release. Due to its frank portrayals of taboo subjects, such as drug use, street violence, gang rape, homophobia, prostitution and domestic violence it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the United Kingdom and was banned in Italy.
Synopsis
The stories are set almost entirely in what is now considered the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn; the location is widely misreported as Red Hook, where one story is set and parts of the 1989 movie were filmed.[2] 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.
- Another Day, Another Dollar: A gang of young Brooklyn hoodlums hang around an all-night diner and get into a vicious fight with a group of Army soldiers on leave.
- The Queen Is Dead: Georgette, a sassy benzedrine-driven party. Georgette dies of a drug overdose after the party.
- And Baby Makes Three: A story told by an unknown narrator about a couple, Suzy and Tommy, who have a baby out of wedlock, and their wedding, and baby's christening party is quickly thrown by Suzy's parents.
- Tralala: The title character of an earlier Selby short story, she is a young Brooklyn prostitutewho makes a living propositioning sailors in bars and stealing their money. In perhaps the novel's most notorious scene, she is brutally gang-raped after a night of heavy drinking. She is left for dead in a vacant lot.
- Strike: Harry, a machinist in a factory, becomes a local official in the strike, and uses the union's money to entertain the young street punks and buy the company of drag queens and gay men. He is ultimately beaten viciously by the hoodlums from the opening chapter, after he forcibly fellates a 10-year-old boy.
- Landsend: Described as a "coda" for the book, this section presents the intertwined, yet ordinary day of numerous denizens in a housing project.
Style
Last Exit to Brooklyn was written in an idiosyncratic style that ignores most conventions of
Selby did not use
Publication history
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 first appeared in The Provincetown Review in 1961, drawing criticism which resulted in an obscenity trial.[3][4]
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."[5]
Trial
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.
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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.[7]
The jury was all male. Judge Graham Rogers directed that the women "might be embarrassed at having to read a book which dealt with homosexuality, prostitution, drug-taking and sexual perversion."[9] The trial lasted nine days; on November 23 the jury returned a guilty verdict.
In 1968, an appeal issued by lawyer and writer John Mortimer resulted in a judgment by Justice Geoffrey Lane that 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.[citation needed]
Film adaptation
In 1989, director Uli Edel helmed a film adaptation of the novel.
See also
- The Queen Is Dead: the title of the 1986 album by the Smiths is taken from the book.[10]
- Last Exit on Brooklyn, a Seattle coffeehouse named in homage to the book
- "Last Exit to Springfield", an episode of The Simpsons, which parodied the title
- Alt-J, British band composed a song entitled "Fitzpleasure", inspired by the novel.
- The Novembers, a Japanese band, composed the song "Last Exit to Brooklyn".
- The Velvet Underground song "Sister Ray"'s lyrics are based on a scene in the novel.
References
- ^ DePalma, Anthony. "Hubert Selby Jr. Dies at 75; Wrote 'Last Exit to Brooklyn'", The New York Times, April 27, 2004.
- ^ "Fifty Years Later, Looking for Last Exit: Chasing Hubert Selby’s ghost through the neighborhood he captured in his controversial classic." by Henry Stewart. BKLYNR Issue 36 | October 10, 2014
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-08-24.
- ISBN 978-0230115934.
- ^ Homberger, Eric (28 April 2004). "Hubert Selby Jr". The Guardian.
- ^ Forell, Claude. "A Noble Crusader for Purity." The Age Literary Review, Archived 2003-01-17 at the Wayback Machine March 25, 1967.
- ^ a b c Newburn, Tim (1992). Permission and Regulation: Law and Morals in Post-War Britain. London: Routledge, pp. 96–8. Google Books
- ^ H. Montgomery Hyde, Last Exit To Brooklyn, The Times, 6 December 1967
- ^ "Obituaries: Hubert Selby, Jr.", The Times, April 28, 2004.
- ISBN 978-1-4803-9449-0.