A reissue of a controversial novel first published in 1964 which has been republished to coincide with a new film. Written by a Brooklyn-born, ex-marine and drug addict, it describes the world of prostitutes, junkies and drag queens that he knew well.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Last Exit to Brooklyn (Open Road)
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Review
'A masterpiece' -- Al Alvarez
'An urgent tickertape from hell' -- Spectator
'Last Exit to Brooklyn is a tour de force of muscular, rhythmic prose' -- New Statesman
'Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists...so to understand his work is to understand the anguish of America' -- New York Times --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
'An urgent tickertape from hell' -- Spectator
'Last Exit to Brooklyn is a tour de force of muscular, rhythmic prose' -- New Statesman
'Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists...so to understand his work is to understand the anguish of America' -- New York Times --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From the Inside Flap
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 as fiercely and frighteningly apposite today as it was when it was first published more than thirty-five years ago.
"An extraordinary achievement,...a vision of hell so stern it cannot be chuckled or raged aside."--The New York Times Book Review
"As dramatic and immediate as the click of a switchblade knife."--Los Angeles Times
"The raw strength and concentrated power of Last Exit to Brooklyn make it one of the really great works of fiction about the underground labyrinth of our cities."--Harry T. Moore
"Last Exit to Brooklyn should explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America and still be eagerly read in a hundred years."--Allen Ginsberg
"Drops like a sledgehammer. Emotionally beaten, one leaves it a different person-slightly changed, educated by pain, as Goethe said."--The Nation
"Selby has an unerring instinct for honing our collapse into novels as glittering and as cutting as pure, black, jagged glass."--Saturday Review
"Scorching, unrelenting, pulsing."--Newsweek
Hubert Selby, Jr. was born in Brooklyn in 1928. Last Exit to Brooklyn, his first novel, was originally published in 1964. He has since written five other novels, The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, and The Willow Tree, and a collection of short stories, Song of the Silent Snow. Mr. Selby lives in Los Angeles. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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First Sentence
THEY sprawled along the counter and on the chairs. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
THEY sprawled along the counter and on the chairs. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Anne Rice
Format:Paperback
This is a work of sheer genius by anyone's standards. Yes, it's raw, it's shocking even to those of us who thought nothing in modern fiction could shock us but it's one brilliantly sustained song of the brutal, the outcast, the desperate, and at times the cruel who exist inside all of us. I read it over and over again hearing it in my head aloud. I lose it for a few years, then grab it up again. The rhythm of the sentences is perfection. It's for all the time, and the movie -- though a different entity altogether -- was pretty damned fine too. Of course it couldn't be the book. No. It couldn't be quite that dark. Yet it had its own magnificently wrought violence. Selby sings! Here's to him from another writer!
By K. McNamara
Format:Paperback
Enjoyed Selby's prose...Tried to pick up another book after finishing "Brooklyn" and couldn't concentrate. Not for the squeamish or closed-minded. Definitely a re-read down the road.
Format:Paperback
I don't know whether it was deliberate or not, but Hubert Selby, Jr.'s LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN is a window into the hidden side of America's supposed banner years during the Eisenhower administration. Movies and television of this period depicted squeaky clean families in their squeaky clean houses (with the notable exception of I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners whose families lived in apartments). In this Father Knows Best world, no one worried about poverty, minorities, or women's rights, and the only evil was on the other side of the hemisphere in the USSR.
And then there's the world of LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN. This is the underclass of citizens that the nation preferred to ignore: pimps, hookers, thieves, junkies, drag queens, wife-beaters, and the thousands upon thousands of working class stiffs at the mercy of their union officials or their bosses, neither of which seem to have their best interests in mind. But this is no 'pity the poor' sort of the book, no HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES (although I do wonder what kind of effect this book had upon its release). These characters, and they are fascinating, are not sentimentalized. Selby portrays most of them as brutal, unsympathetic, and as cruel to their own kind as anyone else. Even the drag queens, whom you would think would be a little understanding of each other, turn vicious at their best friends over the slightest insult. While very uneven in terms of pacing and tone, this is still a ferocious book which deserves reading.
Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points.
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4.1 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Concerns drug addled drag queens in every story
Now matter how the stories in Last Exit to Brooklyn start out, they end up with drag queens on benzadrine. Read more
Published on May 13 2004 by N. Siefers
2.0 out of 5 stars
this is not the best thing i/ve ever read i can/t understand
That was my attempt at writing like Hubert Selby, Jr. I don't understand how anyone can write like that. There are NO periods. There are NO commas. Read more
Published on April 14 2004
1.0 out of 5 stars
Worst ... book ... ever!. And that is saying a lot.
This was the worst thing I have ever had the displeasure of slogging through. Not since high school have I ever labored to finish a book like I did with this one. Read more
Published on Mar 4 2004 by Jeffery T. Ramone
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Scatterbrain of a Novel yet an Interesting Read
Hubert Selby's novel Last Exit To Brooklyn is a harrowing and a sprawling portrait of underachievers in Brooklyn. Read more
Published on Sep 25 2003 by K. Bentley
5.0 out of 5 stars
The pulse of a world dying in inane screams...
Anyone who has lived in a city will recognise the stories narrated in this book even if he's never come to direct contact with the type of characters depicted in them. Read more
Published on Sep 3 2003 by Takis Tz.
3.0 out of 5 stars
I felt like it was trying too hard
I emphatically believe in the reading and writing of honest truth. As a reader, I much prefer the harsh, brutal and basic version of a story rather than it's rose-colored fantasy. Read more
Published on April 3 2003 by Lisa Sloane
5.0 out of 5 stars
Raw and True to Life!
I lived not far from where much of the action of this novel took place. And have had first hand experience of the kind of characters that are found here in this remarkable piece... Read more
Published on Mar 23 2003 by ardent_lover
4.0 out of 5 stars
It's "good," certainly, but almost unbearable.
Last Exit to Brooklyn, Selby's full-length literary debut, is structured more like a collection of stories than a novel. Read more
Published on Mar 20 2003 by Angry Mofo
5.0 out of 5 stars
Do Believe the Hype
If you like requiem for a dream the movie or the novel this book should be right up your alley. Simillar to Ellis' nove "The Informers" this novel is told through the... Read more
Published on Jan 12 2003 by chris
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Believe the Hype
Do not read this book because you liked Requiem for a Dream the movie. It is totally dissimilar. For that matter, don't read this book if you like a novel to have a plot. Read more
Published on Sep 24 2002
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