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Last Exit to Brooklyn (Open Road)
 
 

Last Exit to Brooklyn (Open Road) [Kindle Edition]

Hubert Selby Jr.
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)

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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

Product Description

“An extraordinary achievement . . . a vision of hell so stern it cannot be chuckled or raged aside.”—The New York Times Book Review
A classic of postwar American literature, Last Exit to Brooklyn created shockwaves upon its release in 1964 with its raw, vibrant language and startling revelations of New York City's underbelly. 
 
The prostitutes, drunks, addicts, and johns of Selby’s Brooklyn are fierce and lonely creatures, desperately searching for a moment of transcendence amidst the decay and brutality of the waterfront—though none have any real hope of escape. 
 
Last Exit to Brooklyn offers a disturbing yet hauntingly sensitive portrayal of American life, and nearly fifty years after publication, it stands as a crucial and masterful work of modern fiction. 
 
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Hubert Selby, Jr., including rare photos from the author’s estate.

Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 845 KB
  • Print Length: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Open Road Media Iconic Ebooks (13 Dec 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B006D23D12
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray: Not Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #13,069 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars A compelling yet uneasy read 29 Mar 2005
By B. Remy
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I am very glad that I've read this book, but now I have, I will never read it again.

It is a hard-boiled account about marginalised people - a prostitute, a transvestite, a convict, and a sexually troubled trade union leader amongst others. The style of writing is utterly refreshing and compelling, the characterisation astonishing, and beating from deep within the book is a heart and humanity. It is not though a dispassioned or sanitised book - the words "raw" and "gritty" are a massive understatement at times.

Be in no doubt that this book can be brutal, it pulls no punches and it often leaves a dirty bloody taste in your mouth whilst reading it.

It's a very good book, there's no doubt about it, but be prepared for a painful and uneasy read. There are no happy endings.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars An ugly tale that is beautifully compelling 14 Jan 2003
Format:Paperback
Last exit to Brooklyn is the only Selby Jnr. book I have read, yet will undoubtedly not be the last. Read in a stuffy hostel in Spain while ill, I was transfixed by a world of degredation, mysogyny, and utter contempt. The characters that Selby Jnr. portrays are visceral and hateful - Tralala is almost like a modern day Lulu, and ultimately deserves what she gets. Vince and his pals are hateful characters not unlike Burgess' Clockwork Orange mob - disrespectful to everyone and everything and getting away with it. It seems that Selby Jnr. is trying to show how the characters all use and abuse each other and ultimately, none are the better for it. This book is seedy, and the characters hateful, yet it had me gripped to the end.I still don't know why I enjoyed it so much and could not put it down - maybe this is Selby Jnr.s way of showing that we can be just as perverse as these fictional characters. Sickeningly enjoyable and made even more contreversial when thinking of the trouble Selby Jnr. had in getting it published. Will definitely be reading more of his work.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Swish the curtains and face the world 22 Feb 2010
By Dr. Delvis Memphistopheles TOP 100 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Life beyond social veils may be difficult to swallow. Dickens wrote about working class life with a dose of sentimentality pandering to his literati readership. The people he was writing about were not literate enough to read about themselves so he had to water his bile for bourgeois taste. After all, he could not afford to upset his readership with too much reality otherwise they would not buy his books. Even so he was a pioneer of life beyond the aspidistra spending his time visiting his Dad in Marshalsea Prison.

Selby however wrote at a time when working class people were climbing out of the sewers following the GI Bill. This allowed ex servicemen to get an education for free. This was the greatest social experiment ever attempted in USA. Those who survived the war could not only learn to read and write but also go to university. When they got there they realised there were no stories about them and their lives. There was just a blank.

Difficult to imagine as the US seems to be the archetype of free, easy and available, but this was fought for, rather than given. Selby was one of those who shoved the envelope as far as he could. The novel was banned for its salaciousness evidently. Why anyone would want to get hot and steamy about the types of sex in this novel is the subject Havelock Ellis dissected and was documented in the Kinsey Report?

Before Selby everything was Jane Austen, Bronte Sisters, Chaucer, Shakespeare or cowboys and indians. A whole chapter of American street life had been wiped clean. How many films have been made about urban squalor of the big cities in the 1900's, a time of turmoil? How many portray the licentiousness of pre-narcotic prohibition.
... Read more ›
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A stunning vision of an inner city hell 18 Nov 2000
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This was Hubert Selby Jr. debut novel and such was the power of the book that in the UK, the original publishers were taken to court to be prosecuted for obscenity. Luckily for us the case was thrown out but the book has a raw power that is both compassionate and horrifying.

Selby writes sketches of various lives living in Brooklyn. All trying to survive on a estate that continually grinds them down. People do nasty things to each other but Selby doesn't condemn his characters but trys to comprehend them.

The stories are bitter and raw, from Tralala who cannot distinguish between sex and love to Harry, a repressed homosexual who lets out his anger on his workers, his wife, his children because he has never come to terms with his sexuality.

Selby writes in a prose style that ignores every rule of school grammer bar one: it has to be understood by the reader.

There are no speech marks, semi-colons and rarely does a comma appear. The effect is stunning, the text hits the mind like bullets as the emotion crosses out of the page. If you thought William Burrough's 'Naked Lunch' was a daring literary experiment, try 'Last Exit to Brooklyn'.

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars An unusual experience 12 Dec 2004
Format:Paperback
Everyone should read this book once; sometimes it hurts to turn the page and watch another character that you have grown quietly fond of reach their inevitable downfall, or make the mistakes that you know are in their nature but that you don't want to see them make. By showing the nastier parts of mans characteristics unashamadly, Selby gives us not just a book, but a warning.

As much as people hate to see it, there is a little bit of one of the characters in all of us, whether the violent and materialistic Tralala or the tormented and love struck Georgette and it hurts to see our own natures portrayed so graphically in any text. But as difficult as this sometimes is, you walk away feeling somewhat cleansed and moved to not make the same mistakes. An unmissable piece of brilliance.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent read
I loved this book the characters are so full of colour especially Georgie who I adored. Their stories are tragic and sad and full of struggle. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Beverely
4.0 out of 5 stars Drooklyn
I read this book when it was banned loaned it out and never got it back so I had to buy it again it did not cost very much so I will read it again to try and analyse it
Published 9 months ago by R. Cunningham
1.0 out of 5 stars Last exit to brooklyn
I have always thought this a great film and wanted to read the book. At last I sent off for a copy and when it arrived I took the first oportunity to settle down to what I... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Jex
5.0 out of 5 stars Arguably Selby's best novel - and probably one of the most disturbing...
Selby has been described as a `clinician of violence ... whose novels have the immediacy of art' (Josephine Hendin, Vulnerable People: A View of American Fiction Since 1945 (A... Read more
Published 22 months ago by bobbygw
4.0 out of 5 stars A Must read!
I read Last Exit on the back of a list-mania review and was pleasantly surprised. Definitely a slow burner - if you are anything like me you might struggle with the first 50 pages... Read more
Published 23 months ago by Polkadotsteph
3.0 out of 5 stars Showing it's age but still has the capacity to shock
I read this on a recent trip to New York City (pretentious I know, but it worked last time with "Catcher on the Rye" as well). Read more
Published on 25 Oct 2010 by Mr. Joel C. A. Cooney
5.0 out of 5 stars Old and collectible books
This is difficult. Each item is going to be different. It depends on desire for the book per se but it;s out of print. Read more
Published on 11 Aug 2010 by Alison Pole
4.0 out of 5 stars Strangely Subtle
Last Exit to Brooklyn is relentlessly bleak, I only found one character I had any sympathy for and she appeared in the last part. Read more
Published on 4 April 2010 by Harry the book monkey
5.0 out of 5 stars A Modernist Literary Masterpiece - Not for the faint hearted
I will never forget how it felt to read this book.

The language here seems to do things I thought were only possible on film or on mind altering drugs: it creates a... Read more
Published on 7 Dec 2009 by N. Chida
4.0 out of 5 stars A novel you will never forget!
This is an incredible novel and it is hard to find anything else to compare it with. The effect of reading this book is so intense and powerful; it is truly mind-warping. Read more
Published on 9 Sep 2009 by F Drew
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For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. &quote;
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