Hubert Selby Jr. (1 Viewer)

I eventually got round to reading Last Exit to Brooklyn and I absolutely loved it. I was wondering if any of you had some advice on what to read next / whether all Selby's work was worth checking out. Thanks in advance.
 
I agree with Hooch. I really loved "The Demon" also.

His last two novels were really tough for me to read, but some great ones are "The Room", "The Demon", and "Songs of the Silent Snow", which are short stories....

Bill
 
I would second the recommendation for Requiem. A brilliant book. Even if you've seen the movie (the book, of course, is better).

Also, check out the documentary too, it/ll be better tomorrow.
 
There's a good recording of Hubert with Nick Tosches called "Blues Eyes and Exit Wounds". Used to live near the last exit to Brooklyn. Not a happy place as I recall, but then Selby really didn't do happy much.

p.s. The bar bearing the same name is on Atlantic Ave. within sight of the old waterfront shitholes, it's just okay though
 
i picked up Last Exit a few months ago and got maybe 20 pages in. i had a hard time getting past the way he writes, with the slang and such. will try again later...
 
Slang and PUNCTUATION....

Don/t let it bother you. It isn/t that bad once you get used to it.

Bill

p.s. Selby uses / instead of '
 
Yeah the punctuation can be be difficult at first... but it starts flowing of its own accord eventually. At least, it did for me. I had to finish the first part of Last Exit before I finally got into it...

I found it a lot easier to read than some of the more experimental Kerouac and Burroughs stuff. But that may just be me.
 
i picked up Last Exit a few months ago and got maybe 20 pages in. i had a hard time getting past the way he writes, with the slang and such. will try again later...

I found it difficult at first but it's worth persevering with as it's such a good book and it gets a lot easier once you get used to it. Not unlike some Irvine Welsh stuff in that respect.
I've just purchased a copy of 'Requiem for a Dream' by the way.
 
i just picked up demon. when i opened it i noticed that his style of writing is more traditional. there were no strange paragraph break or strange punctiation. it looked kinda normal. does anyone have any ideas why this is?
 
I recently read Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football by David Winner. So why mention it here? You might ask. The cover has a testimonial by the late Mr. Selby saying how much he enjoyed the book and how fascinating he found it. I was wondering if anyone could cast any light on why the subject would have been of interest to him. Did he visit the Netherlands when he was a merchant sailor or did he enjoy football (soccer)? It just seemed a bit odd.
 
They are both published by Bloomsbury Publishing in the UK. It looks like this was a favor that the publisher called in. Still, it is odd as I can't imagine that fans of this book could give a shit about a Selby quote.

Bill
 
Ah right. That makes sense I suppose. It was probably just to give it some gravitas then. It's a good book actually, if you like that sort of thing ;)
 
I watched "It/ll be better tomorrow", which is the dvd biography of Selby. A really fascinating movie. Three highlights:

1) The guy who played Georgie in the movie reading from "the Queen is Dead"
2) He explains that he did not use qoutation marks as it was too much trouble on a manual typewriter.
3) No sight of Bono anywhere on this, although they had a lot of Rollins...
4) Learning that he dropped out of school in the 8th grade.

Well worth adding to your netflix list.

Bill
 
Yes very much so. A very interesting documentary. I especially liked it because there's just not a lot of footage of Selby around...
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top