Last Exit to Brooklyn
First edition
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| Author | Hubert Selby Jr. |
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| Cover artist | Roy Kuhlman |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Transgressive fiction |
| Publisher | Grove Press |
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Publication date
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1964 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 320 pp |
| OCLC | 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.
Although critics and fellow writers praised the book on its release, Last Exit to Brooklyn caused much controversy because of 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.
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.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.
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Wikipedia