I picked up Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr. in college, most likely at the Brown Deer Salvation Army for $0.33, (I miss you Brown Deer Salvation Army! I love you!), most likely because of the blurb on the back cover:
Last Exit to Brooklynwas found obscene at the Old Bailey in November 1967, a decision which was reversed by a historic Appeal Court judgement in July, 1968. Now, ‘this honest and terrible book’ as Anthony Burgess describes it in his introduction to this edition, can take its rightful place as one of the major books of our time.
The book is a collection of vignettes of various length about working class 
people in the projects and tough streets of New York City. In reference to that “obscene” ruling, it contains quite a bit of profanity, drug use, graphic descriptions of violence and graphic-er (yes) descriptions of both homosexual and heterosexual activity. Also, it leaves out all the apostrophes (insert audible gasp here).
Seriously though, I found all the “obscenity” in Last Exitappropriate because it didn’t overwhelm the characters or the themes. It is not sex or violence for the shock value. It is part of a plot that proves a point. (Tangentially, the only author I’ve found to go way too far in this area is Bret Easton Ellis, author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho. The amount of sexual violence in AP made it unreadable, in my opinion.)
It’s been awhile since I’ve indulged my love for modernist themes in literature and this book served to remind me how much I love stories of regular lives, filled with loneliness and alienation. A perfect example of this is a story I taught while student teaching–The Far and the Nearby Thomas Wolfe. (If you are actually going to click that link and read the story, don’t read the rest of this paragraph until you do. Spoiler alert!) It’s a very short story about a train conductor who passes the same town everyday for years, and daily exchanges waves with a woman and her daughter who grows into a women herself over the train conductor’s years of service. The conductor can’t wait to retire and go see these women and this town close-up. But when he does, the woman is old and bitter and he is left confused and disillusioned, realizing that the town he ”knew” is nothing like he imagined it, and he can never have that perfect picture back again. Despite my penchant for being a fairly optimistic, cheery person, I love the how depressing this story is. Stories of disillusionment and despair tend to resonate with me. (For more depressing, Holly-approved stories, check out “Bliss” by Katherine Mansfield and “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin.)
Anyway, I like Last Exitfor its modern themes. These people’s lives suck. Georgette is in love with Vinnie, who plays her and doesn’t love her back. Tralala is drug-addicted prostitute. Harry is a secretly gay union worker whom no one likes. Etc. Their lives are repetitious and painful to watch. There are no happy endings. In fact, this book is filled with rather disturbing endings.
There were a couple elements of the book that threw me more than any of the “obscenity”, but upon further reflection, I think I understand why Selby wrote this way. First of all, many of the homosexual males in the book have female names and are referred to as “she.” To be clear, these are not transgendered characters. Because of this, it was disorienting and hard to picture the characters correctly. Much of the book is written with the bias of chauvinist male characters, and these characters devalue women throughout. Perhaps Selby referred to the gay men as “she” to show a similar devaluing of homosexual men in the eyes of the other men. Also, Harry, the union work who discovers he is gay, is uncomfortable with his sexuality and might find safety in referring to these men in feminine terms.
The other element that seemed offensive on first reading was the last section of the book , which portrays several husbands who range from lazy to abusive to philandering while their wives do all the housework, childcare, and provide the income. In each case, the men have no respect or appreciation for their wives. These men are horrible, and while their wives despise them, several of the wives are still sexually desirous of them. That made me totally mad–it seemed like a stereotype of women that was coming from the author, not from that chauvinist male voice. But overall I don’t think Selby is sexist, I think he is pointing out the irony of the husbands’ perspectives–they are looking elsewhere for gratification, while their wives are desperate to be fulfilled. Desperation reigns throughout, in fact. It is sad.
I think this book is important because of its focus on alienated, powerless, hurting people–those dismissed because their addictions or illness, those who are underestimated or stereotyped, those who are desperate for a different life. Like many of my favorite books, Last Exit is character-driven. These alienated, powerless people are given complex voices, and though often what they choose to say and think and do is not pretty or positive, it is real and human, and the voices, no matter how horrible, cannot be ignored.
