Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr is easily one of the most devastating novels I’ve ever read. In fact, when I try to think of any other books that might have left me feeling so dejected, the best comparisons I can come up with are some historical accounts of human suffering. Biographical memoirs like The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Wild Swans by Jung Chang are the closest things that come to mind, which is really saying something because those are the actual true stories of what it was like to live in oppressive, famine-stricken countries and Last Exit to Brooklyn is mostly just about a couple of miserable days in lives of a handful of barhoppers in 1950’s New York. I never thought to draw the comparison before, but considering it now I think a lot of the power of the book comes from the fact that it’s put together with the same kind of detached interest you might expect from a historian.
That isn’t to say Last Exit to Brooklyn is written like a history book.
As far as I understand it, Hubert Selby Jr had been working in Brooklyn for a long time and had gotten to know the seedy underbelly of the place as well as anybody. Last Exit to Brooklyn is a compilation of six stories that in one way or another were inspired by the things he saw and heard during his time there. For the most part, each one centres on a character that’s circling the drain at the edge of society. I don’t mean to dance around the subject, but broadly speaking these people mostly spend their days pursuing the kind of compulsive habits that would probably get my channel demonetised if I were to list them all here. Nonetheless, though there’s some seriously disturbing behaviour on show, Selby made it his prime objective to honour the characters, not by justifying their life choices; but by illustrating the events as he imagined they happened. It was his belief that there shouldn’t be any moral lesson taken from them and that really the only decent thing to do was acknowledge the fact of their existence.
That said, while Last Exit to Brooklyn is similar to a textbook in its lack of editorial commentary, it’s by no means a dry ordeal.
The style of writing throughout the book is both simple and bold. The stories are generally told in a matter of fact manner, but the characters’ interior dialogues often interrupt the more lucid prose with much more colourful euphemisms and provocative thoughts. On a basic level this only means there’s a heck of a lot of profanity to describe events as they unfold, but it all adds up to create an experience that wouldn’t be possible if it were written in a more measured tone. Most importantly, it allows you to relate to the characters on their level. Though Selby worked hard to purge the book of his own moral opinions, the people being portrayed are by no means shy about expressing their world views and you often find yourself sympathising with a lot of people who in real life you’d be incredibly uncomfortable with sitting beside you on a bus downtown.
This is in spite of the fact that at times Selby’s writing becomes downright experimental. In general, stuffy things like quotation marks are omitted altogether so that the conversations can have a more direct, down to earth quality, but at points Selby even goes so far as to remove any spaces between the words in an attempt to reflect the mental deterioration of his cast. I wouldn’t blame you for saying this all sounds a bit pretentious. When it comes to fiction what’s considered artistic often equates to what makes a difficult read. But I think the success or failure of such choices basically come down to whether they’re parsable once you understand their goal and it’s a point in Selby’s favour that regardless of how odd the text formatting gets it’s always immediately clear what’s going on. Of course, I also wouldn’t blame you if you aren’t rushing out the door to pick up a copy of the book. Some of the things that happen throughout it really do portray humanity at its absolute worst. It’s been a few years since I’ve read it but to this day if I actually sit down and think about the stories there are a good few instances in them that still make me feel like I’ve taken a punch to the stomach.
So I guess at this point you might wonder why on earth you’d want to read a book that makes you feel this way?
Well, on the whole, I’d say if you aren’t already inclined to then you probably shouldn’t. There’s a great deal of horrendous material within the pages and it’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. But if you’re teetering on the fence I do think there’s a lot more to be gained from reading the book than just a way of fulfilling some morbid curiosity.
Selby once cited Beethoven as a major influence when he wrote the book. It wasn’t that he aimed to bring some sort of musical structure to the stories, rather, he felt that the composer was able to endow profound meaning on otherwise ordinary things. Similarly, the events that unfold in Last Exit to Brooklyn demonstrate the same dramatic qualities that you might expect from an opera, but they’re all the more devastating because the emotions are wrought from the kind of people you pass on the street every day. If you’ve ever seen Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream then you have a pretty good idea of what to expect. It was based on another one of Selby’s novels, and though I haven’t read it, Aronofsky’s film certainly brings the same bombastic quality to everyday problems that Last Exit to Brooklyn does and coincidentally utilises an incredibly dramatic soundtrack to do so.
At any rate, I think Hubert Selby Jr was uniquely capable of describing the suffering he saw, probably because he had a pretty difficult time of it himself. He was diagnosed with TB when he was in the navy. The service wouldn’t provide the drug he needed to live, so his family had to pay for it themselves. By and large, he spent three years relegated to bed, had ten ribs removed, suffered a collapsed lung and continued to experience serious medical problems in the years that followed.
All of this is to say, maybe his own suffering allowed him to express his sympathy for those that were hurting in a way that other writers often don’t. One thing that characterises the people in Last Exit to Brooklyn is their lack of self-awareness. The tragic ends they meet are usually brought on by the same type of compulsive behaviour they demonstrate at the beginning of the book. Unlike the usual kind of stories that gain popularity in television, books and film, there aren’t any lessons for them to experience or revelations to be found. They merely stumble along to their inevitable doom. Typically this kind of oblivious mindset is something you’d only find in a comedy or satire. For example, I’m a huge fan of movies by the Coen Brothers. They also tend to portray characters that are ignorant of the machinations at work behind their lives. But in the way that the Coen Brother’s work comes together, their early work especially, you sometimes get the feeling that they’re being a little mean in how they portray how ignorant these characters really are.
One thing I can say for Last Exit to Brooklyn is that at no point does it feel like Selby is looking down on these unfortunate characters. Moreover, though what they go through is downright inhuman, it’s humanity he gives back to them by how he commits to creating an honest portrait of their lives.
