Waiting Period

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When Selby decides to attack, it is with the shock of a practised mugger and with the speed and economy of a poet

Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists ... to understand his work is to understand the anguish of America

Hubert Selby, Jr. was born in Brooklyn in 1928. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and went to sea with the merchant marines. While at sea he was diagnosed with lung disease. With no other way to make a living, he decided to try writing: 'I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.' In 1964 he completed his first book, Last Exit to Brooklyn, which has since become a cult classic. In 1966, it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK. His other books include The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, Song of the Silent Snow, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. In 2000, Requiem for a Dream starred Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn and was directed by Darren Aronofsky. Hubert Selby Jr died in Highland Park, Los Angeles, California in April 2004.

Driven to desperation by the hand the world has dealt him, the suicidal narrator of Waiting Period attempts to buy a gun to end his life. But a computer malfunction causes a delay with the gun license: a life-saving event that sees the man questioning why he should die when there are so many others he believes should go before him. Planning the perfect murder, he chooses a victim - a bureaucrat responsible for denying him his benefits - and discovers to his amazement that his plan works perfectly. But now this man has found his purpose in life, how far will he go with his mission? In his final novel, Hubert Selby Jr. offers a shocking and fascinating examination of morality, murder and one man's personal war.

The Willow Tree

Selby's work has the power, the intimacy with suffering and morality, the honesty and moral urgency of Dostoevsky's

Bobby - young, black and happily in love with Hispanic girlfriend Maria - lives in a cramped Bronx apartment with his mother, his younger siblings and walls full of rats. But when Bobby and Maria are brutally attacked by a Hispanic gang, leaving the couple severely injured, everything changes. Maria may be lost, but, under the unusual care of the reclusive doctor he knows only as Moishe, Bobby might just have stumbled into a hopeful future of which he could never have previously dreamed. The Willow Tree is a searing trip of despair and hope through the lives of America's dispossessed inner-city residents.

Song of the Silent Snow

We believe Selby's characters and will never forget them. Selby has written from the gut with great compassion

Selby brings a scorching light to a limited area of human existence, which most people know of but do not know

Fat Phil can't lose at dice, even when his friends turn nasty and he's trying his hardest; a salesman finds success comes from fortune cookie mottoes, but panics when these mottoes turn against him; a date goes so perfectly a man talks himself out of ever seeing the woman again; a commuter finds himself obsessed with a plain young woman on his train, at the expense of his marriage. In this collection of short stories, Hubert Selby Jr. plunges the reader into the violent, passionate worlds of his protagonists and captures perfectly the delicate balance between joy and despair.

The Demon

Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists ... to understand his work is to understand the anguish of America.

A major author of a stature with William Burroughs and Joseph Heller

Harry White is the man other men want to be: admired by his peers, talented, rich, and desired by countless women. His steady rise to a position of unprecedented influence in a New York investment firm seems inevitable to those who know him, and on the way he acquires a beautiful wife and children. But with every achievement the desire to destroy what is his grows stronger. A demon within drives him to sexual excess, petty crime and eventually murder. 
 
The Demon explores the dark side of a man's ambitions with unflinching determination. Harry White's story is a gripping twentieth-century tragedy.

Last Exit to Brooklyn

Few novels have caused as much debate as Hubert Selby Jr.'s notorious masterpiece, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting. 
 
Described by various reviewers as hellish and obscene, Last Exit to Brooklyn tells the stories of New Yorkers who at every turn confront the worst excesses in human nature. Yet there are moments of exquisite tenderness in these troubled lives. Georgette, the transvestite who falls in love with a callous hoodlum; Tralala, the conniving prostitute who plumbs the depths of sexual degradation; and Harry, the strike leader who hides his true desires behind a boorish masculinity, are unforgettable creations. Last Exit to Brooklyn was banned by British courts in 1967, a decision that was reversed the following year with the help of a number of writers and critics including Anthony Burgess and Frank Kermode. 
 
Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928-2004) was born in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and went to sea with the merchant marines. While at sea he was diagnosed with lung disease. With no other way to make a living, he decided to try writing: 'I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.' In 1964 he completed his first book, Last Exit to Brooklyn, which has since become a cult classic. In 1966, it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK. His other books include The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. In 2000, Requiem for a Dream was adapted into a film starring Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn, and directed by Darren Aronofsky. 
 
If you enjoyed Last Exit to Brooklyn, you might like Larry McMurty's The Last Picture Show, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 
 
'Last Exit to Brooklyn will explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America, and still be eagerly read in 100 years' 
Allen Ginsberg 
 
'An urgent tickertape from hell' 
Spectator

Selby deploys street slang, common speech, argot and scatology to create a high poetic art...it seems to derive from the greatest American poetry--Whitman, Pound, Williams, and Olson

Few novels have caused as much controversy as Hubert Selby Jr.'s notorious masterpiece. Described by various reviewers as hellish and obscene, it tells the stories of New Yorkers who at every turn confront the worst excesses in human nature. Yet there are moments of exquisite tenderness in these troubled lives. Georgette, the transvestite who falls in love with a callous hoodlum; Tralala, the conniving prostitute who plumbs the depths of sexual degradation; and Harry, the strike leader who hides his true desires behind a boorish masculinity, are unforgettable creations. 
 
Last Exit to Brooklyn was banned by British courts in 1967, a decision that was reversed the following year with the help of a number of writers including Anthony Burgess.

The Room

A terrifying journey into the darkest corners of the psyche

One must be grateful to Selby for his fatal vision and strong, original talent

'Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists ... to understand his work is to understand the anguish of America.'

It's absolutely horrific ... but just about the most powerful novel I've ever read

'It is quite an experience to be locked up all by yourself in any size room' says the anonymous narrator of Hubert Selby Jr.'s second novel. What follows is a startling series of recollections and fantasies that illuminate the workings of a prisoner's unhinged mind. He yearns for his violent childhood, rages against obscure authorities, and imagines enacting horrible revenge on those who imprisoned him. The prisoner's remand cell becomes the scene of a surreal mental torture. 
 
Disorienting, nightmarish and structurally inventive, The Room is a shocking examination of the suffering humans can inflict on each other.

Hubert Selby Jr.

Harry Goldfarb, heroin addict and son of lonely widow Sara, cares only about enjoying the good life with girlfriend Marion and best friend Tyrone C Love, and making the most of all the hash, poppers and dope they can get. Sara Goldfarb sits at home with the TV, dreaming of the life she could have and struggling with her own addictions - food and diet pills. But these four will pay a terrible price for the pleasures they believe they are entitled to. A passionate, heart-breaking tale of the crushing weight of hope and expectation, Requiem for a Dream is a dark modern-day fable of New York.

Hubert Selby Jr.

Requiem for a Dream

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