Backlisted - Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr

Episode Date: July 25, 2016

Author and poet Saleena Godden joins John Mitchinson, Andy Miller and Mathew Clayton to discuss Hubert Selby Jr's legendary transgressive novel of dead end life in working class 50's Brooklyn. WARNING: contains obligatory reference the The Fall. Timings: (may differ due to adverts)4'02 - Spire by William Golding6'51 - Golden Hill by Francis Spufford, 17'57 - Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I think everybody does of getting there. And I was driving quite fast and I'd lost concentration at one moment in a long queue of cars and rear-ended the car in front. And I had one of those, you know, classic English kind of men who just wanted to swap insurance numbers and talk about the damage. And, you know, it's just, I have to get going. I'm on stage in, like, 20 minutes.

I arrived at Glastonbury, managed to park, and then went to the gate and I said, I'm going to Crow's Nest. And they said, oh, right, mate. And I went right over the edge of the distance. At this stage, I was already five minutes late, so I had to jog across in the heat. And I arrived there completely dripping wet.

And then they said, right, you're on. So, hi, everybody. Sorry I'm late. OK, the QI manifesto. Here we go. But then it was very... And you wrote them dead. You were brilliant. And then the problem was I sort of wasn't in the mood, so I thought, well, I'll drive home again.

So it was like the one... I drove home that afternoon thinking, Glastonbury, I've really, really done this badly. Anyway. Let's begin. Hello and welcome to Baptisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. As usual, we're gathered around the kitchen table in the luxurious offices of Unbound,

the website which brings authors and readers together. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. We're joined today, as usual, by the author and cyclist Matthew Clayton. Hello, Matthew. Hello, Andy. And joining us today as well is Selina Godden. Hello, Selina.

Hello, how are you doing? I'm very well, thank you. Formerly known as Selina Saliva, it says here. Oh, my goodness, why does it say that? It says it because it's true. It's very true. That's Matt taking poetic licence. I think it was quite common when you first start out as a poet

to give yourself a sort of edgy name, a punky, edgy name. I mean, Kate Tempest isn't really called Kate Tempest, for example. So it's kind of a thing. You give yourself a name. It's better. My full stage name in 1994 when I first started performing was Selena Saliva, Gloopy Godiva, God Bless God Damn Godden. That's what I did. My full stage name

to be. Selena Saliva, Gloopy Godiva, God Bless God Damn Godden. And the only bit that stuck was the Selena Saliva bit. Well, Matt says here, Selena is a poet, performer, author, playwright, presenter. We missed anything out? Is there anything you don't do?

I'm really rubbish at playing cello and I can't do ballet. Although I think I can after some rum and listening to Kate Bush. So does Kate Bush. I should declare we were very, very fortunate indeed to help Selina crowdfund and publish her amazing memoir, Springfield Road.

Thank you. And I think I should say that I saw Selena perform last week and it was the single best gig I've seen in about two years. It was amazing. But we're not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr. Selena is a huge Gene Rees fan and that is one of our

sort of entries. Yeah, I was jealous when you did the Gene Rees one. One of the qualifications is that we like to have Gene Rees fans on backlisted. That's true. And we may find some spurious, indeed tenuous links between Gene Rees and Hubert Selby

Jr. but that's not how we're going to start today. Today we're going to start with the age-old, that hoary old question. Andy, what have you been reading? Can I just stop you for a second? Is it going to be Icelandic again? No. We've moved on. We've moved on.

The glorious... Well, we kind of moved on from Iceland, haven't we? I've been reading a novel by William Golding called The Spire, which he wrote in the early 60s, was published in 64 or 65. And I read it because... It's a towering masterpiece. Oh! I was inspired to read it.

The structure is amazing. Because I'll tell you why. There's two reasons why I read it. I read it, first of all, all because a long time listener will recall that we um did sylvia townsend warner earlier in the year and one of the books that i read when we were praying for that was one of her novels called the corner that held them which is a book about a medieval convent the main thread of which is the building of a spire over the period of about 50 to 100 years and so i'm so enthused by reading about spires i looked around and thought i gotta find i gotta find me you put in novel spire and this is i gotta find me another spire building novel

and as luck would have it william golding written on the second reason i wanted to read it john is because when we when we were talking about doing batlisted last year, one of the ideas that we had was that we would talk about, we would choose an author like for the sake of argument, Gene Rees or Joseph Heller but you would choose that you were allowed to talk about any of their books except

their famous book. So you couldn't talk about Wide Sog S.O.C. and you couldn't talk about Catch-22. I remember we talked about William Golding and we said yeah,'re great to do william golding but not do lord of the flowers yeah i want to do the spire or the inheritors the inheritors which i still think we should i'd love to do that as well i hope we i really hope we one of the things that came out of reading the spire was i thought we must we must did you come out with with uh paney-like double thumbs-ups all over the place? Give me several thumbs down.

Oh, my God. I always come out of everything with Paul McCartney-like double thumbs-ups. You know that? No. You two are throwing me some curveballs. I'm not really able to deal with it. Icelandic thumbs-up from Miller. I really, really liked it yeah i it's actually but the the the only thing i'd say about it is that i

i wish we were talking about it in like a month's time because in a way i didn't really i was sort of entertained and moved and baffled by it in equal measure that that it's the sort of book that i thought i'm not sure i totally understood that yeah and i need to let it settle and then come back to it so that's quite an achievement for for historical fiction which is sort of what we're yeah talk about because i also um i've got a historical novel which is a very just you know freshly minted um francis spufford who is a writer and teacher of literature but best known probably for his The Child That Books Built

which was the first in the perhaps the first in the new genre of biblio-memoir highly debatable highly debatable what the first one is it was a book about books

he also wrote a fantastic book called I May sometime ice and the english imagination yeah it's a wonderful book which is a great book um but golden hill is a novel his first novel and it's set in 18th century new york so this is new york when it's still pretty dutch before it obviously is the great the great power that it becomes and I have to say if you like historical pastiche 18th century fiction I mean it's written in that breezy kind of um addressing the reader with energy sort of fielding uh more fielding than than Richardson but it's it's just got it's got great energy to it and it's a fantastic premise a man arrives with a basically trying to cash a check for a thousand pounds a kind of a promissory note

for a thousand pounds out of nowhere called Mr Smith and he arrives in New York and basically says my all my connections are good you'll have to check they are checked up he turns out to be telling the truth so he becomes an object of fascination um he obviously uh falls in love uh and pursues a very the very spiky daughter of of one of the people who ends up honoring the promissory note uh he gets involved in the theater but what you get is a fantastic portrait of a city It's Manhattan. Manhattan in the 18th century where they have weird Dutch Sinterklaas kind of Christmas ceremonies

and they've got the theatre is very 18th century. He turns out to be a brilliant actor. And there is a fabulous, at the background of this there's bigger things, I won't spoil it, but it's one of the best reveals, which is revealed in a

series of letters. The woman he falls in love with. I can't really go into it without giving too much away. But it's highly accomplished. But it did make me wonder what... Historical fiction is odd, isn't it? The thing you have to remember about historical fiction... I can't remember who said

this, but it's a really good point. I think it was Ian Jack said this. The The thing you have to remember about historical fiction, I can't remember who said this, but it's a really good point. I think it was Ian Jack said this. The thing you've got to remember about historical fiction is it isn't history, it's fiction. And I found it really interesting reading The Spire, which fundamentally covers exactly the same historical period that The Corner That Held Them covers, and the same process of trying to build something

at the very limits of what technology, as you wouldn't have called it, but what technology was capable of in that era. And yet when you read it, you know, they don't overlap in history or tone in any way whatsoever. You could only be reading novels by Sylvia Townsend warner and william golden respectively you know the fiction is far more dominant than the history and the thing i wanted to ask you about this buffers is you know it's i was reading a review of it saying you know it's got elements like you said of fielding in it and it's presumably got a bit of lawrence stern in there as well has it yeah there's definitely that so it's a bookish book well it's quite it's quite pastiche and this is a real challenge isn't it because

i'm thinking of paul kingsnorth um and the wake and one of the reasons that he wrote invented that language to tell the wake in is he he resisted which i have to say i kind of sympathetic to i'm reading about tudor eng England and I'm sort of thinking that the dialogue is just modern, rather flat, modern English and those little kind of, you know, the anachronisms that you kind of pick up on. So I always find it is quite a difficult trick. I mean, if you're just a popular, you know,

Philippa Gregory type, you know, you're just a popular uh um you know philip gregory type you know you're just telling a great story uh but everybody's dressed in you know different clothes and there's a few forsooths thrown in there to remind you that you're in but what spuffer's trying to do here is to write a it is a pastiche 18th century novel and i think he achieves that pretty pretty well actually i mean i i like you know there's a lot of every you know nouns with capitalizations and a you know there are kind of letters you know that you give a couple of sentences just to give you smith which seems though kurt the name that designates you easiest in my head i am not accustomed to people being kind a cynic would say no doubt that I make

sure I get little opportunity to get used to it, being so pre-emptingly nasty myself. I find it hard even to pay close attention to any gentle or tender signs of intent, for my mind runs on swift ahead into abrasions and contradictions. It is, for me,

like listening to a very faint sound to attend to kindness and go on and on and on now that's a letter it's not the book's not all written in that high yeah kind of 18th century style but he's definitely what he's doing is trying to make you feel that you are living in a a place a time that is remote from ours and i think he achieves that well you can learn a hell of a lot about 18th century manhattan and as I say you have a story that in the end you do kind of find yourself being very sort of it is I'm afraid another one of those books where you when you get to the reveal at the end you have to go back to the beginning and and reread the whole story because you suddenly realize that

you've missed about 70 percent of the the point of the narrative is actually that's not dissimilar I felt in its own way to the spire that the story you think you're reading you realize at the point of the narrative. Actually, that's not dissimilar, I felt, in its own way to The Spire. That the story you think you're reading, you realise at the end of the book, is not the story you thought you were reading. Yeah. That there's a definite... You know, it's the story of building The Spire,

but it's also the story of the psychology of a man who would be driven to do that in that era. And that's the space that Golding really inhabits. I mean, people always tell this story about Lord of the Flies. You know, Lord of the Flies was rejected 30 times or whatever. Well, yeah, of course it was, because he writes in a very peculiar register. Do you know the story about Howl on Teeth?

Yes. About the fact there was this apocalyptic incredibly purple beginning this is sort of the first chapter and the theory is that not many people got beyond that and just tossed it on one side but Monteith persisted

at Faber weirdly both Francis Buffard and William Golding are Faber authors do you read historical fiction, Selina? I don't, I don't think I do No, I really don't, no I definitely don't I want to say I do, but no I don't His last exit to Brooklyn, historical fiction

That's interesting, isn't it? Oh, would you call it historical fiction? I would not It is now It's a history in the past, isn't it? Well, it's what it is as a remarkable present. I mean, well, we'll get to it in a minute. I'm just saying, you know, when you read Last Exit to Brooklyn,

the answer is you're probably not reading it going, how fascinating how people lived in Brooklyn 50 years ago. You're going, whoa, what's that happening right there now? It's an interesting thing. With Kingsnorth and The Wake, he was trying to make a really powerful point. Obviously, he's one of the books that I might have talked about today, I might talk about next time,

is the next book in his trilogy, which is set now. But he was making a point, he was using all that sort of dislocation to make a point about this key moment in English history, the Norman conquest, and using the language to defamiliarise us with, you know... There is a terrible problem with medieval narratives, is that after Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it's quite difficult.

It is quite difficult not to imagine, you know, Terry Jones in Leotards pretending to fight the knights who say, and you definitely don't get that out of paul king's north book i mean so he had a point whereas i i'm wondering with francis spufford is he using you know it's an interesting he's sort of using 18th century new york to make points about kind of trade and possibly also without giving too much away, in fact, I can't say that, other things that are relevant to now. Literally, if I said one word, you would already begin to look at the book differently.

I did find it a very enjoyable experience reading it. Well, I would really like to... I hope we do... I hope we get to William Golding. I'd love to do an episode about William Golding. Maybe a shout-out to anybody. I'd particularly like to talk about The Inheritors, because I think it's such an amazing book.

This is the one that's basically the Neanderthal. It's written from within the consciousness of a Neanderthal as the Homo sapiens are arriving. It's a great book. I also want to mention, before we move on, in terms of the Spuffet, what's interesting about the Spuffet is the way that it uses both, from what your description, John, is the way it uses both the historical period

but also the way the historical period was written about in its era. So it's as much about the historical period and literature of that period. There's a TV series that's on at the moment in fact when this brought is broadcast it'll be about halfway through called the living and the dead on um bbc one oh we should have a little look at that yeah which is set in the uh late 19th century and is a fascinating mixture of historical drama but also uh the way a sort of very clever pastiche of the way historical drama of that period is presented to us so it manages to be both that's a very good description of what spufford's done yeah i mean it's it's pastiche but without you know he doesn't

it's not heavy i mean he's he's trying to do it in a way, I think, that's valid, because I think there is this problem of just feeling that you're... Hang on, this doesn't really convince me. It's just people dressing up. So just the last thing I'll say about The Living and the Dead is so The Living and the Dead manages to evoke both... They want to evoke, say, M.R. James ghost stories, but they also want to evoke the BBC adaptations from the 70s of those M.R. James ghost stories, but they also want to evoke the BBC adaptations from the 70s

of those M.R. James ghost stories. Did you watch it, Selina? I kind of watched it. I think I caught the end of it. I didn't really understand what was going on. There was a girl that was being haunted or something, possessed or something. And yet there's something, again, I can't spoil it, but it's by Ashley Farrow, who devised Life on Mars.

So is it worth consuming, then? Definitely. And it's on the iPlayer right now as a box set, so you can watch it all in one go. That sounds great. Excellent. If nothing else, this podcast is just worth it for that. Now, it's commercials. Two freshly cracked eggs any way you like them three strips of naturally smoked bacon and a

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we have i'm afraid a absolutely bona fide we'll take absolutely no demurral here. Last Exit to Brooklyn is a masterpiece. I would concur wholeheartedly with that. There's all sorts of things to say about Last Exit to Brooklyn. The first thing I want to say, Selina, is I'm going to

do something that Matt asked me not to do before we started. Not more Bennys. I'm going to talk about the musical. No no i'm not going to talk about the musical the journals not the journal i'll talk about the journals i'm going to say i'll always remember where i was when i read this book and that was brexit this this last brexit to brooklyn to Brooklyn is what I will remember. The trauma of that combined with the amazing experience of reading this book. Really intense and feverish, the whole thing.

Now you've taken that cat out of the bag and given it a Benny. Let's say that actually in a time where we're struggling with failure of empathy this has got to be one of the great empathetic novels looking at the lives of people who you would step over in the street

all these people you would try and get rid of giving them an inner life and a complexity and at times a nobility. I mean, at times the opposite of nobility. But it's just, it's an extraordinary thing. I also wanted to say, this was one of those books, you ever like a book so much that you actually don't want to talk about it?

Because I feel like I'm still communing with this book. I'd rather not be doing this to you. I missed a tube stop. I was rereading bits of it on the way here and missed a tube stop, even though I know what happens. Every time you go back to this book and reread it, you find something else

and you just kind of keep going back to it. It's one of those books. When did you first read it? Oh, now here's a story. I was 15. I was willful i was getting into lots of trouble and i was about to be sent to brooklyn to calm down and i was living in hastings i was a school girl living in hastings i had a famous hastings i had a i had a boyfriend that was about 10 years older than me with a with a sports

car i was getting very interested in in drink and getting stoned and sex and all the good stuff and so my mum was going to send me to brooklyn to go and stay with my just go and look at schools to maybe go to drama school in america and also go and stay with my very strict aunt in brooklyn and the boyfriend that i had who actually turned out to be a bit of a psycho actually but go to drama school in America and also go and stay with my very strict aunt in Brooklyn and the boyfriend that I had who actually turned out to be a bit of a psycho actually but what was he doing going out with a 15 year old anyway

that's another subject but he gave me the book he gave me the book and so I think he was trying to freak me out and I was literally going to go to Brooklyn that next week and he gave me this book and made me read the chapter, the trial, our large chapter, which I read it and I burst into tears. I've literally threw the book across the room and scream. Why are you making me read this?

Why are you making me? And so I kind of calmed down. And I think the way it's written, the way it's structured really informed why I wanted to become a writer. It's almost like rant poetry, the way it's written the way it's structured really informed why i wanted to become a writer it's almost like rant poetry the way it's written in that stream of consciousness way and it definitely was i couldn't believe it had been published i couldn't believe someone had written this i couldn't believe someone had climbed inside my head and showed me a whole character in a whole world in this really visceral no unpunctuated way in a way someone might reveal a memory,

like, boom, boom, boom, this happened, this happened, this happened. And it definitely informed the way I wanted to write. And, yeah, so it became my all-time favourite book. Do you want to... I feel like we should, even before we say, even before we read the blurb and say what the book's about, do you want to read a bit from it straight away? Because I think if anyone hasn't read it who's listening to this, it's about do you want to read a bit from it straight away because I think if anyone hasn't read it

who's listening to this it'll be so much easier to get a handle on it if you understand the rhythms of it and the style of it so Selina if you've got a bit that you want to okay so I'm going to read a little bit from The Queen is Dead The Queen is Dead was actually written as a was a short story

and was published as a short story before the book. And The Queen is Dead features Georgette, who's the transvestite in the story. And I'll just start, OK? The door banged shut and she leaned against the banister until the nausea subsided and stumbled down the stairs. Tony watching her and out to the street. The sun was hot and bright and light, rammed and slashed her from the windows, windshields, hoods of cars from tin signs, shirt buttons, bottle caps and slips of paper lying in the street. Her gut glowed and she bumped against parked cars.

But she was moving, moving, and everything got brighter, whiter, hotter. She clenched the railing and stumbled down the stairs to the subway, the beautiful, dark subway. Only a few people, no one near her. She folded her arms and rested her head on the seat in front of her. Cool, it cooled. Yes, it was cooler than her head and was beautifully warm. And she would have Vinnie again.

And the next time, sometime, he would kiss her and they would go out together, a movie, and hold hands or go for walks. And he would light her cigarette yes he would cup his hands around the match his cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth and i'll put my hands around his and he will blow out the match and toss it away and we don't have to go dancing i know he doesn't like to dance i will wear a smart print dress something simple something trim and neat vin Vinnie, it was Harry.

No, no, I won't have to go in drag. We will defy them all and love, love, we will be loved and I will be loved and the bird will come in high blowing love and we will fly. Oh, that evil bitch. I'm far more convincing woman in drag than Lee. Lee looks like Chaplin, and I would dance like Melissa. If only I were a little shorter. Well, we showed up, Miss Lee, didn't we, Vincent? Georgette danced around the room, humming tunes, in her silk panties and padded bra, and a John sat naked on the edge of the bed,

sweat sliding down his greasy body, touching the silk as Georgette's world round, playing with his genitals licking his lips spit hanging from his lips then he stepped out of her panties and he grabbed them buried his face in them and fell on the bed groaning and groveling no no it's now tomorrow vinnie yes vincenti vincenti amore yes yes cold oh my love a, soft candlelight and I will read to you and we will drink wine. No, it's not cold, not really, just the breeze from the lake. It's so lovely, peaceful sea, just the slightest ripple on the surface.

And willows, yes, sea, majestic, bowing willows, looking at themselves in the waters, nodding, saying yes to us, yes, yes, oh, Vicente, hold me tighter, Vincent, amore. Georgie is a friend of mine. He'll blow me any time for a nickel or a... The lake, the lake and a moon, yes, look, look. Do you see there? A swan, oh, how beautiful, how serene. The moon follows her. See how it lights her. Oh, such grace, oh, yes oh yes yes i do vinnie i do

vincenti see she glides to us us for us oh how white yes she is whiter than the snows on the mountains and they are but shadows now and she glistens shimmers the queen of the birds oh yes yes cellos hundreds of cellos and we will glide in the moonlight, pirouetting to the swan and kiss her head and nod to the willows and bow to the night and they will grace us. They will grace us and the lake will grace us and smile and the moon will grace us

and the mountains will grace us and the breeze will grace us and the sun will gently rise and its rays will stretch and spread and even the will gently rise and its rays will stretch and spread and even the willows will lift their heads ever so slightly and the snow will grow whiter and the shadows will rise from the mountains and it will be warm yes it will be warm well if you don't want to read uh last exit to brooklyn after that what is the matter with you, Selina? That was fantastic. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Matt, have we got a little, it seems appropriate to play a little clip of Hubert Selby talking about what he was trying to do with the rhythm of his work. Maybe we could listen to that now. You can't separate music from life. And my typography, for instance, is musical notation. And I say what I want to do is put the reader through an emotional experience.

Because what else is there? That's the important thing. Now, what I have to do then is experience these emotions I'm trying to project. And music is a very inherent part of that, to help somebody experience these things. So I have to create this musical notation because everybody has their own rhythm and I have to make that evident in their own vocabulary. And their vocabulary is a part of that rhythm. If I perceive through my ears a certain world, my vocabulary will reflect that in how many syllables

i usually use in a word how i adjust the rhythm and beat of a line that sort of thing and also it's visual i i every time i pick this book up to read it you know the thing i the thing i had in my head the little bit of music that sprung up in my head was that open cello we keep talking about cellos it's the opening cello part the riff of street hassle by lou reed right you know that that that circular riff that runs through that 11 minute song you know and i totally i've been like a velvets fan since i was 15. It has got a real Lurie. Lurie clearly borrowing so much from this in terms of the setting

and the rhythm and the type of people he wanted to write about. I just thought it was incredible. When you hear him speak there you can really hear how the musicality in his voice and the rhythm of how he really hear how the musicality in his voice and the rhythm of how he wrote i think he wrote in his own voice i think the characters are definitely people i read that the characters were actually people that he'd seen in his neighborhood

and and the kind of people he grew up with in a way i think this book in a way is almost like a kind of hidden memoir i think these are things that he possibly read or saw or witnessed or characters that he saw or felt or energies that he was witnessing. I was just going to say, on that amazing, those pages that you wrote, he wrote a little afterward for the book, and it's just interesting.

He said at the end of The Queen is Dead, Georgie, the character, is dying of an OD. That's sort of that ebbing feeling that you have. So I like this. He said, initially I thought I would have to be under the influence of some drug to do it. I took some Demerol I had for pain. And this is an important thing we'll come on to. He's lived a life wracked by pain.

But it didn't work. Next I tried sipping beer, but that was a failure. So I just sat there and did it one word at a time. It took a very long time to write the last couple of pages of that story. And you can kind of feel that. It sounds like it's kind of unstructured, but when you read that passage on the page, you can see what he's doing.

I just think it's lyrical, hard-edged writing of the highest order. I'm just going to read the blurb on the back of my copy, which is a 2000-and-something paperback, Marion Boyer's paperback. Few books have aroused so much strong feeling as Last Exit to Brooklyn. The novel features a cast of unforgettable characters from the debris of American civilization. Harry, the strike leader, who during his weeks of power

discovers something of his true nature. Tra-la-la, who rejects the only love she is offered and sinks swiftly to the lowest level of prostitution. Georgette, the hip queer. Abraham, the cool-ass black stud, and many other junkies, hustlers, and outcasts who make up Selby's haunting world. Found obscene and banned in 1967, this is in the UK, a decision which was reversed in a historic appeal court judgment in 1968,

this honest and terrible book, as Anthony Burgess called it, can now take its rightful place as one of the major books of our time you know what I I I had I had always avoided this book because of my you know most of the American quote-unquote cult books that I've read I've read in the last 10 years because when I in complete contrast to you Selina when I was a teenager i these these weren't the books i wanted to read i wanted to read french writers and british writers more than i wanted to read american writers and um what i found coming to this it was a reminder that you should always be open to these

things that actually referring to this as a cult book, as it so often is referred to, does it such a disservice. It absolutely, as John was saying before we came on air... There's a great thing here in the introduction that Irving Welch has written. There are real connections between this book and Trainspotting for Trainspotting fans. As Welch goes on to say, he's a huge fan of this book, but he just says,

the term cult, though it invests him with a counterculture cool that would continue to make him irresistible to future generations of youth, is ultimately marginising and insulting to a writer of Selby's stature. It's high time we all grew the fuck up and embraced and celebrated, without priggish qualification or snide caveat,

one of the great writers and the great works of American and Western literature. And I have to say that is when i was reading this i'm thinking i'm not thinking i'm thinking you know joyce and beckett and weirdly dickens you know i'm thinking this is this is a i mean rarely has anybody captured that sort of sense of of urban life i think yeah i think it's closer to journey to the end of the night that selena than it is to william burroughs just william burroughs happens to be american and do ben's a dream so yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah well they're not really the same kind of writer at all really they're just it's weird it's like people put joyce and beckett together just because joyce

beckett was joyce's secretary but actually the books they write are so complete and it is that sort of lazy kind of this This seems to me to be... I mean, you know, I think what Irving Welch says is right. Nobody needs to make special qualifications. But also, it's like a little reminder to oneself, you know. When you chose this book and you told us that you wanted us to read it, I instantly flashed on, like,

the table of Black Sparrow paperbacks paperback yeah american paperbacks in woodstones charing cross road or compendium the cow ski fante burrows selby and actually it's to remind yourself that you shouldn't one shouldn't be lazy those are four really different writers who have certain things in common, I can see that. Also, I think if I'd read this when I was, again, a different experience, but I think if I'd read this when I was 17, I actually think I wouldn't have liked it, I don't know what I'd have made of it. But coming to it in my late 40s,

I just thought it was out of this world. Those two pages you were talking about that he took, I think, years to get right. Literally years to get right. It was worth it because they're perfect. They are actually perfect. You read them and they diminish and they disappear. I think maybe we should say a little bit because there's quite a lot to say about him and his life, but there's also quite a lot to say about that this is not... It's perhaps important to say this is not a straightforward novel. It could almost be a collection of stories.

Well, is it? Yeah. A collection of stories. I'm going to say, do you think, is this a novel? Yeah, I do think it is a novel, although The Queen is Dead and Trial, Our Love were both published as short stories independently. Trial à l'Art was... What did I write down? Yeah, it was done for obscenity in a trial in 1961. So before this book was a novel,

that as a short story had already got him into trouble. So, yeah, I do feel that it is a novel, definitely. Yeah, but it's a novel of... I mean, there are recurring characters, right? And as a recurring setting. Alex the Greek and the sort of the place where the hoodlums who hang out in the first story. But it does seem to revolve.

I mean, I guess in a way you'd say it's a novel of place. What holds it together is the place itself. Yeah, that's a good's a it's a novel of of place what holds it together is is the place itself and that and that that's but it's it's a novel of desperation as well isn't the characters are desperate yeah yeah it's also somebody says in the in the in there's a great documentary uh about selby um somebody says in that documentary it's a book about the things that rush into the vacuum left by when when love has disappeared that's very good you know that's what those that in fact it probably selby himself he says that you know that that's what so what holds it together as a novel is approaching that same kind of vacuum from different angles yeah that kind of hopelessness yeah is that what you um

resonated with you as a teenager was it the hopelessness and the desperation i think it was the honesty i think it was the brutal i think i could feel uh because at the same time or during that same summer the summer of me turning 16 i was also um there was another book psycho american psycho as well yeah there you go now here we have two books both brutal both violent but i felt that the hubert selby jr and i was the one where you could feel the poverty and the hunger and the rawness you could feel the with each punch of the key, he meant everything. Whereas with American Psycho, I could feel,

this will shock you, this will shock you, this will make you squeamish. You've got this kind of sort of shock doing it to make you go, gasp. Like, you know, girls will gasp in libraries wearing cardigans and glasses.

And whereas Hubert Selber Jr., you can tell he's self-taught. He left school at 15. So he's got that sort of raw hunger, something to say, and this kind of brutal, tight writing, and I really like that. you can tell he's self-taught he left school at 15 so he's got that sort of raw hunger something to say and this kind of brutal tight real writing and i really i really like that so he hasn't been kind of shaped by a university telling telling him how to write or what's good or what's bad it's come very much from his belly and i think he can feel that he had a real mission yeah he's

great i mean he one of the great all-time lines i love is i started writing because i did not want to die having done nothing with my life. To be honest, that is a pretty good reason. Even though he says he didn't know how to go about it and how to do it, he says he just used to write letters to people. That's how he started. That's how he taught himself. Yeah, all he had was the alphabet, but that was a place to start.

The lovely thing he says, I realise that for everything for was the alphabet, but that was a place to start. Yeah. The lovely thing he says, I realise that for everything for me is in the story, the people, but I had to do more than just tell a story, you know. It's like, no master storyteller epithet for... Sorry, it's another one of our... It's a running joke for us, the phrase master storyteller. If you want to hear a great story, this isn't this good. If you want to hear a great story, go to any candy store in New York City or pool room or street corner and you'll hear stories that will knock your socks off. But I had to do more than that.

I was aware that we all have a million stories. So why was a particular one in my mind? It seemed to me simple enough. That was the one I was supposed to write. I realized that for me, I had to understand the essence of the story given me to write. And for me, that meant to get to the heart of the matter the true dynamic and from that essence create a work of art so already you've got a guy who isn't just telling tales from you know brooklyn as a sort of an amusement he almost has a messianic belief that there's this this is his

book and to be honest this is his book he is known for one for one book and i don't is that true you know requiem for a dream is a is a famous book i these the voice is the thing i think with him maybe you know the voice of you i i dipped into like i had i got a copy of the demon because which is like 75 76 the demon which was the comedian andy kaufman's favorite book right i love i mean i'm a big andy kaufman fan both the in both the idea of andy kaufman and the actual making me laugh but uh uh but but you know that's a really dark that is a really dark again like so many of the authors we do on Backlisted, I'm fired up now to read more. I really like you, Andy.

I guess I kind of gave it a slightly... It was one of those books I felt I knew about. It has such a sort of iconic place in 20th century. I kind of figured I knew what it was about. But that is the genius, isn't it, of great books? How old was he when he wrote it? How does it fit into his own writing? Well, I'll just say a bit about

him now. So, Hubert Selby, born July the 23rd, 1928, dies 2004. He's born in Brooklyn. He's the son of a merchant seaman. His nickname was Cubby for two reasons, partly because he was a lifelong

fan of the Chicago Cubs and partly because he considered Huber a sissy name. He didn't want to be in the neighborhood with guys, yeah, it's Huber. So he dropped out of school at the age of 15 and joined the Merchant Marines. In 1947, while at sea, he was diagnosed with advanced TB, which he caught from the cattle who were being shipped on the boat.

He was in hospital for the next four years. Surgeons removed some of his ribs. He nearly died several times. He was given experimental drugs treatments. Then he was given morphine. And then he was given heroin, to which he became addicted. That's his path to drug addiction, right? Yes, it's not, yeah.

And so he's writing, as we've been talking about, the stories that make up Last Exit to Brooklyn. Last Exit to Brooklyn is published in 1964 and is a sensation in America. So the book is published in the UK in 1967. It's prosecuted for obscenity, very famous obscenity trial, one of two famous obscenity trials in the UK in the

1960s, the other being Lady Chatterley's Lover and it was eventually passed for publication and I'm not sure if it was widely read here but it was available here after that publication and anyway, so in also in 67 Hubert Selby moves from Brooklyn to LA.

Is it worth saying that the obscenity trial who performed in its favour, Frank John Mortimer, Anthony Burgess, who we mentioned earlier, I mean, Robert Maxwell. Amazing, the publisher. But it was a kind of a very light The Chatterley Trial, only a few years later.

I mean, well, exactly three years later. And it was published by Boyers & Calder. Yeah, and Boyers & Calder published it knowing that it would be problematic. I think partly because they loved the book and partly because they felt, well, we have to see through the Lady Chatterley process. So Selby goes to jail for a couple of years in the late 60s

and he kicks drugs while in jail. And then he gets a job teaching creative writing at the University of Southern California, which he does right up until the end of his life. He would come in with his oxygen tank. One of his students said that the best thing that selby used to say to them was she said i sent this story out uh cubby to be read and it got rejected and he said he'd always say the same thing he'd always say fuck them they're one person that's great

so he wrote six novels a book of short stories last Last Exit to Brooklyn, The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree, Waiting Period, Song of the Silent Snow is the short story. And so he dies in 2004. And the last ten years of his life, he's out on the road with his oxygen tank in Henry Rowlands' van. Yeah, they were mates, weren't they? Yeah, yeah, Henry Rollins.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's amazing. You know, it's weird, isn't it? I didn't really think about that until I realised that he only died that late. But, I mean, you could have gone to see it. I saw exactly the same thing. Did you ever see him, Selina?

No, no, no, I didn't. I didn't. When did the film come out? 1989. What did you think of the film? Did you like the film? Yeah, I saw it. When did the film come out? 1989. What did you think of the film? Did you like the film? Yeah, I saw it in Nottingham as a student. I went to see a late night showing of it.

And I really remember walking home afterwards and being absolutely terrified. I really think Jennifer Jason Leigh's Tra La La is the Tra La La I was seeing in my head when I was reading it. A kind of brassy blonde, kind of Italian. Yeah, maybe Polish but yeah, kind of It's interesting the way they have to sort of make

the strike, they have to frame it's interesting when they have to make a story out of the you don't get that sense of the structure in the book really, I don't think as I say, the characters move in and out of each other's stories but

it's I think that's one of the things that makes it so remarkable there are bits the last bit Land's End you really it's a coda as he calls it and there's lots of bits

life on a project but it's the same sensibility. But he changes his language. I mean, he famously does this brilliant thing where he makes words. He kind of makes the dialogue. When you're reading it, I mean, maybe we'll get Céline to read another bit in a moment, he kind of contracts words and spells things phonetically.

He rolls them together, doesn't he? He rolls them together in a way that sort of works. But, I mean, the thing is, he also just is able to produce sentences like this, which is as good as anything written in the 20th century. This is when Harry, the guy who is the... What did you describe it on the blurb? Harry was coming to terms with...

Basically coming to terms with the fact that he wanted to suck cock. No real major spoiler alert here. And indeed that's but listen to this sentence. It's just great. And Harry's been beaten up by the guys from the Greeks which is the cafe where

the action in a lot of the stories revolves. This sentence. The moon neither noticed nor ignored Harry as he lay at the foot of the stories that revolves this sentence the moon neither noticed nor ignored harry as he lay at the foot of the billboard but continued on its unalterable journey the guys washed up in the greeks drying their hands with toilet paper and tossing the wet wads at each other laughing it was the first real kick since blowing up the trucks the first good rumble since they dumped that doggie they sprawled at the counter and at the tables and ordered coffee, and that's how it ends.

Yeah. Mid-sentence. It's just... Amazing, isn't it? Straight up great writing. Do you know what the last thing Hubert Selby wrote was four days before his death? Was it,

Dear Selina, I'm sorry we've never met. It was. I have it here. There's the clip now. You are. No, he wrote on a piece of paper, underlined, list of indignities. Birth.

Death. That was it. Brilliant. Isn't it brilliant? Fantastic. Matthew, before I ask you for your tenuous link, did you read this as a teenager? I think I read it when I was a student. When I left college, I had a second-hand bookstore, think I read it when I was a student when I left college I had a second hand book store

and I started it with selling my own books and I went around jungle sales and put them up and Last Exit Booking was one of those books you knew if you picked up at a jungle sale you'd sell it the next week straight away so I remember it there, it was a book that passed through my hands very quickly

Do you have a tenuous link between Yeah so I've got a tenuous link, but it's not that tenuous. But I just think it's kind of worth mentioning, because I think it's funny, which is, obviously, The Queen Is Dead was borrowed by Morrissey for the name of a Smiths album. And what's kind of wonderful about that, I think, is that the Smiths album is a kind of, you know,

a call for republicanism and death of the queen but morrissey being morrissey has picked the title of this hubert selby chapter which is about a transvestite prostitute and that's very morrissey to do it is it's a little play in there very kind of and it's very funny you've got to remember the thing about Morrissey in that era particularly you know it's the same Morrissey who'd written a biography of the New York Dolls and the same Morrissey who'd put Joe D'Alessandro on the cover of the first

Smith's album from the Warhol films you know he has got a whole love, all these little things that Morrissey was a fan of these little pockets of things and including that kind of New York City sleaze. So there's one final Morrissey, a fan of these little pockets of things and including that kind of New York City sleaze There's one final Smith sing which I think

is quite good which is How Soon Is Now which is the lines from How Soon Is Now which are I am the sun and air of nothing in particular which is a corruption of George Eliot so in Middlemarch there's a sentence that reads to be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer,

an inevitable heir to nothing in particular. He's just stolen that and rephrased it. And that's kind of fantastic. And I just love that. Genius steals. Yeah. Yes. Talent borrows, genius steals.

It's, I mean, you know, again, reading it, you said, Selina, and we might get Selina to read a little bit more. Yeah, definitely, please. If you're up again, reading it, you said, Selina, and we might get Selina to read a little bit more. Yeah, definitely, please. If you're up for that. Yeah, sure. But you said that that thing about it being amazing, that it could have been written, that anybody could have written so directly and with such,

I mean, with such brilliance about things that weren't normally written about. I mean, it makes Lady Chatterley's lover look pretty tame. Yeah, it really does. Yeah, the thought of reading this... In 1965 or 64 is pretty mind-blowing, isn't it? I mean... It definitely whet my appetite for...

I went hunting after this book when I was 15, 16, for more books. I wanted more books where there was this kind of really gritty, like, brutal kind of honesty, this kind of... Yeah. And, you know, sex and hedonism in books. I'd never... Yeah, I think I... It took ages for me to read women.

I think for those teenage years, I'd pretty much just read men, like I said, Journey to the End of the Night and books like that. It took me ages to realise that there were women that might write like that. Would you recommend... I've got... It says in the back of the Night and books like that. It took me ages to realise that there were women that might write like that. Would you recommend... I've got... It says in the back of the year, reading dangerously, you know, books I still intend to read. I have a little appendix of books I still intend to read.

And Journey to the End of the Night is on there. I have a copy that I've owned for 25 years sitting on it. Should I read it? Yeah, it's good, it's good. It's really good. Yeah, it kind of tumbles like this does. But it's really good it's yeah it's it's it kind of tumbles like this does it's got that but it's uh but it's different it's yeah it's related it's like a brother to it a brother to last I'd say did you did you Selena did you find coming back to this what what did it feel like

not having read it for quite a long time oh it felt like it felt like an old friend it was like and also it kind of reminded me of being because it was it would have been this kind of it was my birthday last saturday so it would have been this kind of time of year thank you and so kind of june and and kind of birthday time and yeah and so i was i kind of was taken back to the time when i first read it which kind of reminded me and I said also as well I think I said this at the beginning I think I must have been really quite heavily influenced in a lot of my short stories and

poetry and that kind of rant style that I write in where the page just fills up sometimes I switch the internet off and I've got quite a collection of typewriters and I like to write with a typewriter because you don't have any spell check and you can't change anything and there's no word telling you you're spelling something wrong

and I just have to bang it out and there's no interference, there's no flashing thing in the corner telling me I've got a tweet, do you know what I mean? and I really like just writing with typewriters and a lot of my typewritten poems and little short stories are written in that kind of no punctuation because I can't be bothered to stop

just keep all the mistakes in and I think I'm being Hubert Selby Jr that's what I'm trying to say do you want to read a little bit more? yeah I will, I tell you what I'm going to read a bit from this trial and error chapter but I'm not going to go right to the end because I think the last

150 words of the trial and error chapter are probably the most 150 words of the Trinidad chapter are probably the most beautiful, but also the most... Shocking. Shocking, and also the most pornographic, and also just something you need to read in your own head. Yeah, brilliant. Because I just think we all see a scene a different way.

We've all got our own theatre in our own heads. That's what's beautiful about books. We've all got our own theatre in our own heads. So I'm not beautiful about books. We've all got our own theatre in our own heads. So I'm not going to take you all the way to the end. I'm just going to start. So Tra La La is feeling great and she's just got a new dress and she's on her destructive thing. She goes into a local pub, bar, place.

When are we going to come in? Okay, we'll start here. So I do, I kind of picture her as a kind of yeah kind of like the jennifer jason lee character kind of blonde and and brassy i really do but um you might picture differently but she stood for just a second in the doorway looking round then walked to the rear where waterman annie ruthie and a seaman were sitting she stood beside the seaman leaned in front of him and smiled at annie and ruthie then ordered a drink the bartender looked her and asked if she had any money she told him it was none of his goddamn business my friend here is going to pay for it won't you honey the

seaman laughed and pushed the bill forward and she got her drink and sneered at the ignorant son of a bitch bartender the rotten scumbag and annie pulled her aside and sneered at the ignorant son of a bitch bartender, the rotten scumbag. And Annie pulled her aside and told her if she tried cutting her throat, she'd dump her guts on the floor. Mean Ruthie's going to leave as soon as Jack's friend comes and if you screw it up, you'll be a sorry son of a bitch. Tra la la yanked her arm away and went back to the bar and leaned against the semen and rubbed her tits against his arm. He laughed and told her to drink up.

Ruthie told Annie, you better not bother with her. Fred will be here soon and we'll go. And they talked with Jack and Tra-la-la leaned over and interrupted their conversation and snarled at Annie, hoping she burns like hell when Jack left with her. And Jack laughed at everything and pounded the bar and bought drinks. And Tra-la-la smiled and drank. And the jukebox blared hillbilly songs and an occasional blues song. And the red and blue neon lights around the mirror behind the bar sputtered and winked and the soldiers and the seamen and the

whores in the booze all hanging on the bar yelled and laughed and tra la la lifted her drink and said chug-a-lug and banged her glass on the bar and she rubbed her tits against jack's arm and he looked at her wondering how many blackheads she had on her face and if that large pimple on her cheek would burst and ooze and he said something to Annie, then roared and slapped her leg and Annie smiled and wrote Tra La La off. And the cash register ka-changed and the smoke just hung and Fred came and joined the party and Tra La La yelled for another drink and asked Fred how he liked her tits and he poked them with a finger

and he said, I guess they're real. And Jack pounded the bar and laughed and Annie cursed and Tra La La and Walter get them to leave and tra-la-la. And while to get them to leave, and they said, let's stay for a while. We're having fun. And Fred winked. And someone wrapped a table and roared. And a glass fell to the floor in the smoke.

And when it reached to the door and tra-la-la opened, Jack's fly and smiled. And he closed it five, six, seven times, laughing. And stared at the pimple. And the lights blinked. And the cash register crooned. Ka-chang, ka-chang. And tra-la-la told Jack she had big tits. and he pounded the bar and laughed, and Fred winked and laughed, and Ruthie and Annie wanted to leave before something screwed up their deal, and wondered how much money they had, and hated to see them spending on Tra-la-la, and Tra-la-la gulped

her drinks and yelled for more, and Fred and Jack laughed and winked and pounded the bar, and another glass fell to the floor, and someone bemoaned the loss of a beer and two hands fought their way up a skirt under a table and she blew smoke in their faces and someone passed out his head fell on the table and a beer was grabbed before it fell and trial i glowed she had it made and she'd shove it up annie's ass or anybody else's and she gulped another drink and it spilled down her chin and she hung on to jack's neck and rubbed her chest against his cheek and he reached up and turned them like knobs and roared and tralala smiled and oh she had it made now piss on all those motherfuckers and someone walked a mile for a smile and someone pulled the drunk out of the booth and dropped him out the back door and tralala pulled her sweater up

bounced her tits on the palms of her hands and grinned and grinned and grinned. Utter genius. You know, it makes you think that it would be you know, you realise the rhythm in the writing is just remarkable. You don't really get that on the tape. Thank you, Selina. There's just nowhere to go after that. I'm sorry.

Thank you, Selina. Thank you for asking me to come. Thank you, Matthew, as always. Thank you, Selina. Thank you for asking me to come. Thank you, Matthew, as always. Thank you, Matt, our producer. And thanks again to Unbound. You can get in touch with us on Twitter at BacklistedPod, on Facebook, facebook.com forward slash BacklistedPod, and on our page on the Unbound site at unbound.co.uk forward slash Backlisted.

Thanks for listening. We'll be back with another show in a fortnight. Can I tell you one pop fact before we go? The word beer, apparently the word beer appears 129 times. I think it probably appears more than that, but someone said that. So if you do read the book, count how many times beer. Have a beer every time. Have a beer every time he mentions beer.

That's great thank you you can choose to listen to backlisted with or without adverts if you prefer to listen to it without adverts you can join us on our patreon at patreon.com forward slash backlisted where you also get bonus content of two episodes of Locklisted, the podcast where we talk about the books and films and music that we've been listening to over the last couple of weeks.