SOURCE: "The Art of Hubert Selby," in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. I, No. 2, Summer, 1981, pp. 335-46.

An early supporter and long-time friend of Selby's, Sorrentino is an American poet and experimental novelist highly regarded by critics for his innovative fiction that uses nontraditional structures to help convey its meaning. During the 1960s, Sorrentino wrote and served various editorial roles for the journal Kulchur, which, inspired by the Beats, promoted the work of writers breaking from the traditional academic forms of poetry and fiction. In the following essay, originally published in Kulchur in 1964, Sorrentino praises Selby's technical and artistic technique in Last Exit to Brooklyn.

What is so remarkable about Selby is that he makes us see all these people as real, e.g., what did John Dillinger read in the bathroom—? Jack The Ripper drinking sherry, perhaps: as against the more devastating manifestations of their "public...