SOURCE: "The Sin of Pride and Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn," in Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1969, pp. 35-42.

In the essay below, Peavy asserts that narcissistic pride, more than circumstance, leads the primary characters of Last Exit to Brooklyn to their tragic ends.

Hubert Selby, Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn has been attacked as immoral and even pornographic. After a series of trials in England, the book was officially suppressed. Last Exit to Brooklyn has also been banned in Italy, and has been the subject of controversy in the United States. The characters in Selby's stories are homosexuals, prostitutes, dope addicts, and hoodlums, and his plots illustrate the degenerate, depraved, and doomed existence they live.

Selby's realistic style is as objectionable to many readers as the actions he describes. Nevertheless, Selby is not a salacious or pornographic writer; he belongs to the tradition of...