lastExitToBrooklyn

[Image source: http://art-nerd.com/newyork/sunset-park/ ]

Harry took a drag of his cigarette, blew the smoke in Wilsons direction, dropped the butt on the floor and squashed it under his shoe. What we do at the union meetings is none of your business unless we want ta tellya about it. O, I know that Harry, I certainly didnt mean to imply otherwise. All I am trying to say is that this organisation, like your union, is like any other organisation in that it is a team and everyone connected with the organisation from the President to the elevator operators are a member of that team and we all have to pull together. Everyones job is equally important. The Presidents job is no more important than yours in that if you dont co-operate, just as he must co-operate, we can not get the job done. That is what I am trying to say. We all have to get behind the wheel, just like in the union. Now, we have a job that must be done and it must be done now. This new man is the only man available to do it at this time. That is the only reason he is doing it. We certainly had no intention of being instrumental in asking anyone to do anything that might even be considered a breach of union rules, but the job has to be done -- look, this guys a new man and aint cuttin no stainless so just stop the shit. If ya put him back on the job I'll call the whole goddamn plant out, Harrys face becoming redder, his eyes glaring, ya get that? I'll stand by that fuckin bench all day if I have ta and if ya try to putim back on that job I swear to krist the whole fuckin plantll be out on the street in two fuckin seconds and you and no ballbreakin fuck in the jointll stop me. Ya getit? If ya want a strike I'll giveya one.   (Hubert Selby Jr., Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964), pp. 98-99)

Even in this quiet-ish extract, we can see that Harry's verbs are characterized by constant effort grading into aggression and threat. To live on the streets of 1950s Brooklyn means, in the minds of the characters, to assert and often to execute violence on others. (The bosses' "shit" is comically different.)

I'm really pleased to have finally read Last Exit to Brooklyn. (I did so, at first, with justified trepidation; it's a ferocious book, not suitable reading for bedtime, or at mealtimes, or while waiting for a phone call.) It connects with a number of other books and authors that are important to me, for instance Zola's L'Assommoir, Frank Norris, and La Vida, Oscar Lewis' 1967 oral history of Puerto Rican and New York poverty. So in short I'm coming at it from the perspective of naturalism rather than modernism, and from my own fleeting contacts with the poor, troubled and disadvantaged. So I've picked quotations in this post to give some idea of the range of Brooklyn registers that Selby finds ways to represent.

VINNIE YELLED AGAIN TA GET THE KID DRESSED SO HE COULD TAKEIM FOR A HAIRCUT AND MARY SAID HE DONT NEED ONE. MEEEEEE, WHAT A FUCKIN JERK. THE KIDS HAIRS DOWN TA HISZASS AND SHE SAYS HE DONT NEED NO HAIRCUT. YEAH. I SAY. I SAY. IT LOOKS NICE. I LIKE IT. HE AINT SUPPOSEDTA LOOK LIKE A GURL. WHO SEZ, EH? WHO SEZ. AND ANYWAY HE DONT LOOK LIKE NO GURL. HE LOOKS CUTE. VINNIE SLAPPED HIS HEAD AND GROANED. MEEEEEE, HE LOOKS CUTE. WHAT KINDA CUTE WITH ALL DOZE CURLS. WHATSAMATTA WITH CURLS, EH? WHATSAMATTA? DIDNT YA BRODDA AUGIES KID HAVE CURLS AND DIDNT ROSIE MAKE IT STAY LONG, EH? EH? SO WHAT THE FUCK YAYELLIN ABOUT? YEAH. YEAH. AND YA SEE HOW CREEPY THE KID IS. LONG HAIR MAKES A KID CREEPY. THATS WHAT IT DOES. GODFABID MY KID GROWS UP LIKE THAT. ID GIVEM A SHOT IN THE HEAD. joey peeked at them from his room. WHO YA GONNA GIVE A SHOT IN THE HEAD, EH? WHO? WHATTAYAMEAN WHO? ILL GIVEYA ONE TOO. YA THINK SO, EH? YEAH. GOAHEAD. GOAHEAD. ILL SPLIT YA FUCKIN SKULL.  (pp. 203-204)

And yes, this scene soon descends into violence. For all that, Vinnie's and Mary's marriage is almost a comedy compared to the dark things that Vinnie engaged in before his marriage. He hasn't consciously changed, he's just older, so the fountainhead of rage, lust and viciousness pumps a bit less furiously. 

But perhaps that doesn't quite say it right. It doesn't express the emptiness of the endless drugs, booze and kicks. Most terrifyingly and pitifully this is portrayed through the self-destruct journey of Tralala, a robber-prostitute burning up with hate and frustration, unable to comprehend love or kindness or any kind of fellowship, driven only by a meaningless belief in being the queen of the street. (And ending as the desecrated body of the novel's most shocking scene.) As with punks like Vinnie, street status is everything to Tralala. This passage is from when her downward trajectory is just beginning to accelerate.

A CPO came up to her and asked her if she wanted a drink and she damn near spit in his face, but just mumbled as she looked at the clock and said shit. Yeah, yeah, lets go. She gulped down her drink and they left. Her mind was still such a fury of screechings (and that sonofabitch gives me nothin but a fuckin letter) that she just lay in bed staring at the ceiling and ignored the sailor as he screwed her and when he finally rolled off for the last time and fell asleep she continued staring and cursing for hours before falling asleep. The next afternoon she demanded that he giver some money and he laughed. She tried to hit him but he grabbed her arm, slapped her across the face and told her she was out of her mind. He laughed and told her to take it easy. He had a few days leave and he had enough money for both of them. They could have a good time. She cursed him and spit and he told her to grab her gear and shove off. She stopped in a cafeteria and went to the ladies room and threw some water on her face and bought a cup of coffee and a bun. She left and went back to the same bar. It was not very crowded being filled mostly with servicemen trying to drink away hangovers, and she sat and sipped a few drinks until the bar started filling. She tried looking for a liveone, but after an hour or so, and a few drinks, she ignored everyone and waited. A couple of sailors asked her if she wanted a drink and she said whatthefuck and left with them. They roamed around for hours drinking and then she went to a room with two of them and they gave her a few bucks in the morning so she stayed with them for a few days, 2 or 3, staying drunk most of the time and going back to the room now and then with them and their friends. (pp. 77-78)

Nor are the hip queers, like Georgette, free from the same desperation, a compulsive but unconscious and never satisfied search for peace. But they are the only people we meet who try to shadow forth a semblance (it's not much more than a semblance) of love, culture, courtesy and civilisation. Their party with the rough trade is so drug-hazed that it's increasingly difficult for us (and Georgette) to keep track of the excessive action, locations, people and drug intake.

She was sleeping so Goldie lit a few candles and told her Sheila was turning a trick so they had to come down here and Im sure you dont mind honey, handing her some bennie, and told Rosie to make coffee. Rosie lit the small kerosene stove in the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. When it was ready she passed out paper cups of coffee then went back to the kitchen and made another pot, continuing to make pot after pot of coffee, coming inbetween to sit at Goldies feet. The guys slowly snapped out of the tea goof and soon the bennie got to their tongues too and everybody yakked. Goldie said she felt ever so much better. I guess I needed a good cry and she passed around the bennie again and they all popped bennie and sipped hot coffee and Goldie sat next to Malfie and asked him if he was enjoying himself, and he said yeah, Im havin a ball; and Goldie just floated along on a soft purple cloud, feeling luxurious and slightly smug: a handsome piece of trade beside her; wonderful girl friends; and a beautiful bennie connection in the corner drugstore where she could get a dozen 10 grain tablets for 50c.   (p. 36)

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Selby's novel doesn't sentimentalize any part of the brutal society he depicts; no gender, ethnic group, or age group (the children in the playground are nightmarish). But I think he's particularly insightful about the destructive harm of his era's macho ideals of manliness. (I wish I could say this was just history.) Perhaps he wrote so well about those wretched beliefs because he knew them, as he must have done, from within, or perhaps I particularly notice that aspect of the novel because I do too. 

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The early chapters of Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) are astonishingly prophetic of Last Exit in their violence, innovative rendering of speech, minimalism and hopelessness.