His work has been trialed for Obscenity offences, has caused widespread outrage and offense, and his reportedly caused one reviewer to be physically sick: so why are the books of Hubert Selby Jr. re-published as Modern Classics for a new generation of readers? Georgina Holland describes her chilling reading of two of his best-known books as she journeys into the dark and disturbing mind of Hubert Selby Jr…
I came across Selby out of pure voyeuristic intrigue. I had heard that his books were something else: challenging, chilling, explicit, and provocative. What I hadn’t expected was the level of dark disturbia that goes into Selby’s authorial imagination. As the Guardian described it, reading Selby would be “a terrifying journey into the darkest corners of the psyche”*. A dark journey it was, but one that I couldn’t seem to stop.
I would describe reading Selby’s books as a sort of sadomasochistic experience: at points the scenes are so explicit, so chilling, so disturbing, that you can barely read the words; yet I would challenge any reader to put the book down or to tear their eyes away from the page. It all began with Requiem for a Dream (1978), one of his best-known novels that was adapted for the silver-screen in 2000. The plot is made up of two halves: on the one side there is the narration of main protagonist Harry, friend Tyrone, and lover Marion. The trio are slipping into a dark and dangerous lifestyle as what begins as a weekend habit soon evolves into a harrowing heroin addiction. This addiction will eventually tear the three apart and, without giving away too much of the plot, will have severe and crushing consequences for each. On the other hand there is the story of Harry’s mother, Sara, a lonely woman with two dangerous, conflicting, and little-understood addictions: food and diet pills. Requiem for a Dream is a story of addiction and the changes that it can make. As those with a basic grasp of addiction will know, in every case there is a moment when the addict will reach “rock bottom”. With opening chapters that were so saddening that I had to stop reading, I found myself closing the book, looking at the hundreds of pages left for me to read and wondering when will these characters hit their “rock bottom”?
Next I moved on to The Room (1971) – again a story of simple structure: the anonymous narrator is a criminal locked up in isolation. What follows is 225 pages of the mental ragings of man left to dwell for years, alone, on thoughts of justice, revenge, and torture. The novel was described by Selby as “the most disturbing book ever written”: a fitting depiction indeed for a book that contains scenes of abuse so graphic that I would compare the experience of reading to be as visually explicit as watching a horror film. But if the book is so disturbing, why not simply stop reading? There is something about the way that Selby writes, with unwavering honesty, that makes his books painfully hypnotic to read. Here is a man who dares to go into the darkest depths of the human mind.
His books penetrate the darkest underworld of our society: prostitution, gang warfare, addiction, mental trauma. His life as a painkiller and heroin addict clearly resonate in every fractured sentence of writing. His works have been trailed for Obscenity offences in Britain and have cause widespread outrage at their content; yet they are published as Modern Classics by publishing houses such as Penguin. Why? Because Selby’s writing is not about the author, the characters, or the troubling content, it is about the reader. In every book he aims to challenge and question our expectations as an audience. From content that is unflinchingly honest and blunt, to a complete flouting of grammar, spelling, and punctuation rules, every page comes as a shock to the system. It seems that Selby wants us to understand our power as readers: if we are able to imagine the graphic and gruesome scenes that are conjured up by Selby, are we not then as bad as the characters that he has devised? What I have discovered is this: Selby’s books are not for the faint-hearted. Once picked up, you will instantly regret turning the first page, but I challenge you to put them down once begun.
By Georgina Holland – Exeposé Online Books Editor
*quote taken from the Penguin Modern Classics edition of “The Room”
Featured image by Sylvia Plachy
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