Hubert Selby Jr.(1928-2004)
- Writer
- Actor
American writer. He was born and brought up in New York City, the son
of Hubert and Adalin Selby. His father was a merchant seaman and former
coal-miner from Kentucky who had settled in the Red Hook district of
Brooklyn. Hubert Sr. returned to the merchant marine after the outbreak
of World War Two, where in 1944 Hubert Jr. followed him. He had
attended various New York state schools, including Peter Stuyvesant
High, before dropping out aged 15. In his third year at sea, Selby
contracted tuberculosis. Told he had only months to live, he was taken
off his ship, docked in Bremen, Germany, and transported back to
America. At the Marine Hospital, New York, he was treated with an
experimental drug, streptomycin, and underwent surgery, having 10 ribs
removed in order for surgeons to operate on his lungs (one of which had
collapsed). The streptomycin treatment saved him but left him with
acute pulmonary problems which persisted for the rest of his life. When
he left hospital after three years he was dependent on morphine;
however, the spell in hospital had also given him his first opportunity
to read seriously and he had determined to be a writer. He married for
the first time in 1949 but with no qualifications, no work experience
outside the forces and severe ill-health his job prospects were poor
and so he stayed at home to bring up his daughter while his wife worked
in a department store. During this period he made the acquaintance of
several writers, including Gilbert Sorrentino and Amiri Baraka, who
encouraged his literary efforts. During the 1950s he had a succession
of jobs - secretary, insurance analyst, freelance copywriter, gas
station attendant - whilst working on a collection of short stories
called "The Queen in Dead" based on the people he had met in bars near
the army base in Brooklyn. Several of these stories appeared in small
literary journals, including "Black Mountain Review", "New Directions"
and "The Provincetown Review". The decision of the latter in 1961 to
print his story "Tralala" (about the gang-rape and murder of a
prostitute) involved it in an obscenity trial: the editor was arrested
for selling pornographic literature to a minor. The case was later
dismissed on appeal. When the collection of loosely linked stories had
taken shape as "Last Exit to Brooklyn", Amiri Baraka suggested that Selby
contact Sterling Lord, Jack Kerouac's agent. The books was published by
Grove Press (who had also published works by William S. Burroughs) in 1964. Although
critical opinion was sharply divided, the book drew praise from Allen Ginsberg
as a work that would "still be eagerly read in a hundred years". When
the rights for the British edition were bought by Marion Boyars and
John Calder, the manuscript was submitted to the Director of Public
Prosecutions. His reply was unhelpful, and the book was published to
favourable reviews and sales of nearly 14,000 copies. Then the director
of Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford complained and although the DPP still
declined to act a private prosecution was initiated in July 1966 by Sir
Cyril Black, Conservative MP for Wimbledon, before Marlborough Street
Magistrates' Court. After a guilty verdict was returned, the public
prosecutor brought an action under Section 2 of the Obscene
Publications Act. At the trial, in London's Old Bailey court, witnesses
for the prosecution included the publisher Sir Basil Blackwell, and
witnesses for the defence the scholars 'Al Alvarez' (II) and
Professor Frank Kermode (who compared the book to Dickens). The jury
was entirely male, Judge Graham Rigers having directed that women
"might be embarrassed at having to read a book which dealt with
homosexuality, prostitution, drug-taking and sexual perversion". The
trial lasted 9 days and, although a guilty verdict was returned, in
August 1968 an appeal led by the lawyer and writer John Mortimer was finally
successful, the whole case representing a turning-point in British
censorship laws. By this point the book had sold 33,000 hardback copies
and 500,000 paperbacks in the US alone. Meanwhile, Selby's struggles
with dependency continued, and in 1967 he spent two months in jail for
possession of heroin. Shortly after this he managed to beat his
addiction by cold turkey. In 1969, his frail health no longer able to
withstand the severity of New York winters, he moved south to West
Hollywood, where he lived until his death. The subject-matter of his
books remained uncompromising: his second novel, "The Room" (1971),
dealt with the sadistic sexual fantasies of an unjustly imprisoned man,
plotting revenge on the two policemen who arrested him. "The Demon"
(1976) was about a man obsessed by brutal, loveless sex, and "Requiem
for a Dream" (1978) about drug addiction. The latter was written in 6
weeks after a near-fatal bout of pneumonia. As Selby got older, the
pace of his writing slowed: when in 1986 the collection of short
stories, "Song of the Silent Snow", was published, some dated back 20
years. He wrote two subsequent novels, "The Willow Tree" (1998) and
"The Waiting Period" (2001) as well as collaborating on a screen
adaptation of "Requiem for a Dream". At the time of his death he was
teaching creative writing part-time at the University of Southern
California.