Amazing piece of literature from a totally unique American author

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	• The Demon Hubert Selby Jr. Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd, 2000 - 312 pages average customer review:based on 40 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Amazing piece of literature from a totally unique American author

This should be required reading for anyone interested in American Literature. Selby's style is so incredibly unique and the way he creates empathy for the wife of this man is an excellent example of minimalism. He says SO much utilizing an economy of words.

Read this book - And also read Selby's "Last Exit to Brooklyn" and "Requiem for a Dream."

HIGHLY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

Selby tries too hard

Selby is an incredible writer. This book is well written and has incredible description. It just drags on too long. You'll find yourself getting tired by the end of it. He has a demon and goes on a killing spree. Then more self loathing and description that goes on and on. Selby is one of the best writers to ever put ink to paper, but I enjoyed Last Exit to Brooklyn more than this. If you can wait and don't mind pages and pages of the same description, you'll enjoy it. The end is depressing and if you like a happy vibe, do not read.

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Interesting book

Unlike Last Exit to Brooklyn which is in your face and pounding your gut with every page, this book sneaks up on you. At first you think that someone goofed with the title, since it's just about a man who can go to any club, any dance hall and pick up a chick. For the first third of the book you think that it's just about a lady's man and a jerk.

But at a certain point it shifts, and the title becomes very appropriate as the protagonist suddenly stops channeling his energy into scoring. Since he's no longer engaging in societally normative conquests, you start to slowly understand what you've known all along, ie. that this is a book about a man without a conscience looking for the next big thrill.

After reading this book, you'll understand why people ignore the warning signs for serial killers and child molestors and swear that "he seemed like such a normal man" since really, sociopaths don't always act out and the few times they do, it's always easy to explain away their actions.

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Into that dark place again

I was immediately pulled into the story of the young intelligent Manhattanite and his dark habits. Selby again delivers a stream of powerful inner monologue that humanizes his character even as he seems to lose his humanity. The character's descent is incredibly convincing and you empathize with him at every stage of deterioration. It's a very absorbing story.

However, it isn't quite Last Exit to Brooklyn. It isn't perfect. In my opinion, the story went on too long. The last third was only needed to drive home the spiritual theme, which was better left implied.

That said, this is a powerful story and very enjoyable read. This isn't a portrait of a psychopath (one who lacks conscience). It's a portait of a man possessed.

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Very dissapointed

This book held my interest fairly well but the ending was cheap and dissapointing. It's prose is now dated and does not hold up to other authors writing in this similar vein.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

A major American author of a stature with William Burroughs and Joseph Heller.?Los Angeles Times

Harry White is a man haunted by a satyr's lust and an obsessive need for sin and retribution. The more Harry succeeds - a good marriage, a good corporate job - the more desperate he becomes, as a life of petty crime leads to fraud and murder and, eventually, to apocalyptic violence.

Author of the controversial cult classic, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby began as a writer of short fiction. He plunges the reader head-first into the densely realized worlds of his protagonists, in which the details of daily life rub shoulders with obsession and madness. Although fundamentally concerned with morality, Selby's own sense of humility prevents him from preaching. He offers instead a passionate empathy with the ordinary dreams and aspirations of his characters, a brilliant ear for the urban vernacular and for the voices of conscience and self-deceit that torment his characters.
"Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists ... to understand his work is to understand the anguish of America."?The New York Times Book Review

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