little johnny jewel

hubert selby, jr. july 23, 1928 - april 26, 2004.

I picked up this much thumbed paperback copy of "Last Exit To Brooklyn" from a jumble sale sometime in the early to mid 70s. It was several years after the successful 1968 court appeal - following the guilty verdict returned when the book was tried by jury in 1966 under the Obscene Publications Act at the Old Bailey in London - and thankfully the copy was unexpurgated. Written between the late 1950s and early 1960s, and originally published by Grove Press in the US in 1964, this book was a revelation. A window onto cancer of the soul.

Despite the woefully histrionic film adaptation of 1989, it remains one of those truly great pieces of American writing capable of changing the way its reader looks out at the world forever.

The same could be said for this 1975 slab of creeping osmosis. Written by Tom Verlaine.

It's after 4:00 AM here in this shitty tower block and I can't get back to sleep, brothers and sisters. Oddly, the little clocks on my sidebar both seem to have disappeared. Who knows for sure ? Maybe they have decided to strip the code off the page and let me bleed out into the black. I have no idea any more what time it is in New York.

▼ TELEVISION: LITTLE JOHNNY JEWEL (PARTS 1 & 2) from "Little Johnny Jewel (Part 1) b/w Little Johnny Jewel (Part 2)" 45 (Ork) 1975 (US)

MARQUEE MOON REVISITED