The Fearless Voice of Hubert Selby Jr.

“I’ve never gotten a fellowship, I’ve never gotten a grant, I’ve never gotten anything.” —Hubert Selby Jr. 

The author of nine renowned works of fiction, Hubert Selby Jr. was noted for his gritty portrayals of addiction and urban despair. His books have influenced generations of authors, artists, and musicians. 

Selby’s Requiem for a Dream is widely regarded as one of the best novels ever written about substance abuse—and the tragic and captivating tale caught the eye of Darren Aronofsky, who directed the film adaptation in 2000. In this photo, Selby (right) poses with Aronofsky. After seeing the film at Cannes Film Festival, Selby burst into tears. “It was so moving,” he explained. “It is such an emotional film, so powerful.” 

Unflinching and unrelenting, Selby’s work brilliantly exposes the raw, grim, and disturbing aspects of humanity. In The Willow Tree, he captures the pain and hardship of twentieth-century urban life through the story of an extraordinary bond between an African-American teen on the hunt for revenge in the wake of tragedy and an old man who guides him toward redemption. Like many of Selby’s works, the dark tale is tempered by hope, and is ultimately a story of love, death, rage, and violence.

Selby’s profound understanding of salvation came from his own personal struggles with addiction. The month before he passed away in 2004, his doctors offered him morphine to help relieve the pain—but he refused. He wanted, he said, to retain his clarity. 

Other Ebooks Available by Hubert Selby Jr:

Song of the Silent Snow: Fifteen stories of love and despair, destiny and dumb luck, and the small tragedies and poignant victories of the unremarkable inhabitants of a heartless city 

Waiting Period: A blood-chilling excursion into the twisted mind of a serial killer

Requiem for a Dream: Tragic and captivating, Requiem for a Dream is one of Selby’s most powerful works of four people trapped—and ultimately destroyed—by their addictions

Last Exit to Brooklyn: Prostitutes, drunks, addicts, and johns desperately search for a moment of transcendence amidst the decay and brutality of New York City’s underbelly—though none have any real hope of escape

The Room: A viscerally affecting portrait of an incarcerated man who loses himself to dark fantasies of revenge

The Demon: A womanizer’s struggle for self-control spirals into crime, madness, and murder