The advent of Hubert Selby Jr. on the international literary scene in 1964 was dramatic and controversial. After charges of obscenity were filed against Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964) in Great Britain, Selby's sensational and innovative first novel became the subject of an intense debate in the House of Commons. The novel was subsequently banned in Italy. In fact, some of the material that appears in the novel inspired controversy in the United States even before the book was published by Grove Press. In 1960, after "Tralala"--which became part 4 of the novel--was published in The Provincetown Review, the editor of that little magazine was arrested for selling pornography to a minor. As Selby later told interviewer S. E. Gontarski, "it turned out the minor wasn't a minor; he was nineteen years old." Although a lower court found the editor guilty, the case was eventually thrown out. Word of Selby's manuscript...