Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, my guest is a legendary American writer, Hubert Selby Jr.

From the time he published last exit to Brooklyn to his most recent book, Waiting Period, a new novel published

by Marion Boyers, available in America, but published in England. His work has been a nonstop

aggression, in a sense, against the American way when we speak of that way too complacently.

The voice is always the voice of the undertrodden, the powerless,

the person taking power in his mind.

It's an absolutely distinctive voice.

Unlike most American writers known for their voices, there is no real pleasure.

Ain't no pleasure in it in the voices of Selby. When we talk about voice, we usually start

talking about Huckleberry Finn, and we talk about all those funny locutions.

But from the very start, your voice is interested in a certain kind of antagonism

and a certain kind of jangling, fierce alarm clock-like quality.

And why is that?

And how did you know that from the beginning?

How I knew from the beginning, it's difficult to explain.

I started writing, so I wanted to do something before I died.

...