As I type this post, I am watching It/ll Be Better Tomorrow, a documentary about the contemporary author Hubert Selby, Jr. Selby wrote novels such as Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream (which was adapted into one of my favorite movies).
Part of Selby’s story is very dark. He spent most of his life sick, on the verge of death at any moment, and addicted to heroin. He also lived in a sanitarium for a few years and was determined to be physically and mentally unfit to work.
But there’s also a brighter side to the story. Selby eventually got sober. After a near-death incident, Selby was worried that he would die with having accomplished nothing. He pondered what he could do. He had no skills. He had been a merchant marine, but that was no longer an option. His education stopped at the eighth grade. But he knew the alphabet, so he figured he’d try writing.
Selby’s style was unconventional. Drugs and sex were some of the milder themes in his books. He didn’t follow the established rules in regard to capitalization and punctuation. (The title of the documentary is a line from one of his books: It/ll be better tomorrow. He replaced apostrophes with backslashes). The dialog in his stories aren’t designated by he said or quotation marks. It flows with the rest of the story. Some may feel that this makes Selby’s stories difficult to read, and that’s fine; his stories aren’t for everyone. That’s not the point.
The point is that Selby’s style was his own. Few authors put such a stamp on their stories. You can look at Selby’s stories and know that they’re his own.
And this is the challenge we all face, no matter what we’re trying to do. How do we distinguish ourselves from the rest? How do we make ourselves instantly recognizable? How can we be the Hubert Selby, Jr. of our niche?
Selby’s story is both heartbreaking and inspiring. But most inspiring of all is this quote from Selby:
“Being an artist doesn’t take much, just everything you’ve got. Which means, of course, that as the process is giving you life, it is also giving you death. But it’s no big deal. They are one and the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it, I transcend all this gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission.”
RIP Hubert
