“There’s a sorrow and pain in everyone’s life, but every now and then there’s a ray of light that melts the loneliness in your heart and brings comfort like hot soup and a soft bed.” – Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream
Rays of Light in Sorrow: Why Christians Should Read Hubert Selby Jr.
In 1958, after a near death experience, Hubert Selby Jr. (known as Cubby among his friends) realized that if he didn’t start writing he’d regret his life. Recovering from drug addictions and physical complications that required one lung to be removed, Selby realized he was living on borrowed time. His prose reflected his intensity – with slashes used instead of apostrophes, random indents, entire paragraphs at times in all-capital letters. He didn’t have traditional chapters in his work. Selby wrote what he knew: the hardness of life, addiction, and poverty. Yet, this isn’t a voyeuristic sort of writing – it’s rather pastoral in nature, asking people to look at addicts and the least of these among us as people made in God’s image. Far ahead of its time in many ways, Selby’s story “The Queen is Dead” is about a transgender woman trying to find acceptance in her family and in the wrong relationships. It ends violently, thus displaying the brutality marginalized communities face.
Selby’s big break came later in life with the film adaption of Requiem for a Dream, which led to an Academy Award nomination and launched the career of Darren Aronofsky. While the subject matter is addiction, the underlying message of it is that chasing the American dream often leads to ruin. He wrote in the novel that “… to believe that getting stuff is the purpose and aim of life is madness.” Thus he both showed the hardship of addiction, but also the futility of living a self-centered life. In many ways, Selby sought to show his readers that we are all inches from oblivion and we need to have compassion for one another.
My first Selby book was The Willow Tree, a novel about a Holocaust survivor mentoring a teenager out of anger and revenge. The teenager, Bobby, was jumped by a gang and left his girlfriend disfigured. She was so full of grief about the way she looked that she chose to take her own life. Thus begins Bobby’s journey into seeking revenge, and Moishe’s journey into showing Bobby the power of forgiveness.
As a Christian in recovery, I’ve often had to tow the line between what is real and what is church appropriate. Selby’s work, inspired by his own recovery and experiences growing up in poverty, is full of Biblical allusions. The Willow Tree ends in a Psalm-like prayer when Bobby finally sees the emptiness of hatred. Last Exit to Brooklyn has Bible verses heading each chapter. Requiem for a Dream opens with a Psalm dedicated to Selby’s son. Yet none of what Selby has written can be read comfortably in a church setting, and that is precisely why every Christian should read his work.
Last Exit to Brooklyn was the subject of a landmark case about obscenity in the United Kingdom and was outright banned in Italy. It was also adapted into a film. This book, a loose stream-of-consciousness of connected stories, still hits hard. It is a brutal read, but it’s important. In Selby’s world, the only way to understand the plight of the poor and addicted is to be fully immersed into their hell. It is only through baptism into their pain and suffering that we begin to understand grace and love.
Jesus famously preached in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:3 that those who are “poor in spirit will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.” As a white suburbanite, I don’t entirely grasp the full meaning of until I find the willingness to journey with writers and preachers like Selby and see first-hand what it means to be spiritually destitute.
In Selby’s world the Kingdom of Heaven is for everyone, but it’s especially for the transgender sex worker who struggles to find acceptance in society. It’s for the young teenager struggling with his girlfriend’s suicide. It’s for the art student who has hopes, dreams, and idealistic aspirations, but gets hopelessly hooked on heroin instead. Once we realize that these people who are rejected in society belong to the heart of God, then we have the wisdom and strength to see his hand at work in their lives.
In my own twelve-step circles, I often quote Selby alongside Jesus. The Willow Tree was a foundational book for me for eventually forgiving people who did horrendous things to me. And in every twelve-step meeting, there’s a handful of people who talk about how Selby influenced their recovery – whether through his writing or the film adaptations of his work. There’s a quiet reverence for his spirit there, and I think that’s the way Cubby would’ve liked it.
It’s one thing, as Christians, to preach solidarity and care for the poor – but how can we stand in solidarity when we don’t have the courage to look at their lives as they are in reality? Selby continues to challenge me through his work to look at how God is continually at work in the people society considers to be helpless, and to look for those rays of light in everyday sorrow. It’s every Christian’s calling to do this, whether it’s through reading or volunteering at a soup kitchen. We have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Otherwise, we miss the chance to see God’s grace in the world in action. That is the summation of faith, and what the Sermon on the Mount pushes us all to do. Jesus invites us to see the stoned beggar, whether on the street corner or in Selby’s work, and to hear him gently say: “I’m with them. Please meet me there.”
That’s a calling I continue to wrestle with, and I’m grateful for writers, preachers, and prophets who have the bravery to speak truth. Without them, the church would be another social club – or another way to futilely chase the American dream.
