Last Exit to Brooklyn [antikvár]

FOREWORD TO THE POST-TRIAL EDITION Last Exit to Brooklyn was first published in Great Britain on 24th January 1966. It had already been available in an American edition for over a year and had had exceptionally favourable reviews in the U.S.A. It had come to the notice of Marion Boyars who, with the enthusiastic approval of John Calder, negotiated the British rights and acquired it for publication by Calder and Boyars. They both felt that it was a book which a serious publisher could not afford to ignore. Because Last Exit to Brooklyn contains controversial material— many descriptions of violence, detailed descriptions of the activities of homosexuals, predse descriptions of the sexual act and of what is going on in the minds of the cWacters at such times—it was decided to submit the book to the Director of Public Prosecutions in advance, so that if objection was taken to the book, no bookseller would be involved. The Director's ofl&ce gave an inconclusive reply, which ended with the words: "If you find—as I am afraid you will—that this is a most unhelpful letter, it is not because I wish to be unhelpful, but because I get no help from the Acts." The book was accordingly published and received a highly favourable press which, wlule making it clear that this was not a suitable present for Aunt Edna, established the book as a possible masterpiece, certainly a remarkable first novel by a writer with a Zolaesque passion for truth and morality—not the morality that consists of not noticing or pretending not to notice the unpleasant side of life, but a morality that sees evil where it exists, seeks out the causes of that evil, and commits itself to eradicating those causes. Anthony Burgess said in The