Revenge in the guts

The story is that of a man seclusion deep in a dungeon. We do not know his identity or why he is detained. Its space is reduced to a dingy cell that has only furniture a mattress, a toilet seat and a washbasin surmounted by a mirror. It has no visual contact with the outside, except the hallway outside his door he saw through a small window. It is in this context that cramped and unhealthy vegetate all day, folded on itself, to pacing from one wall to the other, to inspect all angles and for hours the mirror, or just lying on his miserable pallet, forearm stuck to his eyes to protect themselves from artificial light that is never extinguished. And he thinks, because this is now the only occupation: think and think again. Thinking to twist in the meninges. And the novel is largely devoted to transcribe the words that flow from that activity of mind.

What are turned to these thoughts? Towards revenge. The prisoner is filled with fierce and secret hatred against the authorities, against those who, according to him, wrongfully arrested and unjustly put to the hole. He feels persecuted and wronged by the established order and considers himself a victim of the system. Carrying his wounded pride as a cross, he engages in an internal struggle to make plans consisting prove that the eyes of all the injustice he suffered, making his case an affair of state, and by charging his enemies the evil they have done to him. Thus it represents scenes, or rather overly rewarding fantasies, in which he goes into ultra-dominance position relative to its adversaries. He sees himself in court, for example, alone and without a lawyer, trying to plead his cause, speaking with an improbable skill, humiliating before the whole court and all the cameras of the country the two policemen who arrested him by asking them questions destabilizing, to which they can respond and which fill with laughter throughout the room. Or, exacerbated by a sadistic, he imagines a kennel owner, holding in his hands the same two policemen and pitting to transform them into dogs. It develops the most atrocious and most inhuman exercises are in fact of fair animals that occur before the startled eyes of their own families, all for the pleasure of seeing them suffer and feel the fruit of his jubilant revenge.

After reading this brief summary, no need to specify that the Jail is not a novel water-rosa. Rather, it is a torrent of mud and filth hurtling furiously strata of American literature blacker and authentic than ever. And worse, as Last Exit to Brooklyn, Selby's first novel, is that you can not help laughing at some passages that are beyond comprehension.

I did not read all the books in Selby, but I do not think too far in saying that it touches the height of obscenity, and it is difficult to go further. This is also why the author himself said that he probably would take several decades before they can read it. This means ...