Today in Labor History April 26, 2004: Author Hubert Selby died. He wrote “Last Exit to Brooklyn” and “Requiem for a Dream.” His first novel, “The Queen is Dead,” was banned in Italy and prosecuted for #obscenity in the U.K. Allan Ginsberg thought that Last Exit would “explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America and still be eagerly read in a hundred years.” Selby dropped out of high school to work on the docks of Brooklyn, before becoming a merchant seaman in 1947. However, he caught tuberculosis from the cows on board the ship. He was in and out of hospitals for the next three years. Doctors told him he was going to die. But several surgeries and experimental drugs saved his life. Too sick to do physical labor, he tried writing to earn a living.

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