Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists... to understand his work is to understand the anguish of America (New York Times Book Review )
Selby deploys street slang, common speech, argot and scatology to create a high poetic art... it seems to derive from the greatest American poetry--Whitman, Pound, Williams, and Olson (The Nation )
Selby brings a scorching light to a limited area of human existence, which most people know of but do not know (Newsweek )