The demon by has been aptly dubbed the original American Psycho. Whoever has read that 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis will still shudder remembering the incredible cruelty and horror of its descriptions.
Selby's The demon is the precursor of that story, first published in 1976.

The demon isn't half as scary or cruel as American Psycho. Another drawback is that it takes the novel a very long time to develop. Nothing much happens during the first 150 pages, to the extent that I was tempted to abandon the book, but it must be said that I had no idea what the book was about. Retrospectively, the long introduction seems appropriate to build up toward the horror of the latter part of the story.

The time frame of The demon is several decades. The readers sees the development of Harry White from his bachelor years through the maturing of his child, which obviously encompasses his honeymoon and marriage, and his lust and pursuit of other women around it. The novel really kicks off when Harry starts on an impulsive habit of buying plants to decorate the house, and a scene in which he ends up frantically stabbing a Dieffenbachia, a type of chamber pot plant, typical for that era, and a red flag signal moment in the novel.

The demon is psychologically much more subtle that American Psycho, through less extreme in its violence. Still, all ingredients of the later novel are already there. ( )

Wow... I was totally taken in and enjoyed the ride. The best Selby i have read so far.
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By far my favorite Hubert Selby Jr. book. His techniques with using language to heighten the reader's emotional experience worked extremely well in the novel. This is like the hardcore version of Death of a Salesman: not for the faint of heart. ( )

The only book worth a damn by Selby Jr? Seems like it. ( )

Hubert Selby, Jr., seems to me to be a less shitty version of Bret Easton Ellis. They both have the same focus on transgressive violence and emotive writing, but here, at least, Selby is far less hackish.

Selby's writing style is experimental, just different enough to catch your attention, but simple enough to prevent the narrative from slowing down. He replaces apostrophes with slashes (he/s instead of he's), and crams in long run-on paragraphs next to scattered lines
Just

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In order to keep the story flowing and get a raw look at a stream of consciousness.

Our Hero, one Harry White, starts off as a sex addict, who does so not out of a misguided sense of passion but out of a psychological need for release. After getting called out on his behavior, he shifts to a 'regular life', gets promotions and 'success' in his stiff-white collar job, a nice wife, and a family. He enjoys this 1950's sitcom existence only briefly before his inner demon haunts him again and forces him to commit more and more grandiose and violent acts.

Where Bret Easton Ellis has a more superficial focus on the problems of the 1980s and its Reaganist consumerism, Selby takes a more Calvinist spiritual dimension to the problems of spree killers and their psychotic evil, and how they infiltrate society.

A 'good' book, but I'm told Last Train to Brooklyn is better. I'll get to that when the library has it. ( )