User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
First published in 1978, seven years after the start of the War on Drugs, Requiem for a Dream tracks the course of four lives as they’re destroyed by addiction. The novel is written in the stream-of-consciousness mode, but far from the eloquent formalism of modernists like Woolf or the rambling spontaneity of the less talented Beat writers, Selby’s prose reads as frenetic, tense, and unsettling. His characters’ thoughts become increasingly repetitive and distorted as they succumb to opioid addiction. So, too, do the book’s environments become more and more deprived of hope as the narrative jerks forward toward its bleak end, in which the characters lose all control over their lives and are left at the mercy of a callous society. Selby wrote the novel after the stagflation and political corruption that characterized Nixon’s administration had thoroughly deflated the idealism of the ‘60s. Coated with cynicism, the narrative functions not just as a story of individual breakdown but also as a lament for a society in decline.
Rating: really liked it
MAN. That's some fucked up shit, right there. I have so much to say that I don't know where to begin. I've seen the movie, I knew what to expect - but I still feel a deep sadness, revulsion, and shock after finishing the book. It's just... traumatizing. Brilliant, but traumatizing.
I'll say now that if you're concerned about spoilers - just move on. I cannot avoid spoilers in this one... so continue reading if you want, but don't bitch if you get spoiled on the book or movie.
It's been years since I've seen the movie, but it stuck with me. There are some images & feelings the movie evoked in me that just stay with me. When I hear the title, or even just the word "Requiem", or the Kronos Quartet music, these images and feelings surface. I don't recall every moment of the movie, but the amount that stuck with me was enough to make this reading experience like re-watching it. After I finished, I did re-watch, and though there are differences (some of them major), mostly the adaptation sits right in the book's lap. Page 1, reading Harry steal his mom's TV to pawn it for dope money, it was like watching the movie in my head.
This is a rare situation, though, because I'm comparing the book to the movie, rather than the reverse. I try to go out of my way to avoid seeing adaptations prior to reading the book (if I can), but I saw this first when I was 18 and didn't know it was a book until over a decade later. The only other time I've done this was with Children of Men, a movie I really liked & a book I fucking hated. Clearly I didn't hate this, though. In fact, I kind of loved it. The movie was pretty damn accurate to the book, but didn't quite have the same depth. The book did a better job at portraying the inner thoughts of the characters - especially with Sara.
The book spends a lot more time showing the slow descent into desperation for these addicts. The movie kind of seems like a long PSA/worst-case-scenario cautionary tale. "Do drugs and this is how you could end up!" And, while that's valid to an extent, (and could also be said about the book), I think the movie almost loses sight of the fact addiction is a disease, not just a result of an action. This is made much clearer in the book, in my opinion. The movie touches on it briefly - a little scene where Harry and Marion are talking about Sara's TV habit, for instance, but for the most part it just shows the most dramatic and horrifying aspects and kind of doesn't have time for the everyday problems of addiction.
Side note here: There's a lot of stereotyping in the book - the Jewish mother figure, her Yenta friends, the late-70s black character, the uber-racist South, etc. There's a lot of it, and it's extreme. But it's necessary, I think. This is not a subtle book. It's an intense in-your-face-with-a-2x4 kind of book, so I think that if the characters weren't also shown in extremes, it would have felt inconsistent to me. The movie does away with much of that, and I feel like it also takes away some, maybe a lot, of the impact.
The movie also glosses over some of the non-addiction-based ugliness shown in the book. Sara's care is a big, big, big one to me. In the book it's... horrifying. HORRIFYING. The movie portrays the care she receives at the end in a not-very-patient-friendly kind of way... but it's still care. The doctor tries various things, the orderlies are firm almost to the point of being rough - but you can see they are trying to help her even if it seems cruel. This is a sanitization of what's portrayed in the book. Sara, confused, lost in her own starvation- and drug-induced haze, is put into a horrific situation, where every act of trying to force food into her is like rape. There's not only a lack of care, but a lack of human decency, kindness, and empathy in general. It's frightening and terrifying to think that some bureaucratic pencil-pusher can strip someone of their basic human dignity simply to avoid authority conflicts.
Another example is how Tyrone is treated in the south. Some of the tone remains in the movie, but again it's a much milder version. In the book, Tyrone and Harry are hated universally once they step foot below the Mason/Dixon line. They are treated cruelly, as sub-human, because they are addicts. But Tyrone gets it worse, because he's black. They are arrested for vagrancy. FUCKING. VAGRANCY. OMG. I saw this and my stomach clenched. It makes me so angry and literally sickens me. Arrest them because they have fucking HEROIN in the car. Or because they are clearly intoxicated. Or for suspected car theft (because the car wasn't theirs), or for driving without a license (because they don't have one) or fucking any number of reasons that aren't the most fucked up and discriminatory one ever. Arrest them and follow due process, and I can understand. But this is horrific hatred that should have ended long before this book was set. But... of course, that's not how the world works, unfortunately.
The movie shows almost none of that racism based brutality. There's a general tone of suspicion and dislike, and a cruelty in general, but it is not overt in the movie, and it isn't even close to the book depiction. The movie doesn't say what they are arrested for, just that they were recognized as addicts and the police were called. I actually am disappointed that the overt racism was taken out of the movie. There's a scene in the book where they stop for gas, and the attendant won't serve them, lies about being out of gas, and that the bathroom is out of order, and spits on them... for nothing more than because Tyrone is black and Harry is a "n***** lover". Harry begins to argue, but Tyrone just gets back in the car to leave because he knows, even though he's never experienced THIS kind of racism before, just how ugly it can get. His treatment in jail in the book is fucking disgusting, and the movie completely avoids the topic - making it look like it's just a cruelty towards addicts, not that it's racism.
The exception to the movie 'softening' is Marion's situation. The book hints at the "play time" she participates in. "With other girls" and "she didn't know what she'd be doing" and "the smell on her lips and fingers" is pretty much all that we get in the book. But the movie goes very visual and very pull-no-punches there. I was kind of surprised by this, because I expected the book to be grittier and uglier in every way - including Marion's willingness to sell herself for her addiction. But the movie portrayed that very accurately, just elaborating on that one scene.
Other differences are more subtle. For instance, a lot of scenes where Harry & Tyrone struggled to find dope were left out of the movie. There's a tiny mention of it, where their dealer is killed out of nowhere, but that's not in the book. So the fear, anger, and need that's present is out of place because it's never really shown that there's just shortage, and EVERYONE has been desperate for months. This is the catalyst for the end of the book that spurs the decision to try to go to Florida and get weight for their dope-security, but it just feels shunted into the movie awkwardly.
Another subtle change is that Marion and Harry don’t have sex in the movie, though in the book they do many times. It's a kind of juxtaposition of how she feels when selling sex for her habit compared to how she feels having sex with Harry. The lack of sex in the movie, I think, is a nod to that relationship - that it's more than just physical, and that they really do love each other but the addiction, their elephant in the room, overwhelms that connection and makes them resent each other.
In the book, there's no closure or reconciliation, not even acceptance, as shown in the movie. Harry doesn't call Marion from jail, or even think about her. He only thinks about his arm and his pain. The further they get from NY, the further she is from his mind. His concern and focus gets smaller and smaller the further he and Tyrone drive, until it's centered on his infection to the exclusion of all else.
Harry and Tyrone’s relationship in the book starts to splinter as well. They hold back money and dope from each other, their addiction taking precedence over their friendship. At the end of the book, Tyrone is... almost de-humanized, in a way. Not only because of his withdrawal causing him to suffer, but also due to the treatment he experiences in the southern jail, all of which he blames Harry for. If he'd not suggested this trip, if he'd not kept shooting into his infected arm... if he'd done this or that differently, Tyrone wouldn't be in this situation. In the movie, that resentment doesn't exist - they are friends till the end (or, Tyrone is Harry's friend. Harry is sick.) Tyrone's need is present, and painful, but his friendship and concern for Harry's life trumps that. The book... not so much.
In both versions, poor Sara is alone with her own pain and needs and delusions. Her struggles are the most closely matched between the book and movie. She is the character that I feel the most for, who breaks my heart the most. The book really shows her loneliness and sadness a lot more than the movie, BUT Ellen Burstyn does a great job filling a lot of those gaps - the scene with Harry when he calls her out for being on pills is gut-wrenching. With four words, you can feel a decade's worth of sadness there. "I'm old. I'm alone." It gives me chills. Ellen Burstyn just brings her to life and makes her real and so sad.
Book Sara doesn't quite have that same power. By which I mean that I feel a huge amount of empathy for her character, and sadness and rage at how her life spirals out of control, all for want of being wanted and having nobody to speak on her behalf or help her. But it's more of a generalized "If this happened to anyone, I would feel this way" feeling, rather than identification with HER specifically.
Both versions have unresolved endings - but in the movie it's interesting to note that they throw a little symbolism in there. All four characters curl into a fetal position at the end, and both women are smiling. Two women who have fallen so far down that their only concern is their addiction. Sara's had a complete break from reality, hallucinating a happy TV reunion with Harry, and that's all she's really ever wanted anyway. Marion is just content that she's got a regular supply of dope, if she's willing to earn it. That’s security to her, and nothing else matters. Both men are crying, thinking about the dreams they've lost. Tyrone’s is to be safe and secure with a caring, supportive woman (his mother); and Harry’s thinking about how things have gone so bad with Marion.
There's really nothing to hope for with any of them. Harry has a habit of drowning his every feeling in heroin, and that won’t get easier after losing his arm, his friend, his girlfriend, and his mother. If he actually were to get treatment, he might make it - but where he is, I don't see anyone making an effort for him. Same with Tyrone, who has lost his friend, his freedom, his dignity, etc. With treatment, he might be OK, but if they just release him at the end of his sentence, he'd go right back to using. Marion, who has lost just about everything as well, her life now consists of selling sex to make a score to last her until the next one. Even if she were to have someone step in and try to help her, it wouldn't do any good. She's intelligent, manipulative, and she wants to feel good, not hurt mentally and physically. She doesn't have coping mechanisms, so I don't see her breaking the cycle either. Sara makes me the saddest, because Harry recognized what was happening, and could have stopped it if he tried, but instead he abandoned her because it was easier.
I want to talk about the writing style, and how I kept comparing it to the cinematography. I am impressed with how similar they feel. Darren Aronofsky truly captured the the feel.
But the writing style is messy. It worked because the BOOK is messy. It's spastic, urgent, shifting, and hazy, and it really FEELS that way. Run-on sentences abound (I think the longest I saw was 4 pages long), but they are put to good use. This was a scene where Harry is waiting for Marion to come home after he 'suggests' that Marion ask her shrink for money for dope. (In the book it's $300, not $2000. He sells her for so much less in the book. He goes along with her trips to Big Tim in the book too - that's not just a "Harry's gone, what do I do now??" desperation as it is in the movie.) He knows what's going, and he feels sick about it, but not enough to change or care. After all, she agreed to it - it's on her now too, right? After that he just distances himself from her scoring method – as long as they have a score at all. Anyway. These pages depict his feelings about what he's sent her out to do, why, how he's coping with it (or not), cycling through all of these emotions that he doesn't want to feel, but not wanting to get high because of their limited and insecure supply, but not able to stop... It's a perfect microcosm of his addiction in a long stream of consciousness that just works. It's not pretty - punctuation use is spotty at best, misspellings abound in a kind of patois that supports the stereotyping (ex: Christ is spelled 'krist'), capitalization is iffy, and it's just a mess of chaos... like the lives we're reading about. And it just worked for me.
This style really just dragged me along for the ride and I couldn’t look away. I read about 70% in one sitting yesterday. The way the dialogue was intermixed with the action, and I never knew really who was speaking, or whether it was thought, or hallucination, or dream, or reality only added to the texture. It almost didn't matter, because in the end, their dreams were their reality - more real to them than their reality was, anyway, and somehow the reader gets that.
I'm almost afraid to read Selby's other books now. I feel like writing styles like this should be used sparingly, consciously, and intentionally. They should be used to enhance and transform a particular story into an experience for the reader. This style, which I thought worked perfectly with this story, did that for me. So, if he just writes like this I'd be disappointed, because I'd feel like this wasn't an intentional choice.
I bring this up, because I felt like this after reading (and really enjoying) Saramago's Blindness. The style there worked beautifully with the story being told. But when I looked at other books, and it was the same style even though the stories were vastly different, it just feels gimmicky rather than a deliberate style choice made to fit the story.
Anyway, this book is brilliant and brutal. I loved it, but I don't know if I can recommend it. I love books that make me feel - and this one did, but it's not sunshine and rainbows that I felt, so I'd stay away from this one if that's what you're looking for.
Rating: really liked it
We all want to have better lives. When I was young, I wanted to be a teacher
my father said no money in teaching. So, I wanted to be an agriculturist
he said you will be digging dirt till the day you die. So, I wanted to be a priest
priests die with their ass dirty as no one takes care of them. So, what?
Why not be a doctor? Okay. After becoming a medtech, what? But he did not have money to send me to a medical school. Ha ha ha ha
In my iPod, I have this song by
The Pussycat Dolls. One morning, I had LSS (last song syndrome) and my daughter caught me singing a part of it. She shrieked with joy and laughed out load. Strange but songs just get into our heads.
♪♫♪When I grow up
Fresh and clean
Number one chick
When I step out on the scene ♪♫♪
Not sure why this song kept on popping in my head while reading this 1978 novel by Hubert Selby, Jr,
Requiem for a Dream. It is an easy read and each character has its own voice. The appropriate emotion in each scene gets reflected on Selby's narration: it can get doped with the wrong spelling and narration; it can get lonely as you remember how many failed diets you tried and they all did not work; it can get orgasmic as Selby makes the lovers moan and moan endlessly and it can get very angry with the junkie son shouting at his poor mama's ears: WHATTA YA DOIN TO ME??? YOUR ONLY SON!!!!
It is about four dreadful pathetic characters. Four Americans in Bronx in the 80s. There is middle-age, living by herself, obese
Sara, the mother who wants to appear on a TV show in an old red dress that her dead husband Seymour really liked on her. So, she takes dieting pills until she can fit into that old worn-out dress. The thinks that being slim means being new and the whole world will discover how wonderful girl she is.
♪♫♪When I grow up
Be on TV
People know me
Be on magazines ♪♫♪
There is Sara's only son,
Harold or Harry and his girlfriend
Marion, who, aside from making love twice a day, injecting their veins with cocaine and smoke grass and cigarettes in between, dream of putting up a coffee shop where Marion's paintings (she loves to paint and dream of become a famous painter someday) can be put on display. Then later they can go and tour the whole of Europe.
♪♫♪When I grow up
I wanna see the world
Drive nice cars
I wanna have groupies ♪♫♪
Then there is
Tyrone "Ty" C. Love thats ma name babe dreaming of a better life for him and his girl Alice.
♪♫♪When I grow up
Be on TV
People know me
Be on magazines♪♫♪
But Harold's and Ty's way of achieving this dream:
drug pushing. ♪♫♪Be careful what you wish for
Cuz you just might get it
You just might get it
You just might get it ♪♫♪
That's where the song went all wrong. They dreamed. Wrong way. They lost.
♪♫♪HA HA HA HA♪♫♪
Seriously, there is that part in the lyrics.
Rating: really liked it
Am I the only person in the world who thought this book was terrible? From the Amazon reviews, apparently so. The book is all narrative and dialouge. In other words, all telling with virtually no "showing."
And what's up with cramming everyone's dialogue into the same paragraph so you can't always tell who is speaking? Why not just break it normally so it's clear? Or for goodness sake, use quotation marks. And can you get any more pretentious than being too good to use an apostraphe when you write "youre" or "Im?" What's wrong with you're and I'm?
Anyway, I'll never bother to read anything by this writer again.
Rating: really liked it
Requiem for a Dream, Hubert Selby Jr.Requiem for a Dream is a 1978 novel by American writer Hubert Selby Jr.
This story follows the lives of Sara Goldfarb, her son Harry, his girlfriend Marion Silver, and his best friend Tyrone C. Love, who are all searching for the key to their dreams in their own ways.
In the process, they fall into devastating lives of addiction. Harry and Marion are in love and want to open their own business; their friend Tyrone wants to escape life in the ghetto.
To achieve these dreams, they buy a large amount of heroin, planning to get rich by selling it. ...
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «مرثیه ای برای یک رویا»؛ «مرثیه ای بر یک رویا»؛ نویسنده: هیوبرت سلبی جونیور؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و چهارم ماه اکتبر سال 2015میلادی
عنوان: مرثیه ای برای یک رویا؛ نویسنده: هیوبرت سلبی جونیور؛ مترجم: سهیل صفاری؛ تهران نشر افزون، 1393؛ در 317ص؛ شابک9786009375127؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
عنوان: مرثیه ای بر یک رؤیا؛ نویسنده: هیوبرت سلبی جونیور؛ مترجم: هما قناد؛ تهران: انتشارات میلکان، 1397؛ در 305ص؛ شابک9786007845509؛
عنوان: مرثیه ای برای یک رویا؛ نویسنده: هوبرت سلبی جونیور؛ منرجمها: آرش پوردانا، امیررضا احمدی؛ ویراستار علیرضا خسروی؛ تهران افق بی پایان، 1398؛ در 500ص؛ شابک9786008120575؛
هشدار: بهتر است ریویو را نخوانید...؛ همه اش مواد و بیماری اعصاب، این فراموشکار پس از خوانش کتاب «مرثیه» بسیار دلسرد شدم، «سارا گلد فارب»، بیوه زنی معتاد به تلویزیون، که در «کانی آیلند» زندگی میکند، از شوهر متوفایش پسری به نام «هری» دارد؛ «هری» که معتاد است، بیشتر اوقاتش را با «ماریون (یک طراح مد ناکام)»، و بهترین دوستش «تایرون (مواد فروش سیاهپوست)» میگذراند؛ «هری» و «تایرون» در پی به جیب زدن پول کلانی، از راه فروش مواد مخدر هستند، و «ماریون» هم، در حالیکه اعتیاد آنها و ناامیدی توأم با آن، شدت میگیرد، با آن دو همراه میشود؛ «سارا» نیز، تمام وقت خود را در جلوی تلویزیون میگذراند، و رؤیای شرکت در مسابقه ی تلویزیونی محبوبش را، در سر میپروراند؛ «سارا» که باور دارد، حضورش در تلویزیون قطعی است، زیر نظر پزشک بدنامی، آغاز به رژیم گرفتن میکند، تا لباس قرمز رنگی که در جوانیش میپوشید، دوباره اندازه اش شود؛ او به زودی گرفتار قرصهایش میشود، که در واقع «مواد مخدر (مخلوطی از کوکایین و هروئین)» هستند؛ اعتیادش او را از دنیای واقعی دور، و توهمهای هراسناکی را، جانشین آن میکند؛ «هری» و «تایرون»، هر چند در آغاز کارشان، موفق به گردآوری پول قابل توجهی میشوند، اما در پایان همان پول، خرج مصرف فزاینده ی هر سه نفر میشود، و از دست میرود؛ «هری» که همراه «تایرون»، درصدد قاچاق مواد از شهری دیگر هستند، با عفونت بازوی «هری (بر اثر تزریق با سرنگ آلوده)» به دکتر مراجعه میکنند، و به چنگ پلیس میافتند؛ بازوی «هری» برای پرهیز از گسترش عفونت، قطع میشود، و «ماریون» نیز که تنها و بیکس شده، به تن فروشی روی میآورد؛ «سارا» هم پس از گذشت مدتی کوتاه دچار فروپاشی عصبی و در آسایشگاه روانی بستری میشود؛ همگی به پایان ناخوش گرفتار میآیند
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 04/04/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Rating: really liked it
Among the people who try to find the meaning of the dreams or even interpret them, there are some for whom the mere hint of any positive dream is Life. The solitude, oblivious to the surrounding and the troubles which keep them wide awake in the darkest nights, is what they look for feeling them as
a whole. Unable to find it, these ill-fated souls
stimulate their solitude by poisoning their veins to save themselves from the madness that is leisurely side-walking toward them. Little do they know that the madness did not stop at the red signal from their burning veins but started jaywalking all around!
Selby Jr takes us on a disturbing tour of drug-infected streets of New Yorkers wandering here and there with the only objective of scoring their
stuff in the cold weather among the carcasses disdainfully left to rot, struggling to survive between the Man (Who
mans the streets!) and drug dealers (Who contaminates the streets!). As soon as you step into the scene, you will realize that this is not something conventional or just unorthodox, but just disturbingly strange.
Dream VS Dope Does Dope instigate dreams or dreams bring the desire for dope? Hard to say! But the characters who are unhappy with their earthy lives and tired of their Nine-To-Five routine, take a shortcut to reach their seemingly unreachable dream with frequent injections of the
fleeting dope, with a hope to prolong their sedated solitude which makes them feel
themselves… and as
a whole. Some fall for the other kind of oblivious addiction for fame which, they think, might save them from their boring loneliness and dull insignificance, gleefully trying to stash all their sorrows into the unreal lives of TV actors and unconsciously allowing the reality show anchors to chase them. But, the day-dreaming ends soon and the TV stops; TV actors vanish and the anchor is no longer waving at them. Nobody is there to cheer them anymore. Autumn is gone. Winter has come.
The characters dive into doing unjust and unimaginable things for just getting a shot, because what was once a relaxation or a pleasure has now become an impaling addiction from which they are trying to escape and striving to keep their distant dreams alive… and when the urge is too compelling, disposing their dreams away with the syringes used to kill them.
“I suspect there will never be a requiem for a dream, simply because it will destroy us before we have the opportunity to mourn it's passing.”
Rating: really liked it
Selby’s novels are transgressive masterpieces with a bigness of heart and a strange, spiritual tenderness. The epigraph to this book alludes to Selby’s faith (in God) and I can see him writing about these doomed dope fiends with the compassion of a pastor tending to his flock. This heartbreaking novel follows the decline of four distinct Americans—young working-class white male Jew, young middle-class white female Jew, young working-class black non-Jew, and elderly widow. All four are addicts through their emotional disconnectedness, or more likely, failure with their parents and sons, though more likely because heroin is
sweeeeet. Selby’s style is a rush of exacting S-o-C sentences, staccato pops and blips, and more elegant art-patches whenever Marion is the focus. I would argue the descent happens a little briskly, especially Sara’s commitment to a psycho ward, and the subsequent brutality of doctors and police and nurses is a little quirk of Selby’s (the world outside his personnel’s bubble is a horrid brutalising place—maybe!), but it’s all good. This is a goddamn American classic. Now we live in an age where people will review your Kindle novel for five pounds. No wonder poppers are popular again.
Rating: really liked it
Wow wow wow wow wow. Requiem for a Dream manages to be so painful and beautiful at the same time. Although I'd seen the film before I read this book and knew the fate of the characters, I was still following their paths with such anxiety and hope. It's an account of people who dream big but lose much bigger.
It follows four characters in the Bronx. There's Sarah, a widow who spends her days living vicariously through her television while eating boxed chocolates. On the warm days, she joins her lifelong neighbors for chatting and sunbathing outdoors. When she receives a phone call informing her that she's been specially selected to participate in a new game show, her heart swells with anticipation. She recovers her red dress from her glory years, gets her hair colored a matching blaze, and begins obsessively dieting in order to fit into the dress once again, imagining herself being admired on TV and being the envy of the block. Sarah's son Harry, along with his best friend Tyrone and girlfriend Marion, are meanwhile doing some serious summer partying. Harry and Tyrone begin dealing heroin (plotting to score the pure stuff), and bringing in big bucks at first until the supply and demand of the streets catches up with them in the following winter months. Harry and Marion, who were once planning on taking the drug money and opening an artsy coffee shop, soon see their aspirations fade away. As their addictions worsen they become more and more desperate for a fix, going to extreme lengths they would have never stooped to in their purer days. Sarah remains on a parallel downward spiral, going back and forth between uppers and downers, practically oblivious to the devastating effects the pills are having on her health.
Selby's depictions of the 80s south Bronx are nightmarish--corpses in abandoned buildings, addicts faking each other out just so their lives can be spared. The writing style itself lends to atypical punctuation, marathon sentences, and street dialect, yet the style doesn't detract from the book's readability. The descriptions and the careful layering of the book's events will leave readers cringing as their hearts break for these characters.
The characters experience little warmth from the outside world of hospitals, medical clinics, and jails. While their need to be saved is so obvious, Selby paints a system that methodically grinds their faces in the dirt, whether it be to prejudice, profit, or just general apathy.
In the preface Selby states that "the book is about four individuals who pursued the American Dream, and the results of their pursuit." He ends the preface with: "Unfortunately, I suspect there never will be a requiem for the Dream, simply because it will destroy us before we have the opportunity to mourn its passing. Perhaps time will prove me wrong. As Mr. Hemingway said, 'Isn't it pretty to think so?'"
Rating: really liked it
When I first watched the film back in 2001 it was at a time when I didn't really read that much. I thought about reading the novel, but didn't. When I did finally pick it up, back around 2010, it became a sort of turning point for me. I just assumed it was written in the late 90s, and got a big surprise when I learnt it was in fact the late 70s. Reading it again now its lost none of its youthful energy; its punchy grittiness; its gut-wrenching power: the last third in particular still held me in a vice that tightened its grip until the shattering climax. You'd have to be either brain-dead or soulless not to feel a surge of emotion I kid you not. It's such a frantic novel at times that made me felt like I was reading it on a treadmill: so yeah, it took my breath away. It could quite easily, give or take the odd thing here and there, have been written yesterday. Selby Jr depicts addicts in a way that takes no prisoners when it comes to their deterioration. The novel plummets these characters into an abyss where their hopes and dreams are smashed into a million little pieces because of addiction. Unlike the harsher, more brutal, Last Exit to Brooklyn; which was too an unforgettable visceral experience, this novel swoons with love and sex and friendship and, when it comes to Harry's mother Sara, with loneliness, that made me feel for and like the characters a lot more, and that kind of brought on a nostalgic warmth, where everything feels like its in its right place; where its all going to be OK: and then it isn't: Big time. Selby Jr's distinctive prose, where he doesn't give two hoots about the correct form when it comes to spelling, punctuation, quotation marks, etc... (example: he would use we/ll instead of we'll, and use different voices at the same time without indicating who is who), and that really captures the slang talk of the streets, just felt so right and so alive that you live and breathe inside this world until the last page. The whole thing shook me to the core and broke my heart. I don't think any other novel has affected me in the same way this did. Never to be forgotten.
Rating: really liked it
I'm not even sure where to begin. This book was incredibly hard, and at times painful, to read. The opening scene is of a young man and his friend taking his mother's television to the pawnshop to get money for heroin. Although there is nothing funny about that when you really think about it, I thought that I was in for a sad story told in a comical way. I mean this t.v. has been pawned by the boy and then bought back by the mom so many times that the pawnshop owner has a book to record the transactions. That's almost funny, right? No, it's not. I think Selby made this scene verge on the comical to ease us into the despair and depravity waiting in the following pages.
I read a lot so reading about drugs is not new or scandalous to me, but this was written as if I, the reader, should be well versed in Heroin. I'm not. My association with it goes about as far as the movies Gia and Trainspotting. This was so, so intensely bad. I felt dirty as I read. I didn't have an understanding of most of the terms associated with the drug that Harry (the boy in the opening scene) Tyrone, and Marion were in love with. As I read I grew to understand more and more, but at the same time, I understood less and less. How could you let yourself get into such dire straits for something so nasty? It was just...gross! The idea of needles is icky on its own, but I looked up Heroin, and pretty much everything to do with it is disgusting. I mean everything. You feel withdrawal after 6 hours! I'll just stick to the occasional drink, thanks.
In addition to those three's Heroin addiction, Harry's mom is addicted to t.v. This addiction leads to an addiction to speed and Valium, which she innocently discovers in an effort to trim down and look good for her television debut. I found it infinitely clever the way Selby traces her addictions alongside the other three. She just wants to lose weight, be healthy, look good, fit in the dress she wore to her son's Bar Mitzvah. How could that be wrong? I could identify on some level with her addiction and increasingly downward spiral because of its commonness. As I continued to read I began to identify with the Heroin addicts as well because Selby made it clear that addiction is addiction. Plain and simple. Too much of anything, for any reason, even the pursuit of a dream, is too damn much!
Like E.E. Cummings and Cormac McCarthy, Selby disregards quotation marks and apostrophes. It makes for difficult reading in the beginning, but as I continued to read I understood his disdain. As the characters became increasingly depraved, who the hell cared about punctuation? Understanding their dialogue takes effort and I'm glad. I wouldn't want to understand them easily. I want there to be a disconnect between myself and these pitiful creatures. The lack of punctuation allowed me to keep that distance.
This book was bleak and painful to read, but it was incredibly well written. Not all stories are rainbows and sunshine and this could not have been further from that, but it was well told nonetheless.
Rating: really liked it
I'm quite surprised that many readers regard it as a book about drug addiction and junkies of different types. I (as the title clearly states) mainly see it as an attempt of pursuing the American Dream, the one that grants all American citizens total and pure freedom. And so, since nobody really knows if the Dream is dead or not, anybody is free to try it out.
What makes it better than the film (if this was ever debatable), is the story-line and the stories behind the characters. Due to my bad memory, I can hardly remember the story in the film, I got stuck on some recurring images and that's pretty much it.
The book was written 30 years ago, but you wouldn't notice that. Well, probably if it had been recently written, it would have involved some computers or iPods :). I only regret I didn't read the English version, I'm sure I would have enjoyed the way Selby's messing with grammar and punctuation.
Rating: really liked it
There is nothing warm and fuzzy about this book. In fact, every time you pick it up to read it and set it back down, you will feel like you dropped your ice cream cone in the sand.
It's torture. It's hell. And it's about as real as a novel can get.
This book tells the story of three friends and their pursuit of the American dream. It also includes the story of the mother of one of the characters. They are all addicts. The friends are addicted to heroin and cocaine and mom is addicted to prescription diet pills.
I felt something for each of these characters and I desperately wanted to reach into the book and save them.
Addiction tears the lives apart and they turn on each other. There is no happy ending for any of them. It's a nightmare ending for all four.
It's an extremely harsh story but the author made no attempt to cover up drug addiction and paint it as something pretty.
It's one of the sickest stories I've ever read. It's one of the saddest stories I've ever read. And it's one of the greatest stories I've ever read. Hubert Selby Jr. is a tremendous author and you will feel every sentence.
Rating: really liked it
Requiem for a Dream was an addiction for me.
The pun intended.
I couldn't read this fast enough. I wish I hadn't been so busy, and could have devoured this in one day. This is an easy, five star favorite for me.
Requiem was my first Selby, Jr. read, and it definitely impressed me. The writing style is his own, and every character's personality was so visual and real. The story of these four people is heartbreaking in their own ways, but, compulsively readable in their own right.
Is it weird to sympathize and feel bad for a drug addict? Is it weird I cared about them? Probably....but I couldn't help it. Harry, Sara, Tyrone, and Marion, the four main characters, were all my favorite. They were each their own character, and they all worked so well together. They felt real, and not just some carbon copy of your typical idea of a junkie. I could hear their voices in my head because of the way each is written.
I wish I could say more about how much I love this book. But for some reason, I'm finding it hard to pen exactly what my feelings are about it.
I want say this for anyone interested in this book....
This book is not for everyone. Requiem for a Dream was my first Hubert Selby, Jr. read. And it definitely won't be the last.
Rating: really liked it
“For weeks Tyrone thought he was going to die any minute, and there were also times when he was afraid he wasnt going to die.” Somehow after watching the movie the book is bearable but still pretty heartbreaking. It is a great book if you have the time to actually read it, 'cause, it needs time to be digested.
You need the time to cry and mourn for the lives of these characters, is sad and heartbreaking, and it will make you wonder what are you doing reading this in the first place.
Requiem for a dream has its ups and downs, at times, more downs than ups. But is worthy. You end up learning a lot about yourself on these pages.
My best advice is: If you don't like the first pages Odds are, you won't like it at all. So don't waste your time.
“Eventually we all have to accept full and total responsibility for our actions, everything we have done, and have not done.”
Rating: really liked it
I came to Selby because I realized that I was interested in a genre called transgressive fiction, which I had not, until recently, even heard of. When I checked out the genre, in addition to many of my favorite books, I discovered that Selby was a leading writer. I then read Last Exit To Brooklyn and loved it, so I followed up with this book. It never occurred to me it would be as good. It turns out that Requiem For A Dream is the best book I have read written since the 1950's.
The book is about addicts. Three of the main characters are heroin addicts and one is addicted to diet pills. But really it is through the vehicle of addiction that Selby rips apart the whole American Dream (the dream of the title) and tears up the illusions on which modern western society is based. He does it in a book of incredible power and honesty and it is a crime that this man never won a Nobel prize or Pulitzer. The book is simply too challenging, I think, to people's basic beliefs and its critique is too accurate and true.
Selby is a writer who never ever turns away from his subject matter and who never ever lies. I think that a lot of people will think that he is exaggerating, but he isn't and that is the way it is. By focusing on lowlifes and the very dregs of society Selby exposes both the unattainability and worthlessness of modern American Values. His point is to show that the materialistic values of suburbia and of television rest on the shattered lives of an underclass, that those values and goods are antithetical to real human relations and that the lifestyle is not really achievable.
It is a world where someone's whole life including their sanity and identity can be destroyed for the chance of appearing on a quiz show.
Selby is a deeply Christian writer. His works begin with a biblical quote and in some sense his message is a message of Christian love. It is not his characters who achieve this love. His characters are inevitably consumed and destroyed by buying into the values of post-western civilization. They are turned into isolated monads with no windows and they are destroyed.
It is Selby himself who achieves this love. He loves, loves, loves his characters. He loves them even though he does not sentimentalize them at all, and even though they are the very dregs of society fed on self-destructive delusions. He makes you love them, and feel with them, and as I have said he does not lie and he does not turn away.
His prose is a sort of mutant step child of Falkner and Hemingway, born in the gutter. The pages of Requiem are on fire as you read them and the words writhe in your brain. He spares nothing, but he teaches you to love the downtrodden in a society that is inherently evil.
Selby's writing is truly great writing. The closest thing to it is Dostoevsky. Like him he challenges the very moral foundations of our society by looking at those at the very bottom.
At once a book of love through understanding and also a book full of rage against a society that is seen as evil, and destructive, it is one of the greatest books ever written.
