Man. MAN. That's some fucked up shit, right there. I have so much to say about this book that I don't know where I should start or how to say anything, and last night when I started this review, I was just kind of stuck in a kind of disturbed loss for words. And I've seen the movie and I knew what to expect - but I still feel a deep sadness and revulsion and shock after finishing the story. It's just... traumatizing. Brilliant, but traumatizing. I'll just go ahead and say now that if you're concerned about spoilers - just move on. I don't think I can avoid spoilers in this one... so continue reading if you want, but don't bitch if you read something you didn't want to know about the book/movie. It's been many years since I've seen the movie... but it's one that has stuck with me. I'm sure I'm not at all alone in this. There are some images and feelings that the movie evoked in me that just stay with me. When I hear the title, or even just the word "Requiem", these images and feelings surface. When I hear music from the Kronos Quartet - same thing. It's a visceral reaction. I didn't recall every moment of the movie, of course, having not seen it for years prior to reading the book. But the amount that stuck with me was enough to make this reading experience almost like re-watching the movie. At least that's how it felt to me as I was reading. After I finished the book, I watched the movie again, and though there are some differences (some of them major), for the most part, the movie adaptation sits right in the book's lap. Right from the start, watching Harry steal his mother's TV to pawn it for dope money, it was like I could see the movie playing in my mind as I read. This is a pretty rare situation that I find myself in, though, because I almost feel as though I'm comparing the book to the movie, rather than the other way around. I usually go out of my way to avoid seeing movies prior to reading the book they are based on (if I can help it), but seeing as how I saw this movie first when I was 18 and didn't know it was a book until over a decade later, it makes sense that it would feel this way to me. The only other time I've felt this way was with Children of Men, a movie I really liked and a book I fucking hated. Clearly I didn't hate this one, though. In fact, I kind of loved it. I feel like the movie, while pretty damn accurate to the book, didn't quite have the same depth. I feel like 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 the same could be said about the book, I think the movie almost loses sight of the fact addiction is a disease, it's as much a mental need as a physical one, and it's not just a result of an action (like doing drugs or drinking alcohol). 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 those are just some examples. It's extreme. But in a way 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. But the movie does away with much of that, and I feel like, while the movie's been modernized to a certain degree, it also takes away some, maybe a lot, of the impact.The movie also glosses over some of the non-addiction-fueled 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. But this is a sanitization of what's portrayed in the book, this horrific situation that Sara, confused, lost in her own starvation- and drug-induced haze, is put into, where every act of trying to force food into her is almost like rape. There's not only a lack of care, it's a lack of human decency and 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, ignoring what is morally and ethically right. Another example is how Tyrone is treated in the south. Some of the tone remains in the movie form, 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 not only is he a Yankee addict, but he's a black one. They are arrested for vagrancy. FUCKING. VAGRANCY. In the late 70s. OMG. I saw this word and... my stomach clenched. It makes me so angry, this mentality that it's OK to abuse someone just because you don't want them in your neighborhood. This, as much as anything else in the book, sickens me. Arrest them because they have fucking HEROIN in the car. Arrest them because they are clearly intoxicated. Arrest them for suspected car theft (because the car wasn't theirs), or for driving without a license (because they live in NY and don't have cars, so why would they need a driver's license?) 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 hatred and racism based brutality. There's a general tone of suspicion and dislike, and a cruelty in general, but it is not clear as to the reason behind it in the movie, and it isn't even close to the depiction in the book. The movie doesn't specify what they are being 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 gas attendant won't serve them, lies directly to their faces 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 "nigger 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... It's 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 this kind of '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. To be honest, 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 to the book, just elaborating on that one scene. Some other differences though are more subtle. For instance, a huge amount of scenes where Harry and Tyrone struggled to find dope were skipped over in the movie. There's a small reference to this difficulty in the movie, but it comes out of nowhere. Their dealer is killed, suddenly and with no explanation, and I feel as though that's supposed to explain the shortage, but that's not the case in the book at all. There's a shortage because there is not because there's some sort of sting operation taking down the big dealer. So the fear and anger and need that's present is kind of out of place because it's never really shown that there's a city-wide shortage and EVERYONE is desperate and has been for months. This is kind of the catalyst for the end of the book, and what 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 do not have sex in the movie, though in the book they have sex many times, and 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 fact that they don't have 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 with a physical and chemical one that is stronger and makes them resent each other. In the book, there's no closure, no reconciliation, not even acceptance, as shown in the movie. Harry doesn't call Marion from jail, he doesn't even think about her. He thinks about his arm and his pain. In the hospital, after, he thinks about his arm and his pain. It's like 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. To counter this point, though, is the relationship between Harry and Tyrone. In the book, it starts to splinter as well. They hold back money and dope from each other, their greedy need taking precedence over their friendship. At the end of the book, Tyrone is... almost de-humanized, in a way. Not only because of his addiction and withdrawal causing him to suffer, but also because of the treatment that he experiences in the southern jail, all of which he blames Harry for. If he'd not suggested this trip... if he'd not continued shooting into his infected arm... if he'd done this differently or that differently, Tyrone wouldn't be in this situation. In the movie, that resentment doesn't exist. In the movie, they are friends till the end (or, rather, 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 the book and the movie, poor Sara is alone with her own pain and needs and delusions. Her struggles are the most closely matched between the book and the movie. She is the character that I feel the most for, and who breaks my heart the most. Definitely more in the book than the movie, because 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 - her 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. Book Sara doesn't quite have that same power. By which I mean that what I feel for her character is a huge amount of empathy, and I feel a mixture of sadness and rage at how her life spirals out of control for want of being wanted... and how she has 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 an identification with her, if that makes sense. I feel for her, and her situation breaks my heart, but really Ellen Burstyn just brings her to life and makes her real and so sad. Both the book and the movie 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. Both women who have fallen so far down that their only concern is their addiction. Sara's had a complete break from reality, and she hallucinates a happy reunion with Harry on TV, and that's all she's really ever wanted anyway. Marion is just content that she's got dope, and a regular supply, if she's willing to work for it. To her, that's security, and nothing else matters. The men are both crying at the end of the movie, because both are thinking about the dreams they've lost. Tyrone, his safe and secure life with a caring, supportive woman (his mother); and Harry 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 I don't see that getting easier for him after losing his arm, and his friend, and his girlfriend, and his mother. If, by some chance, he actually were to get treatment, he might make it through - but where he is, in the South, I don't see anyone making much of an effort for him, given the precedent set so far in how they've treated him. Same with Tyrone, who has lost his friend, his freedom, his dignity, etc... If he were to get treatment, he might be OK... but if they just release him at the end of his sentence, he'd go right back to using. And Marion, who has lost just about everything as well, and her life now consists of selling sex to make a score to last her until the next one. I think that with her, even if she were to have someone step in and try to help her, it wouldn't do any good. She's intelligent and 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, though, she makes me the saddest, because Harry recognized what was happening, and could have stopped it if he tried, but instead he felt guilt because of the fact that he knew he didn't have the strength of character necessary to support his mother in her need... and instead he abandoned her because it was easier than dealing with the situation. One last thing I want to talk about is the writing style of the book. because I'd seen the movie first, as I read, I kept comparing the writing style to the cinematography of the movie. I really am impressed, very impressed, with how similar they feel. Darren Aronofsky truly captured the feel of the book in the movie. But the writing style is... messy. It worked for the book, because the BOOK is messy. It's spastic and urgent and shifting and hazy... and the way that the book was written really FEELS that way, to me. There are a lot of run-on sentences (I think the longest I saw was 4 pages long), but they really are put to good use here. The 4-pager was the scene where Harry is waiting for Marion to come home after he 'suggests' that Marion ask her shrink for money so they can use it to get some dope to turn around and sell. (In the book it's $300, by the way. Not the $2000 from the movie. He sells her for so much less in the book. And he goes along with her trips to Big Tim in the book as well - 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 on, that first time with the shrink, and he feels sick about it, but not enough to change, not enough to care, really. I mean, after all, she agreed to it - it's on her now too, right? And after that it's like he just distances himself from her scoring method - just caring about the fact that they now have a score at all. Anyway. I digress. The 4 pages depict his feelings about what he's sent her out to do, and why, and how he's coping with it, and failing to cope with it, and cycling through all of these emotions that he doesn't want to be feeling but then not wanting to get high because their supply is so limited and unsure, but then not able to avoid it... It's like a perfect microcosm of his addiction in a long, 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 (Christ is spelled 'krist', for example), 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 is sloppy-on-purpose writing, and it really just dragged my eyes along for the ride and I found it hard to look away. I read about 70% of this book in one sitting yesterday afternoon because I just couldn't look away. The fact that 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 of this book. 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. I feel like they should be used to enhance and transform a particular kind of story into an experience for the reader. This style, which I thought worked perfectly with this story, did that for me. So, I'm afraid that, if he just writes like this and CALLS it his style, I'd be disappointed, like I'd feel like this wasn't intentional choice of style because it told this particular story so well, but instead was just... lack of skill, and I would feel misled. I bring this up, because I did feel like this after reading (and really enjoying) Saramago's Blindness. I thought that the style there worked beautifully with the story being told. But then, I looked his other books, and it was the same style even though the stories were vastly different, and then it just feels gimmicky rather than a deliberate style choice made to fit the story. Bah. Anyway, for this book, which is the only one I've read of Selby's, I say it's brilliant and brutal. I loved it, but I don't know if I can recommend it. I love book 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.
Some stories can shake me to the core. Today, I finished one such story.I’ve heard talk about the film Requiem for a Dream for several years now, how it’s considered one of the most disturbing and hopeless movies of all time.Sounds fun, right?Due to the hype, I decided to check out the novel off of which the film is based.PremiseHubert Selby Jr.’s 1978 book of the same title has what sounds like a simple plot: people get addicted to drugs, and it’s bad. From the back of the book: “In Coney Island, Broolyn, Sara Goldfarb, a lonely widow, wants nothing more than to lose weight and appear on a television game show. She becomes addicted to diet pills in her obsessive quest, while her junkie son Harry, along with his girlfriend Marion, and his best friend Tyrone, have devised an illicit shortcut to wealth and leisure by scoring a pound of uncut heroin. Entranced by the gleaming visions of their futures, these four convince themselves that unexpected setbacks are only temporary. Even as their lives slowly deteriorate around them, they cling to their delusions and become utterly consumed in the spiral of drugs and addiction, refusing to see that they have instead created their own worst nightmares.”Words on fireThis was the most visceral reading experience I’ve ever had. Not just due to the graphic and devastating subject matter, but due to Selby’s unique prose. He pays little to no regard to writing conventions such as grammar, spelling or punctuation. Paragraphs often continue on for several pages with multiple speakers, but no quotation marks or attributions indicating who is saying what.I honestly didn’t think I’d make it through the book when I first started. But the text literally came to life, bringing me right into the crazed haze along with the characters, violently assaulting me with an arsenal of imagery and emotions which continued sometimes for pages before the period would finally show up to end the sentence.A cautionary takeawayLet me say this loud and clear that Requiem for a Dream is not for the faint-hearted. It’s graphic, disturbing and, at times, terrifying. More than anything, it’s a cautionary tale about dreams and the means we can use to achieve them. In addition, it’s far more powerful than any anti-drug PSA you’ll ever see or hear. Darren Aronofsky, who directed the controversial film, wrote that he “needed to make a film from this novel because the words burn off the page. Like a hangman’s noose, the words scorch your neck with rope burn and drag you into the sub-sub-basement we humans build beneath hell. Why do we do it? Because we choose to live the dream instead of choosing to live the life.”Personally, I can say that this novel has already changed the way I look at the world around me. As it says in the forward, “It’s Selby’s gift to us that once again we find ourselves aching for his people – which is to say we find ourselves loving the unloveable.”As I delved further and further into the story, I came to love these hopelessly lost characters, and in all honesty, my heart broke more and more with each passing page. I wanted them to achieve their dreams. I wanted them to get clean. I hated Selby for making me trudge through hell with Sara, Tyrone, Harry and Marion. This won’t ruin the plot at all; the end result is forecast from the very beginning, but nothing can prepare you for the journey itself. I’m not the first reviewer to say this, but the reader’s love is the only thing that comes out on top in Requiem for a Dream.“And so the city became even more savage with the passing of each day, with the taking of each step, the breathing of each breath. From time to time a body would fall from a window and before the blood had a chance to seep through the clothing hands were going through his pockets to see what might be found to help them through another moment of being suspended in Hell.”
What do You think about Requiem For A Dream (1999)?
“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.” OMG This Book.....I do not know how to describe it, i'm going to quote Cassandra Clare and said: “You know that feeling when you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing tight around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you are tied to the story as if being dragged behind a carriage and you cannot let go or turn the course aside.” This book is heartbreaking, It's for people who have dreams ,but at some point collapse on the way.“Eventually we all have to accept full and total responsibility for our actions, everything we have done, and have not done.”
—Marie Antoinette
Wow.Shocking. Beautiful. Harrowing. Perfect.Finished this book nearly two weeks ago and it still haunts me. It’s beautiful and moving in the way that a tragic and all-too-believable story can be. A cautionary tale of illegal drug use as well as the more socially-acceptable addictions set in the Bronx in the late 70s. The characters are all dreamers in some way, propped by their various substances and habits; Hubert Selby, Jr. portrays the fine line between dreams and delusion, a line that becomes increasingly hard to discern for those teetering on the brink of addiction. And on the other side? The abyss. There’s no doubt that the author, as a reformed addict, knows of what he speaks.I thought the writing was perfectly tailored to the content: a dysfunctional society delineated in unconventional writing. The punctuation is minimal and there are few clues to begin with in relation to direct speech, quite a bit of which is phonetic but you soon develop a feel for who’s speaking as all the characters have their own distinct speech patterns, once you adjust you can’t imagine it being written any other way.
—Chantal
I thought this book was a lot like the movie, dark, depressing and bleak! This is the story of two types of drug addiction that takes place in Coney Island NY in the 1970's. One of the character is a young hoodlum who gets hooked on heroin and the other is a middle aged widow that gets hooked on pills (interestingly enough they are mother and son). I think at one point diet pills were pretty much like legalized speed but a doctor wrote the prescription, so what could be wrong, right? Turns out plenty.Both mother and son progressively sink deeper and deeper in to drug addiction with disastrous results. I liked how the author told the story of addiction from two very different viewpoints, it was also interesting to read about the heroin subculture in NYC at that time.Well written and a real good read!
—Hudson
