"Requiem for a Dream" by Hubert Selby, Jr. (published 1978)
I'm glad I finally read Hubert Selby Jr.'s "Requiem for a Dream" (1978) after years of having a copy of the book on my shelf and never getting to it. I've seen the movie, directed by Darren Aronofsky (2000), several times, but Selby's book has so much more resonance, though if one has seen the film even once those images don't disappear as you read the words of this story.
The words seem to flow from the author without much pre-conception: "Requiem for a Dream" is free from any sense of being contrived. The story and its style (which is a variant of stream-of-consciousness) is beautiful in its simplicity and for the authors clear talent for telling it like it is. A story like this doesn't need much more.
What a reader might be able to grasp from the book rather than from watching the film is the idea that the kids in this book really don't know how to care for anything but their own souls. It's as if they've never really learned to look at themselves in the mirror and carve a space out for themselves in world. Literally looking at themselves in the mirror, as we know that Marion and Tyrone do, isn't an act of identity searching or vain contemplation or beauty, or even a judgement and assessment of aesthetics. It's instead a fantasy and game, I think, where they look into the mirror and see nothing but a soul. Unfortunately, what happens to these kids is that their soul food is heroin: that drug that kills their flesh and blood bodies. It's not like they don't know what they are doing, it's that they refuse to admit it, and end up destroying something that, perhaps, they cared very little for in the first place. The blood and bones and the meat of themselves.
Marion, Harry, and Tyrone are living blindly: a fault that is not theirs to claim. What do they see - literally - in the world of Brooklyn, New York? Not really anything - as Selby, Jr. evokes with his writing. The story is of action and feeling, action and feeling, not much more. Think of the scene (in the book) where Marion, a talented artist, is unable to figure out *what to put down on paper*, *what to sketch*, *what to draw*. She doesn't know. It's empty - visually. The description is of a girl who feels this aching desire to create, a girl who has the skill-set to do so, yet has no idea what - materially - this output should be. This is the blindness I am speaking of. She is rendered blind. And to take this a step further, with Mrs. Goldfarb, Harry's mother, who can't see anything except the television and the fridge. This idea of having internal feelings that cannot be materialized visually in any sort of conception of the world is what I'm interested in within this story. Why the result is a descent into heroin use is another question entirely and one I cannot answer.
By the last few pages of this book my eyes were wet with tears. People in predicaments similar to the characters in this book walk by right in front of our eyes in real life, daily and nightly, with a need we cannot always return in the way that is required. I'm closing "Requiem for a Dream" with this thought: life is but a dream, but first one must have life.
The words seem to flow from the author without much pre-conception: "Requiem for a Dream" is free from any sense of being contrived. The story and its style (which is a variant of stream-of-consciousness) is beautiful in its simplicity and for the authors clear talent for telling it like it is. A story like this doesn't need much more.
What a reader might be able to grasp from the book rather than from watching the film is the idea that the kids in this book really don't know how to care for anything but their own souls. It's as if they've never really learned to look at themselves in the mirror and carve a space out for themselves in world. Literally looking at themselves in the mirror, as we know that Marion and Tyrone do, isn't an act of identity searching or vain contemplation or beauty, or even a judgement and assessment of aesthetics. It's instead a fantasy and game, I think, where they look into the mirror and see nothing but a soul. Unfortunately, what happens to these kids is that their soul food is heroin: that drug that kills their flesh and blood bodies. It's not like they don't know what they are doing, it's that they refuse to admit it, and end up destroying something that, perhaps, they cared very little for in the first place. The blood and bones and the meat of themselves.
Marion, Harry, and Tyrone are living blindly: a fault that is not theirs to claim. What do they see - literally - in the world of Brooklyn, New York? Not really anything - as Selby, Jr. evokes with his writing. The story is of action and feeling, action and feeling, not much more. Think of the scene (in the book) where Marion, a talented artist, is unable to figure out *what to put down on paper*, *what to sketch*, *what to draw*. She doesn't know. It's empty - visually. The description is of a girl who feels this aching desire to create, a girl who has the skill-set to do so, yet has no idea what - materially - this output should be. This is the blindness I am speaking of. She is rendered blind. And to take this a step further, with Mrs. Goldfarb, Harry's mother, who can't see anything except the television and the fridge. This idea of having internal feelings that cannot be materialized visually in any sort of conception of the world is what I'm interested in within this story. Why the result is a descent into heroin use is another question entirely and one I cannot answer.
By the last few pages of this book my eyes were wet with tears. People in predicaments similar to the characters in this book walk by right in front of our eyes in real life, daily and nightly, with a need we cannot always return in the way that is required. I'm closing "Requiem for a Dream" with this thought: life is but a dream, but first one must have life.
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