Requiem for a Dream: A Novel (alkuperäinen julkaisuvuosi 1979; vuoden 1999 painos)

I've no idea how they manage to create such a stellar movie out of a rag such as this. I dislike the characters, but nothing can outshine my seething hatred for the dialogue. I could forgive the missing apostrophes, the awful New York accent conveyed through writing, but I cannot forgive lumping all dialogue in one mass, where you have to pick apart who said "ooooo" and who said "sheeeit". ( )

I must say I am really impressed. I usually don't rate contemporary novels this well, but this book had all the right stuff. The characters and their parallel stories worked great. ( )

Hubert Sebly's "Requiem for a Dream" is a dark descent into a world of addiction, poverty and hopelessness. He chronicles the lives of four people who become addicts as their lives take darker and darker turns.

I liked the story (though the ultimate ends for the characters all seemed a little on the extreme side.) The writing style was a bit challenging at first but ended up being appropriate because it all sort of reinforced the story itself. ( )

Sara Goldfarb, viuda cuyo contacto con el mundo se reduce a las horas pasadas delante del televisor en su modesto apartamento de Coney Island, fantasea con participar un día en un concurso televisivo. Harry, el hijo veinteañero de Sara, yonqui como su novia Marion y su mejor amigo Tyrone, sueña con abrir un café bohemio que permita a los tres abandonar el sórdido y desesperanzado mundo que los rodea. El inicio del verano trae las mejores expectativas: Sara recibe una enigmática llamada invitándola a participar en un importante concurso, mientras a Harry se le ofrece una oportunidad única de conseguir rápidamente el dinero necesario para poner en marcha su anhelado negocio: el tráfico de heroína. Sin embargo, el verano pasa, y el deus ex machina que debía alejarlos de la tragedia, termina por revelar su auténtico rostro y por arrastrarlos en un vertiginoso descenso a los infiernos.

I was surprised by this book. I ended up with an appreciation of it when I expected to dislike it. The book was written by Hubert Selby, Jr in 1978. It is a story that tells the story of four people living in the Bronx. Selby is an author who endeavors to attack the American dream and his book looks at life lived in urban poverty and addictions. It is a story of addictions; addictions to TV, addictions to food, addictions to drugs and the desire to achieve something but never getting there. Selby captures the spiral of degradation that these addictions bring to Sara the mother addicted to TV and food, her son Harry with a dream to have a coffee house, Tyrone C. Love, and their girlfriends. It explores loneliness, futility and being unnecessary. The author captures the downward spiral into madness.

Quotes
"Nobody know who they are. Everybody is running around looking for an identitiy or trying to borrow one, only they don't know it."
"dope continues to flow through their blood, whispering dreams to every living cells int their bodies.".

Comments at the end of the book;
Selby experimented with grammar, punctuation, spelling, language.
The brutal urban landscapes he portrayed, combined with potent immediacy of his prose.
His frank descriptions of drugs, prostitution, and the rough Brooklyn streets that he (the author) had known since his childhood.

Selby also experienced addiction to first morphine then heroin ( )