Hubert Selby Jr.’s powerful original novel Requiem for a Dream (later developed into an extraordinary film by Darren Aronofsky [Aronofsky 2000]) is, amongst other things, a study of addiction. More specifically, it is a study of how people become addicted to illusions as distinct from realities and how, while providing some succour in the short term, this eventually in the longer-term leads to acutely destructive conclusions for both these individuals and their vulnerable loved ones around them. Selby Jr. no doubt has primarily in mind the so-called American Dream. Writing on the outskirts of the Beats movement (and later chronologically), Selby Jr. shares their countercultural critique of the corporate capitalist postwar order. The novel was published in 1978 and, in this, Selby can also be seen as part of the emergent punk subculture. Over in England, just the previous year of 1977, Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols were castigating the complicity of monarchy and authority in the Queen’s Jubilee Year. ‘God save the Queen / She ain’t no human being / There is no future / In England’s dreaming’ (Sex Pistols, 1977). This is the Pistols’ own funeral mass (Rotten, after all, being Irish) for the illusions (or ‘dreams’, but not in a good sense) of the British colonial state and its aberrant and brutal violence and power. If the Make America Great movement is a recent re-emergence of the American Dream (and this connects intrinsically to the so-called Post-Truth era [Agostinone-Wilson 2020]), Nigel Farage and Reform in England (plus the fetishisation of St George’s flags on nearly every UK street over the summer) is an analogous, reemergent British Dream. Be careful what you wish for, however.

As the Dead Kennedy’s Jello Biafra has said, ‘punk is a state of mind; very similar to the Beats’. The DK’s developed this artistic and political vision in groundbreaking ways in the early 1980s. They released their own and others’ (seminal) records on their own independent label (Alternative Tentacles in San Francisco) – ’no EMI, CBS or Warners for them’ (Ogg 2014). They developed the concept of all-ages shows (which I, amongst many others, benefited from significantly in terms of formation as a young teenager in Dublin). ‘They legitimised the whole concept of an American punk band working successfully in UK and Europe, while disseminating the true horror of their native country’s foreign policies, effectively serving as anti-ambassadors on their travels’ (Ogg 2014: 14). The extraordinary first album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (Dead Kennedys 1980), a metaphor which seems to return today in 2025 as so comic-tragically apt for our forlorn world, was also (oftentimes forgotten) musically very original and powerful: ‘a musical chassis that was tetchy and inventive’ (Ogg 2014), due to the heavy bass of Klaus Flouride, tight drumming of Bruce Slesinger and above all the idiosyncratic (neo-Munsters theme) guitar playing of East Bay Ray (a fusion of jazz and rockabilly). Jello’s unique vibrato-based vocal is also key. Lyrically, moreover, Jello is always ‘cruel in precision . . . but revelatory’. ‘Kill the Poor’, ‘When Ya Get Drafted’, ‘I Kill Children’, ‘Drug Me’. Perhaps ‘California Über Alles’ is the most extraordinary moment (the opening drumbeats still give me goosebumps listening today) – ‘I am Governor Jerry Brown / My aura smiles and never frowns / Soon, I will be president . . . I will be Führer one day / I will command all of you / Your kids will meditate in school / Your kids will meditate in school’ (Dead Kennedys 1980). Emergent here is also a whole conception of life and its relation to art and politics, as well as an attempt to renew (as well as ruthlessly expose and critique) the vision of America in the world. In 2025, the prescience of this understanding seems quite extraordinary and powerful.

This is also part of what Holland Cotter has referred to as the ‘grasping of art as a lived condition rather than a hoarded possession’, referring especially to the Black Mountain school of American poetry and art (Creasy 2019). Charles Olson, the leading figure of Black Mountain, refers to this as ‘Projective or Open or Field Verse…prospective, percussive, projectile…OPEN’, and holds out for the renewal of the ‘relation between man and experience’ (Olson 1960: 395), a poetic template that might be applied exactly to the energetics of the Dead Kennedys, for example. If the Beats did seek, as kindred poets and artists, ‘a spiritual alternative to the relentless materialist drive of industrial capitalism’ (Skerl 2004: 2), then perhaps punk is less sure of alternatives, while holding the critique. This latter is certainly true of Selby Jr’s oeuvre, which offers little redemptive escapism (think also of Last Exit to Brooklyn). And while the addictions in the novel on the surface- level are to drugs, a more deeper level sense of the text reveals the connectivity between all kinds of addiction. In a philosophical sense, Selby, Jr. gives us a whole ontology of palpable and distorting addiction, its extraordinary self-delusions and self-justifications (the novel is the literary equivalent of the later Freud’s convincing if pessimistic Civilisation and Its Discontents). Addiction in its etymology as a concept demonstrates a significant tension between human desire and well-being. On the one hand, addiction is simply ’the need or strong desire to do or to have something, or a very strong liking for something’ (Cambridge Dictionary). So far so good, we might say. What’s wrong with liking something strongly? But a second sense is more concerning: ‘an inability to stop doing or using something, especially something harmful’. Such harm may be to oneself but also such harm may be inflicted on others, around oneself.

Human beings have a significant ability to harm themselves and to harm others. In his Ethics (Aristotle 2000), Aristotle refers to this maleficent capacity as quite distinctive to humans as, in the wider animal kingdom, a more cyclical or predictable existence unfolds. It is the unpredictability of human choice and disposition, tending either towards virtue or what Aristotle refers to as ‘vice’, which marks us out as autonomous beings, as more human than animal. As the philosopher of balance puts it succinctly in the extraordinary Book 1, the human is the being that can ‘go higher or lower than the animal’ (Aristotle 2000). Unfortunately, one of the aspects of our condition that draws us into the lower, more depraved realm of action and behaviour is the tendency to addiction, an attraction to doing ‘something harmful’.

Such harm isn’t simply at the individual level, of course. When human beings act in these destructive ways, they create harm in an inter-subjective and communal sense. Oftentimes it starts with the nuclear intimacy of the blood family, whether this is intentional or not. Philip Larkin described this all too well in his poem ‘This Be The Verse’: ‘They fuck you up, your Mum and Dad / They may not mean to, but they do / They fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you’ (Larkin 2003). But if it begins here, it soon extends out to communities and wider societies, which themselves become subject to such harm and destruction on a much more macro-scale. Larkin’s own proposed solution was simple, if harsh: ‘Man hands on misery to man/ It deepens like a coastal shelf/Get out as early as you can/And don’t have any kids yourself’ (Larkin 2003).

In Selby, Jr.’s narrative, Larkin’s advice hasn’t been taken heed of. This story follows the lives of Sara Goldfarb, her son Harry, his girlfriend Marion Kleinmitz, and his best friend Tyrone C. Love, who are all searching for the key to their dreams in their own ways. The characters are each already involved in inter-dependent family and erotic relationships. As we move through the seasons from Spring into Summer, things seem to be hopeful. Harry and Marion are in love and want to open their own business; their friend Tyrone wants to escape life in the ghetto. But, as the story develops, what is revealed is that these relationships are held together not by love but by varying kinds of addiction and mutual harm. As Autumn arrives, the inevitable denouement is becoming more evident and at the final declaration of the arrival of ‘Winter’, the reader knows what is ominously coming. Sara’s opening gambit of ‘It’ll all work out’ doesn’t quite come to pass. In her own case, she becomes addicted to dieting pills (in a quest to get on a TV Game show, which is her ultimate ‘dream’), develops psychosis and is ultimately committed against her will to a psychiatric institution. The text (between each of the deconstructing and unravelling life-hopes) then plays out precisely as a requiem for a dream, a reductio ad nauseam (where you will actually, believe me, need to vomit).

What sense might we make of this American Dream in a more contemporary context? In my own work, this has led me through the influence of Jerome Rotheberg to the concept of ‘Deep Image’ (Rothenberg 2013).

Deep Image or A Painting by Jeffrey Dahmer#

Is it true that Jerome Rothenberg
came up with the concept of ‘deep image’
after he wilfully opened a large pomegranate in his kitchen
and the blood splattered across the four walls
like a painting by Jeffrey Dahmer? (Irwin 2025).

In a related key, Scott Spearly’s artistic work, across a range of disciplines, is an interesting example of an exploration of these themes of the (post-) American Dream. In Red Ogre Review, both his poetry and his music (alongside collaborator Dave Sims and with band The Knuckle Dusters) have featured. Recent song ‘Stop the Killing’ has music by Spearly and spoken-word voiceover by Sims. The process of development was described as ‘”There’s so much brutal, unnecessary killing going on all the time,” his old friend said after first sharing the cut, “so you decide where you want to take the words.”’ The song addresses the deep problem in the US of femicide, here specifically in relation to the Native American community. Sims is also an educator, teaching Native American literature and perspectives. ‘It’s painful to consider that nearly half a century has passed since the body of Anna Mae Aquash was found on a back road of the Pine Ridge Reservation. It’s excruciating that so many other women continue to disappear with few ever hearing about it. More people need to know about this ongoing darkness so that something else can be done to stop it. Pay attention’ (Spearly and Sims, Notes to ‘Stop the Killing’). As the song has it, ‘Nobody’s laughing / Nobody’s singing’ (Spearly and Sims, 2025).

A similar wry sensibility and vision informs Spearly’s impressive Seven Nights at The Sutton’s: Collected Poems (Spearly 2025). In ‘All Inclusive’ from ‘Vacation Poems’, ‘Paradise is indeed a state of mind / and not a place / At least not this place’. Although there is hope evinced in ‘Bar Hazards’ in the fact that Athena / Medusa / Morticia Addams lookalike ‘Crystalline, the sultry Princess of Darkness’ may be clocking in soon, or at least ‘after 9pm’. Perhaps the trick then (Freud would agree, although perhaps not Selby Jr) is to allow ourselves to get lost in the ‘diversions that await us all’. Again, this reminds me of Lynne Tillman, this time the very short story ‘An American Abroad’: ‘Mao appeared one day at the steps. He was tall, thin and brown, a French Vietnamese. Suddenly he was my boyfriend and we were going to Greece together’ (Tillman 2021). Also another American (punk) songstress, Patti Smith, from ‘Gloria: In Excelsis Deo’, ‘Jesus died for somebody’s sins / But not mine’. Although such anti-apologetics may not always work so well or convincingly. As ‘Broken Tongue’ has it, ‘Olga will not be happy / with the drunk condition this room left you in’. One senses an Olga shitshow is the next scene, goddamn our drasted bad luck, Scott!

And from Olga we move back (or fast forward as in Aronofsky’s neo-surrealist filmic take on Requiem) to poor old Sara. Sara so longs for her postmodern, garish dreams to come through. She so longs for her (smudged) makeup and her (faffy) hairstyle to match up to the visions emanating from the big TV in her tiny, dingy and claustrophobic living room. And for some extraordinary moments, her dreams do morph into dayglo reality. As cinema spectators, we almost believe that Aronofsky has chosen a happy ending – but no, actually, as we blink, we see the pallid if brutal truth instead emerge from the screen. Sara is hallucinating due to amphetamine psychosis. Sara’s increased dosage of amphetamines distorts her sense of reality, and she begins to hallucinate that she is mocked by the host and crowd from the television show, and attacked by her refrigerator. The huge fridge coming alive and trying to eat up our anti-hero Sara (now deathly thin with a shockingly unholy pallor from her awful diet and worse diet pill popping) into its ferocious gaping jaws has to be one of the most disillusioning cinema moments of all time. As Bataille used to say, philosophy is the suffering of the disintoxicated. Sara’s disturbed state causes her to be admitted to a psychiatric ward, where she undergoes electroconvulsive therapy after failing to respond to various medications. Aronofsky, after all then, is a truly faithful disciple of Selby Jr’s school of addiction critique. Sara Goldfarb’s desperate desire to be ‘somebody’, her corrosive and misguided belief that ‘it’ll all work out’. This is American punk, not Hollywood, not Disney. Think later Freud, unforgiving. No apologies.

To conclude, I add a poem after one of my favourite Greek poets, Cavafy, an astute diplomat who knew more than a little about the genealogy (and fatality) of human and social foibles. His original poem ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ captures something perennial about the human addiction to self-destructive illusions, the fear (and the unjust scapegoating) of the Other and the (tragic) refusal to take ethical responsibility, both individually and societally, until it is too late.

Waiting for the Barbarians#

The streets empty early
People lost in dark thoughts
By sunset, the enemy will enter the largest gate of the city
Now is the time to reflect
Why this sudden uneasiness?
When you have had a whole life-time
Why now be surprised when the barbarians come?

And yet by night-fall there are no barbarians
The men from the frontiers say that they exist no longer
All of this life you have lived in fear of their arrival
When all the while the barbarian was within

Blind Barbie and Stop the Killing by Dave Sims & Scott Spearly#

Words and audio for Blind Barbie and Stop the Killing are found in Issue 28, February 2025.

All-Inclusive by Scott Spearly#

Bar Hazards by Scott Spearly#

References#

Agostinone-Wilson, Faith (2020) On the Question of Truth in the Era of Trump. Brill Books, Boston.

Aristotle (2000) Ethics (Nicomachean). Penguin Classics, London.

Aronofsky, Darren (2000) Requiem for a Dream. Artisan Entertainment, Los Angeles.

Creasy, Jonathan (ed.) (2019) Black Mountain Poems. New Directions, New York.

Dead Kennedys (1980) Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. Alternative Tentacles, San Francisco.

Irwin, Jones (2025) Deep Image. Tofu Ink Press, California.

Larkin, Philip (2003) ‘This Be The Verse’ in Collected Poems. Faber, London.

Ogg, Alex (2014) Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. PM Press, California.

Olson, Charles (1960), ‘Projective Verse’ in Allen, D. (ed.) (1960), The New American Poetry 1945 - 1960. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Rothenberg, Jerome (2013) Eye Of Witness: A Jerome Rothenberg Reader. Black Widow Press, Boston.

Selby, Jr., Hubert (2012) Requiem for a Dream. London, Penguin.

Sex Pistols (1977) ‘God Save the Queen’ in Never Mind the Bollocks. Here’s the Sex Pistols. Virgin, London.

Sims, Dave and Spearly, Scott (2025). The Old Punks. Self-published, Pennsylvania.

Spearly, Scott (2025) 7 Nights at the Sutton’s: Collected Poems. Unpublished, Pennsylvania.

Tillmann, Lynne (2021) Weird Fucks. Peninsula Press, East London.