Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr.
Published 1978 · 76,725 words · about 7 hours at an average pace
How hard is Requiem for a Dream to read?
Requiem for a Dream scores 62 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 52 out of 100
- Street vocabulary, phonetically rendered.
- Sentence structure: 78 out of 100
- No quotation marks, minimal punctuation, dialect run together — the hardest thing about the book.
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- Concrete addiction, relentlessly so.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Moderate.
- Narrative indirection: 68 out of 100
- Four consciousnesses reported from inside, none of them clear-eyed.
- Symbolic density: 62 out of 100
- The television and the dress carry sustained weight.
- Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
- The gap between the characters' dreams and their conduct is total.
- Resolution withholding: 78 out of 100
- The four endings offer no relief whatsoever.
- Structural complexity: 58 out of 100
- Four braided descents with no chapter breaks.
How Requiem for a Dream is regarded
Requiem for a Dream holds a literary regard score of 58 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.