Nightmare Alley (New York Review Books (Paperback))

"Ever since he was a kid Stan had had the dream. He was running down a dark alley, the buildings vacant and black and menacing on either side. Far down at the end of it a light burned; but there was something behind him, close behind him, getting closer until he woke up trembling and never reached the light." That something is fear, and Stan Carlisle knows how to avoid it, and how to sell it back to prospective buyers. As a con man, Stan wears many hats: Stan Carlisle. The Great Stanton. Reverend Carlisle. Cashing in is the name of Stan's game, and his world of deception and dishonesty, he is the ultimate shyster. There's an aura of fatalism that resides over Stan Carlisle, seemingly propelling him toward either success or doom at any given moment. However, he meets his match in an unlikely femme fatale, Dr. Lilith Ritter. Nightmare Alley is such a unique and different take on the noir genre. Grotesque, dark and bizarre, it opens at a county fair with locals about to witness the "geek show." Stan, an ambitious employee for the carny, is both captivated and repulsed by the lowly depths of the alcoholic geek. He wonders how one could get to such an awful state. Impressed with the Zeena the mentalist's act, and how she can dupe the crowd, Stan becomes resolved to take up his own act. With Molly, one of the performers, along Stan soon becomes immersed in the world of mentalist acts, psychic readings and spiritualism, looking to gain dough and sell hopes. With effective atmosphere and exceptional prose, Gresham pushes us into the world of the carny, tarot readings, mentalism, deception, set ups, secret codes, phonies and fakes. There's even some Freudian analysis to boot. Despite its bleakness, and despite one of the more ruthless protagonists you'll ever encounter, Nightmare Alley is fascinating and hard to put down, and definitely a treat for noir fans. This edition of the novel has a fascinating introduction by Nick Tosches that gives quite a bit of background for the story as well as the author. Reportedly Gresham found inspiration for the novel while drinking with a companion who told him a bizarre tale about a "geek", an alcoholic who would work and perform bizarre acts at a carnival for booze. Gresham said the story "haunted him" and so, he wanted to tell the story and thus "get rid" of this memory. There's also a fantastic film from 1947 with a very George Clooney-esque Tyrone Power playing Stan Carlisle. The film, while much tamer than the novel, still is quite amazing and worth checking out

I found this book very interesting - even though I cannot say it's enjoyable. Reading it was rather unpleasant, to put it mildly. Think Kafka's The Metamorphosis, with people depicted by Gresham being about as attractive as Kafka's insect. But yes, we have to admit, there are very unappetizing things in life, and Gresham is definitely able to describe them with great authenticity. A number of things make this book interesting. First and foremost - it's the language. This book is written in American vernacular of the first half of XX century. Even though I was born much later, one can feel immediately it's the real thing, Gresham has keen ear and ability to put on paper the way people really talk. The book is full of colloquialisms, expressions used on the street by lowlife people, and people in a particular trade (most of the characters are in the show business, carnivals), as well as psychiatric terms (one of the characters is a psychiatrist). Words and expressions you won't find in print frequently, like gonif, ad-libbed (now they'd say winged), etc etc. And it's not just the language: the life itself is captured with lots of details, which makes this book very persuasive. It has a wide variety of characters, from "carny" crowd, vile psychiatrist, an industrialist, duped by "spiritualist" crooks, even one black communist, described, again, very vividly in one chapter. Everyone talks using their very own language: policeman, morgue attendant (what a story!), lady psychiatrist... The book describes in much detail how "mind readers" operate, from cheap town fair crooks "mitt readers" to high level "spiritualists", arranging fraudulent séances where people "meet" their deceased loved ones, cheating the victims of all their possessions. Another side of the book which makes it worth reading is the chance to get a view of the - probably tortured - mind of the author himself. As we learn from the introduction, he was an alcoholic, also he was influenced by teachings of Sigmund Freud which were very much in vogue back then. There's a lot of sexuality in the book, if not very explicit - then at least very much suggested; the prose is dense with sexual longings, trauma and despair. Two main characters, Stan and Molly, both experienced exposure to sexual acts in their childhood, which Gresham describes as traumatic/defining event. Generally, in the nature/nurture dispute, Gresham is, clearly, very much on the nurture side. Life of his heroes is broken, author suggests, because of those childhood experiences. I wonder if Gresham himself suffered something similar as a child. I'll repeat - this book is not pleasant, and I don't find it interesting philosophically, also the characters are rather one-dimensional. That's why I give it 4 stars. The story itself and the construction of this book is good, but main interest is in this being a history of society, language and the way of thinking of people in certain time and place. And this task is performed by the author with great mastery. The introduction, written by Nick Tosches, is also very good and informative - if a bit too short. Gresham's life seems to be very interesting.

This amazing, grim novel is the ideal noir, in film or literature. If you like the tropes, gestures and sheer style of noir, then you can't go wrong with this book, because they are there in almost every line, every element of plot, especially the long denoument which is both foreseeable and satisfying. This is a great novel of the kind and of the period. If you giggle at the dialogue of "The Big Sleep," then you'll find this book satisfying. If you're a different sort of reader though, who loves the beauty of the dialogue of "The Big Sleep," for whom noir is as much about ideas and a point of view, then you'll find this book a masterpiece. It's easy to call the book cynical, but it's not at all - the main character is cynical, and he both exploits that cynicism and is trapped by it, and his cynicism reflects that found in American society. Noir stories improvise their own sets of morals and values and, if the stories work, those ideas makes sense in the context, and in "Nightmare Alley" they work brilliantly and with great power. The book is as grim as it gets, but the power of Gresham's writing makes it almost relentlessly gripping; his lines and dialogue are excellent, and so is his structure. The pacing is excellent, the characterizations are not just effective but creatively done - these are real people, even the minor figures - and the overall shape, the way Gresham places his chapters, is terrific. His subject and context may be pulpy, but the writing is deeply skillful and without cliché. And what is perhaps most exciting and satisfying is that Gresham goes, without fear and sensationalism, so deeply into the possibilities of human cynicism and depravity, far deeper than even Jim Thompson, and that is what noir is all about. In it's own way, this is a great American novel.

A very different experience than the Guillermo del Toro film. Honestly, the book is more meandering and less intense than the film, which rearranges and reimagines several of the dominant images and storylines to great effect. Having seen the film before reading the book, I definitely came with a certain set of expectations. I was expecting a more brutal treatment of the central "geek" figures. Also, from what I remember there's no mention, in the book, of the carny boss spiking the geek's booze with opium. For me, as a former addict, the addition of the opium layer in the film definitely adds to the "hell-on-earth" existence of the geek character that was the impetus for the creation of the book, according to historical records. I was expecting a more Hubert Selby Jr type read, but it's a phenomenal work that demands the attention of a younger generation of readers.

‘Nightmare Alley’ is a very appropriate title for this tortured novel. A hallucinogenic dread hovers over the entire book from the first introduction of a geek in a sideshow carnival to the last desperate looming destiny that constitutes the conclusion. The main character, Stanton Carlisle, is a drifter looking for a place to land at the beginning of the novel and becomes absorbed with the image of a pitiful savage of a man. First of all, what is a geek? In reality, the geek was a drunkard that was driven so low as to be willing to take a job in the carnival to play the part of a wild man from a distant island. In the words of carnival hawker Clem Hoatley: “You pick up a guy and he ain’t a geek—he’s a drunk. A bottle-a-day booze fool. So you tell him like this: ‘I got a little job for you. It’s a temporary job. We got to get a new geek. So until we do you’ll put on the geek outfit and fake it.’ You tell him, ‘You don’t have to do nothing. You’ll have a razor blade in your hand and when you pick up the chicken you give it a nick with the blade and then you make like you’re drinking the blood. Same with rats.’ The geek gets used to this routine until he’s told that he’s not doing a good enough job and you’ll have to replace him with a professional. Terrified at the thought of having to do without his booze, he’s desperate to do what he can to keep this going. ‘You give him time to think it over, while you’re talking. Then throw in the chicken. He’ll geek.” Stan is introduced to the performers at the carny. There is the mind-reader Zeena and her alcoholic husband Pete, who provides her clues from under the stage and is saved from full geekdom by having the love of Zeena and the continuance of their act to keep him going. Whether he realizes it or not, Zeena will occasionally have a dalliance on the side, with the latest one being Stan. There’s Molly, the young, beautiful teen who performs as Madam Electra, sitting in an electric chair and getting thousands of volts of electricity firing through her which she survives. Stan is obviously drawn to her as one who is closer to his age than Zeena but Molly also has a fierce protector in Bruno. What he lacks in brains he makes up for in heft and muscles. He is the strong man of the act. He serves as a giant guard dog for Molly and will be a fierce obstacle to get around until Molly tells him his protection isn’t necessary with Stan. For a while, Stan takes over as Zeena’s assistant when Pete is too drunk to do it himself. He wins over the crowd as well as the carny acts with his handling of a sheriff who threatens to close down the carnival, sensing the man’s secrets and telling them back to him. Everyone is baffled as to how he does it and Molly’s interest in him grows. Then there is a setback when Stan accidentally (?) gives Pete wood alcohol to drink, just to keep him from raving and begging for a drink, which kills him. He worries that he has screwed his chances with the carny but everyone believes him. Fortuitously, this paves the way for him to be Zeena’s permanent assistant. He knows that Zeena is a very astute observer of people’s behavior to be so effective at discerning their secrets but the carnival will only ever reach a certain level of success. Stan believes he can take the spook readings to another level and persuades Molly to leave the carnival and be his assistant. She is very ambivalent and afraid of leaving her friends. To which Stan responds: ‘The crowd believes we can read minds. All right. They believe it when I tell them that ‘the lawsuit’s going to come out okay.’ Isn’t it better to give them something to hope for? What does a regular preacher do every Sunday? Only all he does is promise. We’ll do more than promise. We’ll give ‘em proof.’ The analogy with the preacher is particularly apt. Stan gets his ordination certificate which gives him the license to call himself Reverend. He makes the full transition into spiritualism, convincing desperate believers that he can communicate with the dead. He preys upon the desperation and fears of susceptible believers. He is on an upward climb until he encounters Dr. Lilith Ritter, a psychologist who is a slightly different sort of con. She sees right through Stan’s act but tells him she can advise him on how to improve it. For one thing, she can steer him to some very wealthy clients of hers that will pay extremely good money to be convinced that they can communicate with their dearly departed. Finally, she leads him to his biggest catch: millionaire industrialist Ezra Grindle, a man who built his empire on the backs of others and had no qualms about stabbing friends in the back to climb to the top. Molly feels increasingly sidelined once Stan spends time with Lilith, a diabolical temptress who takes possession of his body and his spirit. The experience with Grindle turns out as disastrously as one could predict because Grindle is as ruthless as he is powerful. I won’t go into any more detail with the plot other than to say that it follows a rise and fall arc. Gresham had done years of research into psychoanalysis, spiritualism and carnivals. The book is structured into chapters named after the trump cards of the tarot, the Major Arcana, and reading the titles of the chapters for anyone familiar with tarot readings will reveal the direction the story is taking. The prose style also becomes progressively more disjointed as Stan’s simultaneous descent into megalomania and alcoholism becomes a hallucinogenic stream of consciousness. Stanford Carlisle’s descent reflects his creator’s tortured life. Gresham was a hopeless alcoholic who had his only commercial success with ‘Nightmare Alley’. He lost most of the money as quickly as he had earned it. Married three times, the second wife, Joy Davidman, mother of his two sons, divorced him and shortly afterward settled in England where she married author C.S. Lewis. Stan is indeed a surrogate for Gresham. This is illustrated by a strange letter, written by Gresham in 1959, where he wrote: “Stan is the author”. He finally succeeded in killing himself with an overdose of pills in 1962. In lieu of a suicide note, he had already written an extended explication of his character and motives with this spiritual autobiography.

Nightmare Alley explores the mind of the type of man in whom Americans love to place their confidence. The style may be noir, as many here suggest, but the substance - and there's plenty here for those who delve - is that of a character who gains the confidence of people, offers them light at the end of the alley down which they're fleeing, and picks their pockets, and in this case, their hearts and their bones, too. William Lindsay Gresham's book lends itself well to a reading that delves no deeper than the story line, especially for those seeking a thrilling and dark summer read. The arc of Stanton Carlisle's life as a carney magician, who metamorphoses into a mind reader and then a spiritualist, is telling on its face, but also as a metaphor, not unlike Herman Melville's inscrutable Confidence Man and Cormac McCarthy's Judge Holden in Blood Meridian. Carlisle is more accessible, but no less disturbing, for those who plunge into Gresham's story. Don't think for a minute that this book published more than 60 years ago isn't still relevant. It wasn't that long ago that Oral Roberts, with a straight face no less, told Tulsa city officials that a 900 foot Jesus appeared to him in a dream and instructed him to build a hospital tower to the dreamy Jesus' height, despite the fact that the city needed more hospital beds like it needed more heat in the summer. Believe it or not, city officials knuckled right under and approved the structure that became a disastrous blight. And I shouldn't have to relate all the televangelist scandals that crop up regularly. Finally, not to be too cynical about it, but it seems to me that more than a few politicians are members of the same fraternity as Carlisle. Nightmare Alley relies on a structure that ties each of the cards in a tarot deck, with a brief description of the card, to the following chapter. I am no expert on tarot, but Wikipedia's description of the cards in the deck is particularly useful. For instance, the hanged man, with which Carlisle is identified, is "expresses the relation, in one of its aspects, between the Divine and the Universe. "He who can understand that the story of his higher nature is imbedded [sic] in this symbolism will receive intimations concerning a great awakening that is possible, and will know that after the sacred Mystery of Death there is a glorious Mystery of Resurrection." (from AE Waite's The Pictorial Key to the Tarot) If, as seems likely, Greshan meant for Carlisle to be seen from the perspective suggested by Waite, then the only sacred mystery is (in Judge Holden's words) that there is no mystery, other than the ones conceived by Carlisle to suit a person's fears and projected using tricks purchased from spiritualist catalogs; or the other possibility is that the universe is ruled by a most imperfect and sadistic diety. There are psychological tensions here enough to satisfy a Freudian. There is an Oedipal relationship between Carlisle and his mother. This plays into Carlisle's failed relationship with the innocent but unworldly Molly, whom he spirits away from the carney to drag her further, and further into the world of the cons he creates, and it plays into his relationship with Lilith, his love in later life, who proves even a better con than him. For all the darkness of Nightmare Alley, there is a light at the end of the alley in the form of the character Zeena, Carlisle's original mentor, who is grounded and sees herself and her mind reading schtick as an act that offers compassionate succor to the people Carlisle regards as marks. It ain't much solace. But it's what the reader gets when he travels down Nightmare Alley.

I’m typically gratified reading NYRB titles. I had a few reservations about this one, however. Certainly, there’s a lot to like, especially the writing, which evokes the seamier side of American life extremely well. But the plot was less compelling, especially in the later chapters. The striving main character, Stan Carlisle, seemed unduly blind to his surroundings at times, making dubious choices. Tarot provides the thematic backbone of the book, with one card the title of each chapter. I don’t know much about tarot, but it’s interesting that Gresham has his characters explain the grift of it all. The story begins in a traveling circus where Carlisle learns the tricks of the trade, seeming all the while a little out of place. With soothsaying front and center from the outset, the reader can’t help but be mindful of foreshadowing. There’s a tension throughout between the reality of life and the grifts the characters conjure. The book provides signposts that amount to dramatic irony, while the characters struggle mightily to hold their constructs together. Resolution comes when the two things meet. The writing here, again, is exemplary. As I think about it now, I’m almost inclined to bump the rating up a star. A quick primer on tarot beforehand probably would have helped me appreciate the thematic twists more appropriately. Either way, it’s a worthwhile read if not quite up to other NYRB titles I’ve read.

I got this book because I was intrigued by the Bradley Cooper movie that came out a while ago(Kate Blanchett really showed him up, what a woman!) Upon Googling it, I discovered that like most films, the story was once a book! I tried finding it at Barnes and Noble, and I don't know about now, but back then, it was nowhere to be found, not even available as an Ebook. My library didn't even have it. So, I went to Amazon and found my luck to be fruitful, there it was, and it was even pretty cheap. The copy came in perfect condition, no complaints. Below is my (kind-of) SPOLIER filled review of the actual book itself. The first fee paragraphs are vague opinions, that you can use to see if you want to read it or not, based on my experience with it, of course. Overall, the copy I received? 10/10. No worries there. The book itself? 5/10. A hit or a miss. Read at your own will. Upon reading it however, I realized why it was hard to obtain. The story has such promising potential, but absolutely blows. Stan is the most insufferable character. The plot model works because he's supposed to be insufferable, and you get to watch him fall. But, yikes! It's hard to even care about him at all. It's definitely dated, in the same sense the Appointment in Samara is, which is a man having obvious mental health issues, who has childhood trauma, and who therefore falls into substance abuse problems, furthering his mental health decline. All while being a big, selfish baby who destroys other people's lives. There are important literary discussions to be made to analyze, but at the expense of getting through a man-child's temper tantrum. Cate Blanchett's character, the therapist, is the best part about the book. I just wish that it didn't take so long to get to a character other than Stan, that was actually an integral and INTERESTING part of the story. The side characters are worthy of discussion, but they kind of just exist to serve Stan and his ability to make a circus setting, and even a seance, incredibly boring. I loved the usage of tarot cards as chapter names and foreshadowing, and the settings used, and it honestly would've been a better book with just the descriptions of the settings and props used, instead of focusing on Stan and his angles within the settings used. I got through 2/3 of the book fairly quickly, solely because I wanted to see more of the world building. I couldn't, however, bring myself to read the last like 50 pages because of Stan. I didn't care if he lived or died, so, there it sits, on my bookshelf with a bookmark still in it.

Ich weiß nicht mehr genau, wie ich auf dieses Buch gekommen bin, aber diese Reise durch die Abseiten der menschlichen Seele und der amerikanischen Gesellschaft der Depressionsa-Ära hat mich richtig mitgenommen. Die Sideshows, die in der Geschichte noch existieren, gibt es heute zwar nicht mehr, aber es gibt noch überall Scharlatane, die mit mehr oder minder ausgefeilten Manipulationstechniken auf "Menschenfang" gehen. Leute, passt auf, wer an der Haustür klingelt oder euch "kalt" anruft.

For those who like their noir very dark this book certainly delivers. Set in the world of the American carnivals it follows the rise and fall of a sideshow magician with an unrelenting bleakness. Gresham creates a world of life on the margins and the people who inhabit it. It is gloriously written by someone who knows how to paint with broad strokes yet be totally authentic. The language and subject matters are surprisingly strong for novels of this period and once read never forgotten. After reading what has gone on before the last sentence is incredibly chilling. I am glad I discovered it as I am sure you will be.

Libro bellissimo, peccato che in italiano si possa leggere solo nelle biblioteche, è una vergogna, urge ristampa!!!!

Nightmare Alley has been filmed twice, most recently by Guillermo Del Toro. The book is a masterful depiction of greed and deceit. The writing is masterful and extremely unsettling. This is not for all tastes but along with the movie Freaks it is a depiction of the seamy underside of life.

A slightly bizarre and thought provoking book. I mostly read this for research but found it both disturbing and enjoyable. I guessed the very ending, but it was a satisfying way for the story to finish in any case.