Nightmare Alley (New York Review Books (Paperback))

‘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.

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.

Can't wait to get the dvd

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.

If no stars were available as a rating, I'd go there. Over 50 continuous years of reading---including all "noir" fiction of any significance, and a large part of the NY Review Classics Collection---I haven't come across such a wasteland of navel-gazing trash.

Just cracking into it. Beautiful description of Molly coming of age and finding herself in the carny world. Can't wait to see where the story goes. Excited to read the source material for the new re-adaptation by Guillermo Del Toro for his next feature starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. Does one need any more incentive than that!?