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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
FIRST LINE REVIEW: "Stan Carlisle stood well back from the entrance of the canvas enclosure, under the blaze of a naked light bulb, and watched the geek." A "naked light bulb" is, indeed, blazing upon the exploits of Stan throughout this classic crime novel from the Library of American collection and it did not disappoint. Though there were times when it dragged, it was still a fascinating tale of deception, corruption and just desserts. And the ending very powerfully tied back to the beginning.
Nightmare Alley is a remarkable piece of noir fiction. It is different from the classic noir I've been reading in that it isn't about the sort of criminal we see in crime fiction (murder, heists, etc). But it is definitely noir in its themes — doomed protagonist driven by greed, tormented, hurtling toward existential crises. It is now one of my favorite noir classics and should be read by anyone who appreciates the genre.
It was a bit too raw as written and according to Nick Tosches' introduction, censored for 30 years. This edition is not so you read ssociety dames with the clap, bankers that take it up the ass instead of society dames with a dose, bankers that have fishy eyes. I admit, fishy eyes has a certain appeal as a euphemism
The organization of the book is interesting. Instead of chapters it is organized by the 22 cards of the Major Arcana in a tarot deck. The book starts off with Card 1 The Fool. I kept a web site open with meaning of the cards as I read and Gresham matched the card to events. I'm not well versed in tarot reading but it seemed to me that sometimes it was the meaning of the card reversed. You might find it distracting but I had fun reading about the card then reading the chapter.
So if it isn't classic noir crime fiction, what is Nightmare Alley? It is the story of the rise and fall of Stanton (Stan) Carlisle who rises from carnival sideshow magician to influential spiritualist before his inevitable collapses. The first third of the book is set in a carnival where we first meet Stan who working in a carnival's Ten-in-One show. Stan has set his sights on bigger things and has taken up with an older performer, madam Zeena, a mentalist/fortune teller.He marvels at her skill at cold readings and want to learn. Zeena and her husband Pete were once in the big time where they had an elaborate code that enabled them to perform a convincing mentalist act. Pete lost his nerve, was unable to perform, turned to drink, and they landed in the carnival circuit.
Stan is sexually inexperienced but Zeena likes him and he becomes her bed partner. When Stan learns that Pete wrote the codes down in a book, he talks Zeena into giving it to him.
Stan has an opportunity to test his cold reading skills when the law arrives to shut down the show. Stan is able to assess the sheriff's fears, anxieties, and longings and defuses the situation sending the sheriff away feeling at peace. With his skills validated Stan takes off with Molly, another carny and heads for the city and fame.
Stan realizes that the big money is in spiritualism and rises to prominence preying on desperate for closure with the departed.
But Stan in increasingly tormented by nightmares and when he becomes a patient of a psychotherapist, his life takes a turn for the worse.
This summary doesn't do justice to Nightmare because I don't want to provide too many spoiler details. You really need to read Gresham's words to appreciate the richness of his prose.
Stan's life goes through four stages—carny, mentalist, spiritualist, fall—but I think the first, carny, is the one I most enjoyed. The carnival setting also neatly bookends the story and delivers the story's devastating noirness. The depictions of the carnival life are very well written and younger readers may learn that geek didn't always mean someone socially inept and obsessed with technology or minute details. Hint: it involved chickens. There is a particularly evocative part at the beginning where we get to see the rubes queuing up for the show through the eyes of the performers. It ain't flattering.
Here is an example of Gresham's powerful descriptions. He is describing the carnival:
"Dust when it was dry. Mud when it was rainy. Swearing, steaming, sweating, scheming, bribing, bellowing, cheating, the carny went its way. It came like a pillar of fire by night, bringing excitement and new things into the drowsy towns—lights and noise and the chance to win an Indian blanket, to ride on the ferris wheel, to see the wild man who fondles those rep-tiles as a mother would fondle her babes. Then it vanished in the night, leaving toe trodden grass of the field and the debris of popcorn boxes and rusting tin ice-cream spoons to show where it had been."
It wouldn't be noir if there wasn't darkness and there is true darkness. The mildest is the cynicism Stan has toward the people is exploiting—Fear in the key to human nature. When it gets dark it heads into existential nihilism. Stan muses:
"How helpless they all looked in the ugliness of sleep. A third of life spend unconscious and corpselike. And some, the great majority, stumbled through their waking hours scarcely more awake, helpless in the face of destiny. They stumbled down a dark alley toward their deaths. They sent exploring feelers into the light and met fire and writhed back again into the darkness of their blind groping."
The alley image is a recurring, and effective, one that haunts Stan:
"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. They have it too—a nightmare alley."
Stan gets increasingly unbalanced as he refines his con, finding new ways to exploit vulnerabilities. He slips into fevered deleriums. There is indication that he might be bipolar. This leads him to a truely evil physhologist, Dr. Lisith Ritter, who knows how exploit Stan's fears, effectively turning his on con back on him. While the character doesn't occupy a lot of space on the page, when she is there she dominates.
The film version is a very good adaptation of the book although it has to condense events. The ending is softened from the book but the rest is so good that I overlook that bit. Tyrone Power plays Stanton Carlisle and is excellent. His cold reading of the sheriff is wonderful to watch because you can see from his eyes how Stan is reading the sheriff and adjusting his words by how the sheriff reacts. Beautifully done.
Helen Walker expertly plays Dr. Lilith Ritter like she came off the page. Coldly manipulating and eventually gas lighting Stan.,
Joan Blondell plays the aging mentalist Madam Zeena. Interestingly, she actually worked as a circus hand at one point in her career.
I recommend reading the book and watching the film. Both are excellent.
It was a bit too raw as written and according to Nick Tosches' introduction, censored for 30 years. This edition is not so you read ssociety dames with the clap, bankers that take it up the ass instead of society dames with a dose, bankers that have fishy eyes. I admit, fishy eyes has a certain appeal as a euphemism
The organization of the book is interesting. Instead of chapters it is organized by the 22 cards of the Major Arcana in a tarot deck. The book starts off with Card 1 The Fool. I kept a web site open with meaning of the cards as I read and Gresham matched the card to events. I'm not well versed in tarot reading but it seemed to me that sometimes it was the meaning of the card reversed. You might find it distracting but I had fun reading about the card then reading the chapter.
So if it isn't classic noir crime fiction, what is Nightmare Alley? It is the story of the rise and fall of Stanton (Stan) Carlisle who rises from carnival sideshow magician to influential spiritualist before his inevitable collapses. The first third of the book is set in a carnival where we first meet Stan who working in a carnival's Ten-in-One show. Stan has set his sights on bigger things and has taken up with an older performer, madam Zeena, a mentalist/fortune teller.He marvels at her skill at cold readings and want to learn. Zeena and her husband Pete were once in the big time where they had an elaborate code that enabled them to perform a convincing mentalist act. Pete lost his nerve, was unable to perform, turned to drink, and they landed in the carnival circuit.
Stan is sexually inexperienced but Zeena likes him and he becomes her bed partner. When Stan learns that Pete wrote the codes down in a book, he talks Zeena into giving it to him.
Stan has an opportunity to test his cold reading skills when the law arrives to shut down the show. Stan is able to assess the sheriff's fears, anxieties, and longings and defuses the situation sending the sheriff away feeling at peace. With his skills validated Stan takes off with Molly, another carny and heads for the city and fame.
Stan realizes that the big money is in spiritualism and rises to prominence preying on desperate for closure with the departed.
But Stan in increasingly tormented by nightmares and when he becomes a patient of a psychotherapist, his life takes a turn for the worse.
This summary doesn't do justice to Nightmare because I don't want to provide too many spoiler details. You really need to read Gresham's words to appreciate the richness of his prose.
Stan's life goes through four stages—carny, mentalist, spiritualist, fall—but I think the first, carny, is the one I most enjoyed. The carnival setting also neatly bookends the story and delivers the story's devastating noirness. The depictions of the carnival life are very well written and younger readers may learn that geek didn't always mean someone socially inept and obsessed with technology or minute details. Hint: it involved chickens. There is a particularly evocative part at the beginning where we get to see the rubes queuing up for the show through the eyes of the performers. It ain't flattering.
Here is an example of Gresham's powerful descriptions. He is describing the carnival:
"Dust when it was dry. Mud when it was rainy. Swearing, steaming, sweating, scheming, bribing, bellowing, cheating, the carny went its way. It came like a pillar of fire by night, bringing excitement and new things into the drowsy towns—lights and noise and the chance to win an Indian blanket, to ride on the ferris wheel, to see the wild man who fondles those rep-tiles as a mother would fondle her babes. Then it vanished in the night, leaving toe trodden grass of the field and the debris of popcorn boxes and rusting tin ice-cream spoons to show where it had been."
It wouldn't be noir if there wasn't darkness and there is true darkness. The mildest is the cynicism Stan has toward the people is exploiting—Fear in the key to human nature. When it gets dark it heads into existential nihilism. Stan muses:
"How helpless they all looked in the ugliness of sleep. A third of life spend unconscious and corpselike. And some, the great majority, stumbled through their waking hours scarcely more awake, helpless in the face of destiny. They stumbled down a dark alley toward their deaths. They sent exploring feelers into the light and met fire and writhed back again into the darkness of their blind groping."
The alley image is a recurring, and effective, one that haunts Stan:
"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. They have it too—a nightmare alley."
Stan gets increasingly unbalanced as he refines his con, finding new ways to exploit vulnerabilities. He slips into fevered deleriums. There is indication that he might be bipolar. This leads him to a truely evil physhologist, Dr. Lisith Ritter, who knows how exploit Stan's fears, effectively turning his on con back on him. While the character doesn't occupy a lot of space on the page, when she is there she dominates.
The film version is a very good adaptation of the book although it has to condense events. The ending is softened from the book but the rest is so good that I overlook that bit. Tyrone Power plays Stanton Carlisle and is excellent. His cold reading of the sheriff is wonderful to watch because you can see from his eyes how Stan is reading the sheriff and adjusting his words by how the sheriff reacts. Beautifully done.
Helen Walker expertly plays Dr. Lilith Ritter like she came off the page. Coldly manipulating and eventually gas lighting Stan.,
Joan Blondell plays the aging mentalist Madam Zeena. Interestingly, she actually worked as a circus hand at one point in her career.
I recommend reading the book and watching the film. Both are excellent.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I was intrigued by the movie ads. I wanted to read the book first, so I did. It was okay. Some of the carney tricks they revealed were of interest to me. It reminded me of several other carney-themed stories I've seen. I was engaged and wanted to see where it went, so I kept listening.
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A captivating, brutal look at one man’s quest to reach the big time. Stan Carlisle will do whatever it takes—even if he has to leave a few bodies behind.
William Lindsay Gresham’s writing is crisp and beautiful in all the right spots. He paints this picture of a world where everyone has an angle, everyone wants something, and the only person that matters is the one in the mirror. A perfect noir story.
Stan Carlisle is one of literature’s finest characters. It’s a rare feat for an author to be able to generate sympathy for a character who spends most of their time scamming and tricking people. Gresham spends so much time meticulously building his character and providing little detail after little detail that reveals why Stan has ended up on this path.
The other characters, in particular the female ones, are also well-developed with their own motivations and abilities independent from Stan. Between Molly, Zeena, and Dr. Lilith Ritter, I don’t know if many noirs could ever compare to this set of women characters.
Perhaps the biggest strength of the book is the depiction of carny and spiritualist life. Gresham was deeply interested in spiritualism and wrote at length about fairs and spook shows. From page one, you’re dropped into a world of tricks and schemes, and Gresham has all the knowledge necessary to explain what’s happening. He will explain each trick and plausibly create new tricks for Stan to pull off on his rise to the top. There are so many rich details in the small moments that no other author would know or care about explaining.
Dare I say, this is one of the finest tales of American life ever produced. Stan Carlisle is the embodiment of everything wrong with the ruthless, desperate pursuit of the American dream. He steps on toes, abuses people, burns every bridge he can, and even kills to reach the top, and the best part about Gresham’s narrative is that the only thing waiting for him at the top is an even bigger fish.
READ THIS BOOK
William Lindsay Gresham’s writing is crisp and beautiful in all the right spots. He paints this picture of a world where everyone has an angle, everyone wants something, and the only person that matters is the one in the mirror. A perfect noir story.
Stan Carlisle is one of literature’s finest characters. It’s a rare feat for an author to be able to generate sympathy for a character who spends most of their time scamming and tricking people. Gresham spends so much time meticulously building his character and providing little detail after little detail that reveals why Stan has ended up on this path.
The other characters, in particular the female ones, are also well-developed with their own motivations and abilities independent from Stan. Between Molly, Zeena, and Dr. Lilith Ritter, I don’t know if many noirs could ever compare to this set of women characters.
Perhaps the biggest strength of the book is the depiction of carny and spiritualist life. Gresham was deeply interested in spiritualism and wrote at length about fairs and spook shows. From page one, you’re dropped into a world of tricks and schemes, and Gresham has all the knowledge necessary to explain what’s happening. He will explain each trick and plausibly create new tricks for Stan to pull off on his rise to the top. There are so many rich details in the small moments that no other author would know or care about explaining.
Dare I say, this is one of the finest tales of American life ever produced. Stan Carlisle is the embodiment of everything wrong with the ruthless, desperate pursuit of the American dream. He steps on toes, abuses people, burns every bridge he can, and even kills to reach the top, and the best part about Gresham’s narrative is that the only thing waiting for him at the top is an even bigger fish.
READ THIS BOOK
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Sexual content, Violence
Minor: Animal death, Death
Strange to see the phrases "There's a fella that knows his onions" "The ol' Soup and Fish" and "come in my face" in the same story. Weird how when the author isn't worried about going blue, the language from back then is all more or less the same as it is now. Although learning "poontang" precedes Vietnam was a bit of a surprise. Kind of sucks that our grandparents generation had all the same swear words, and used them, just not in public, but also didn't think awesome phrases like "wouldn't know whether to shit or spit nickels" were too corny to use. Sucks for us, I mean, I don't feel like going back and editing the previous sentence for clarity.
Almost five stars.
This is an ugly tale of greed, unbridled deceit and the basest impulses of the human heart
It tracks the progress of Stan as he grows from a young boy dreams of wealth to a con artist always on the hunt for the ultimate trick. Stan isnt the only trickster, he learns his con from a fortune teller, partners up with a naive young woman, but ultimately is fooled most of all. Recurring themes of freudian analysis, parental trauma, alcoholismand the recurring tarot decks. Stan is haunted by a nightmare, the titular alley. It's the story of a man who is all ego and no heart. You want to feel sorry for him; he had a terrible childhood, but he just plain does not deserve it. He uses and abuses others just as he was used and abused as a child, forcing others to provide him services in exchange for a display of affection. The fall is sudden and swift once you pass the obvious turning point. In rapid succession, he goes from neophyte carny to vaudeville mentalist to highly polished practitioner of the seance racket. Which is to say he convinces the gullible wealthy he can connect them with deceased loved ones. Inevitably, he flies too close to the sun and undergoes a breathtakingly brutal fall from grace.
Along the way, there are carny freaks and geeks and rich men with desperations of thejr own to sate.
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. The life itself is captured with lots of details and characters, described very vividly in every chapter.
The ending comes back around ties the noose around the main characters neck with a surprising con.
Highly recommended to readers not turned off by the dark, depraved, gut wrenchingly cruel side of life.
This is an ugly tale of greed, unbridled deceit and the basest impulses of the human heart
It tracks the progress of Stan as he grows from a young boy dreams of wealth to a con artist always on the hunt for the ultimate trick. Stan isnt the only trickster, he learns his con from a fortune teller, partners up with a naive young woman, but ultimately is fooled most of all. Recurring themes of freudian analysis, parental trauma, alcoholismand the recurring tarot decks. Stan is haunted by a nightmare, the titular alley. It's the story of a man who is all ego and no heart. You want to feel sorry for him; he had a terrible childhood, but he just plain does not deserve it. He uses and abuses others just as he was used and abused as a child, forcing others to provide him services in exchange for a display of affection. The fall is sudden and swift once you pass the obvious turning point. In rapid succession, he goes from neophyte carny to vaudeville mentalist to highly polished practitioner of the seance racket. Which is to say he convinces the gullible wealthy he can connect them with deceased loved ones. Inevitably, he flies too close to the sun and undergoes a breathtakingly brutal fall from grace.
Along the way, there are carny freaks and geeks and rich men with desperations of thejr own to sate.
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. The life itself is captured with lots of details and characters, described very vividly in every chapter.
The ending comes back around ties the noose around the main characters neck with a surprising con.
Highly recommended to readers not turned off by the dark, depraved, gut wrenchingly cruel side of life.