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thewilyfilipino 's review for:
Nightmare Alley
by William Lindsay Gresham
The novel’s afterlife is just as colorful, spawning two films (with Guillermo del Toro’s lushly imagined but ultimately disappointing version from last year), inspiring at least one person’s career path (Anton Szandor LaVey of the Church of Satan), introducing the word “geek” to American popular culture (even the Nat “King” Cole Trio came out with a tune), and using the phrase “cold reading” in print for the first time. (Gresham's own journey from Freud, Marx, and yoga to the Tarot, Ouspensky, and Christianity (via C.S. Lewis, for whom his wife, the poet Joy Davidman, eventually left him) is fascinating in and of itself.)
It’s not noir in the typical sense, at least in the way I typically conceive it. Nightmare Alley isn't a lean and cutting piece of work like The Grifters or The Postman Always Rings Twice. It feels more expansive and lived-in, where the reader is immersed in different worlds, following Stanton Carlisle's transformation from traveling circus magician to "the Great Stanton" to Reverend Carlisle, Pastor of the Church of the Heavenly Message. The setup is long, and so is the con.
Nightmare Alley situates the characters in a grander, wider milieu than del Toro’s movie could portray--in particular, amidst pre-World War II preoccupations with spiritualism and hypnotism. These mediums and mentalists are depicted as part of the same spectrum as the fake carnival attractions that fill the first half of the book. And so is psychoanalysis, which in Nightmare Alley is portrayed as the most malevolent grift of all.
It’s not noir in the typical sense, at least in the way I typically conceive it. Nightmare Alley isn't a lean and cutting piece of work like The Grifters or The Postman Always Rings Twice. It feels more expansive and lived-in, where the reader is immersed in different worlds, following Stanton Carlisle's transformation from traveling circus magician to "the Great Stanton" to Reverend Carlisle, Pastor of the Church of the Heavenly Message. The setup is long, and so is the con.
Nightmare Alley situates the characters in a grander, wider milieu than del Toro’s movie could portray--in particular, amidst pre-World War II preoccupations with spiritualism and hypnotism. These mediums and mentalists are depicted as part of the same spectrum as the fake carnival attractions that fill the first half of the book. And so is psychoanalysis, which in Nightmare Alley is portrayed as the most malevolent grift of all.