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William Lindsay Gresham

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Nightmare Alley (New York Review Books Classics) Kindle Edition

by William Lindsay Gresham (Author), Nick Tosches (Introduction) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 903 ratings

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Now a major motion picture from Academy Award–winning director Guillermo del Toro and starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, and Toni Collette

Nominated for 4 Oscars, including Best Picture

Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a carnival-show geek—alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd’s gleeful disgust and derision—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There’s no way in hell, he vows, that anything like that will ever happen to him.

And since Stan is clever and ambitious and not without a useful streak of ruthlessness, soon enough he’s going places. Onstage he plays the mentalist with a cute assistant (before long his harried wife), then he graduates to full-blown spiritualist, catering to the needs of the rich and gullible in their well-upholstered homes. It looks like the world is Stan’s for the taking. At least for now.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[Gresham's] legacy was a brilliant and horrific book — read it and you'll never refer to someone as a geek again." —The Times (London)

"Written in 1946 and just reissued, Nightmare Alley was adapted into one of the most scabrous films of the 1940s. It's a grifter story, a carny story, whose main character is Stan Carlisle, a handsome con artist/fake mind reader who slowly works his way down the food chain until there's nothing left for him except the job of circus geek. It's a novel in which no ray of light ever penetrates. The novel is a fascinating curio of undoubtedly justified self-loathing — Gresham's second wife, the poet Joy Davidman, left him for C.S. Lewis. Gresham committed suicide in 1962. The new edition has a preface by Nick Tosches, who is working on a biography of Gresham. Certainly one of the most valuable reissues of the year." —The Palm Beach Post

"For contemporary audiences who have never strolled through sawdust and tinsel, the carnival chapters of Nightmare Alley offer an unnerving slice of seedy Americana." —The Baltimore Sun

"The ‘nightmare’ of the title rings true, for this delirious and unstoppable novel…inverts the American dream. The plot turns the Horatio Alger myth on its head and the psychology leans on Freud, but the torment, the pervading sense that the human creature lives in a trap he or she is doomed never to escape, comes from the heart and mind of the author. Never was noir more autobiographical than here….Nightmare Alley remains a masterpiece, not only due to its driving narrative power, but because it’s underpinned by the premise that the human animal is alone, helpless in the face of destiny, stumbling in the dark, down the nightmare alley toward the inevitable wall of death at the end. Yet we can’t stop ourselves hoping, and fearing, that there might be something beyond that wall. The message of this disquieting book couldn’t be more human, yet that message is metaphysical rather than moral." —Los Angeles Times

“Nightmare Alley combines the creepy world of Tod Browning's movie, 'Freaks' with the relentless cynicism of a Jim Thompson novel.” —Time

“For fans of vaudeville and magic, the book is a treasure trove of trade secrets.” —Walter Kirn, The New York Times

“Nightmare Alley is a portrait of greed seen through the rise and fall of a carny con man.” —Publishers Weekly

“An impressive low-life novel.” —The Observer (London)

“Mr. Gresham yanked the reviewer into the midst of his macabre and compelling novel, and kept him a breathless captive until the tour was over. It's a truly rewarding whirl through his nightmare alley…All of it adds up to Grade-A guignol with a touch of black magic about it…If you enjoy hundred-proof evil—and a cogent analysis of same with your nightcap—then, in the words of the Ten-in-One barker, hurry, hurry, hurry!” —James MacBride, The New York Times

“While Gresham is usually described as a 'popular novelist,' the epithet fails to capture his contemporary notoriety. Gresham wrote the 1946 best-seller Nightmare Alley (dedicated to Davidman), a grotesque noir classic about the carnival demimonde, later made into an arresting film with Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell. One reviewer described the book as a 'tough, relentless, colorful novel that exposes the private world of the freaks in order to comment on a sick, degrading society.'” —San Francisco Chronicle

"Certainly one of the most valuable reissues of the year." —Canada.com

"[C]apable of eating toasted little Cormac McCarthy novels for breakfast." —Chicago Reader

“William Lindsay Gresham was obsessed by the darker side of circuses and carnivals. His knowledge was profound, his sensitivity to the vice and viciousness lying just underneath the tinseled, gaudy, surface, remarkable.” —John Howard Reid, Hollywood Gold

“Gresham…has something of Nelson Algren's mordant power in picturing denizens of the lower depths…his is a promising contender for heavyweight honors in the rough, tough and morbid division.” —Jack Conroy, The Chicago Defender

About the Author

William Lindsay Gresham (1909–1962) was a novelist and nonfiction writer. Gresham’s was a tortured mind and a tormented life, and he sought to banish his demons through a maze of dead-end ways, from Marxism to psychoanalysis to Christianity to Alcoholics Anonymous to Rinzai Zen Buddhism. From these demons came his novel Nightmare Alley (1946), one of the underground classics of American literature. He wrote one more novel, Limbo Tower (1949), which went largely unnoticed. Three nonfiction books followed: Monster Midway (1953), Houdini (1959), and The Book of Strength (1961). Nightmare Alley brought Gresham fame and fortune, but he lost it all. The second of his three wives, the poet Joy Davidman, left him in 1953 for the British author C. S. Lewis. He killed himself in New York City on September 14, 1962.

Nick Tosches (1949–2019) was an acclaimed author of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Among his books are the biographies Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story and Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams; the novels In the Hand of Dante and Under Tiberius; and the poetry collection Chaldea and I Dig Girls. He died in New York City in 2019.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004FYZJQC
Publisher ‏ : ‎ NYRB Classics; Reissue edition (April 6, 2011)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 6, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1640 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 306 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #240,300 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #753 in Noir Crime
- #1,134 in Hard-Boiled Mysteries (Kindle Store)
- #2,232 in Ghost Mysteries

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4.4 903 ratings

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Rachel

Great Conditioned Copy of A Book That's Hard to Find.

Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2023

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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.

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BOB

Finding his inner geek

Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2022

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‘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.

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Malcolm Taylor

Rare book! Beautiful prose.

Reviewed in Canada on August 28, 2019

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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!?

One person found this helpful

Giorgia

Intrigante noir ti cattura in un vortice senza vie d'uscita.

Reviewed in Italy on December 16, 2020

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

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tazmike

ein Albtraum

Reviewed in Germany on December 5, 2014

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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.

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Rowan

It is all geek to me

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 15, 2014

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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.

3 people found this helpful

Nicola Valentine

Interesting...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 5, 2018

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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.

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