Nightmare Alley

The Great Stanton

Set in the sleazy low-life world of travelling carnivals in the 1920's -- 1930's, William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel, "Nightmare Alley" tells the story of Stan Carlisle from his days as a carnival sleight-of-hand magician, to his rise as a mentalist and spiritualist, to his abject degradation. The book became a 1947 movie starring Tyronne Power. I was drawn to the book because I have been reading American noir and have a fascination with the novel's gritty carnival theme.

The book is replete with opacity and hokum. Each chapter begins with a Tarot Card, as befitting its theme, which is tied in with the development of the story. A popular, best-selling novel in its day, "Nightmare Alley" requires attention to read. The story develops slowly, carefully, and obscurely with substantial foreshadowing. The book becomes clearer by returning to the beginning after an initial reading.

The word "geek" has acquired a contemporary meaning, but in Gresham's novel the word denotes the lowest, most vulgar act in a carnival sideshow. As the book opens, Gresham portrays a "geek", "half man, half animal" as he crawls about on all fours in a dirty pen fondling snakes and killing and eating raw chickens. The most fascinating portions of the book are its portrayals of carnival life, with its "kooch shows", electric girls, tattooed sailors, magicians, midgets, and mind readers. The book's focus is on the "ten in one" show which offered a collage of frauds and freaks for a single price.

Stan Carlisle, the "Great Stanton" is the central character in the book. As it begins, Stan is an ambitious, unprincipled young magician rising in the carny world. The story is told by "misdirection", the heart of the sleight-of-hand worker, as Stan's early life unfolds only gradually and by hints. Stan romances an older carny woman, Zeena, who works as a mentalist answering questions from the audience or "marks" based on a complicated system of cues. An ambitious young man, Stan wants to learn the tricks, which he does in part by knocking off Zeena's alcoholic husband. Stan then teams up with a young girl named Molly, who began her carny life working in a girl show and who has moved up to the role of electric girl. She ostensibly is able to take electricity passed through her body in a replica of the Sing-Sing electric chair. Stan and Molly leave the carnival for bigger and better things and richer marks. For several years, the couple do their mentalism routine in vaudeville shows. They gradually move up to work in the realm of spiritualism, seances, and raising "spooks" which Gresham parodies mercilessly. The Great Stanton finds what proves to be the ultimate vicious femme fatale, a psychiatrist named Lillith Ritter who is more unscrupulous and intelligent than her mark, Stan. Together, they plot to deceive a wealthy manufacturer, Ezra Grindle, who has carried a lifelong guilt when his college sweetheart died from an abortion. Following a long climactic scene, the novels winds inexorably through the world of crime, killing, alcohol, hoboing to eventual geekdom.

Many shocking scenes in the novel take place in alleys, as befitting its title. In one scene, Stan runs through an alley following an encounter with a prostitute en route to a meeting with the psychiatrist, Lillith. The desperate, claustrophobic scene is emblematic of the book. Gresham writes:

"Stan felt the prickle crawl up over his scalp again. The old house was waiting for him and the fat ones with pince-nez and false teeth; this woman doc probably was one of them, for all the music of voice an cool, slow speech. What could she do for him? What could anybody do for him? For anybody? They were all trapped, all running down the alley toward the light."

"Nightmare Alley" is a raw, sordid, powerful book. It is full of details and people which enhance the seamy character of the tale. The primary characters, Stan and Molly, are well and cunningly developed and contrasted. For readers fascinated with such matters and willing to explore noir literature now somewhat off the beaten path, the book offers a sharp portrayal of the underside of American life. The book is available in the single volume I am reviewing here or in a Library of America volume of Crime Novels of American Noir from the 1930s and 40s.American Noir: 11 Classic Crime Novels of the 1930s, 40s, & 50s (Library of America) The book also reminded me of one of my favorites: a photographic history of Carnival girlie shows by the renowned photographer Susan Meiselas.CARNIVAL STRIPPERS. Readers interested in the world of the carny will love Gresham's book.

Robin Friedman