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    Nightmare Alley
    Nightmare Alley
    Nightmare Alley
    Audiobook10 hours

    Nightmare Alley

    Written by William Lindsay Gresham

    Narrated by Adam Sims

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Stanton Carlisle is smart, good-looking and ambitious. Among the outcasts, freaks and geeks of the Ten-in-One sideshow, he learns that the public is there to be gulled, and he learns how to do it. Amoral and brilliant, he aims for the brighter lights of vaudeville before a much bigger coup faking spiritualism for the rich. But his own dark fears haunt him, and he is not the only one taking advantage of terror and desire. Published in 1946, Nightmare Alley is a noir classic – at once a vivid insight into the sub-culture of the carny, and a bleak and gripping fable.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateApr 1, 2011
    ISBN9781843794837
    Nightmare Alley

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    Reviews for Nightmare Alley

    4/5

    179 ratings15 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Fantastic. Dark and brutal, and raw. So many awful and wonderful characters.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Racist. Sexist. homophobic. Etc. The movie was better. Interesting nonetheless
    • 4/5
      Gresham writes a fast-moving crime thriller about a young hustler that works in the freak show of a carnival in the 1920s. He's a virgin and he's green behind the ears, but he grows up fast and lives by taking people--women and men--for all they've got. In the beginning of the story, he's fascinated with how the geek--an alcoholic who bites the heads off chickens--came to be that way. The manager of the carnival recounts how a man starts out the slide toward the bottom, and young Stan is disgusted, wondering how anyone can sink so low.
    • 4/5
      Nightmare Alley, okay here we go. First, strange as it might sound, it almost feels like the author's considerable talent is restrained by the style and genre he has chosen. That is in no way meant to diminish his writing skills. Quiet often he displays that he is more than able to present effective and memorable prose. Yet, oddly, the genre requires less. That is not a complaint but rather a compliment. Gresham's story is compelling and, in it's own way, bewitching. We feel the protagonist slinking, if not actually striving for, a sad end. At times frightening, at times sad and frustrating, the story moves inexorably toward its conclusion. Assuming a reader is comfortable with the genre and patient with the style, Nightmare Alley is wonderful read.
    • 5/5
      Very gritty, intense drama. I wouldn't call it a thriller, as there isn't really an edge of your seat aspect to the plot. The psychological aspect of the characters is incredibly livid.
    • 4/5
      One of a Kind Noir Tale

      There isn’t much that is truly unique, especially within genre fiction, and usually that’s the way readers like it, since they approach these books with certain expectations. William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley most assuredly fulfills those expectations by creating a dark world and populating with people who live in the shadows. Then Gresham goes beyond what you expect, deep into carney life, deeper into spiritualism, and deeper still into the scarred human psyche. His novel teems with double crosses, murder, sex (even touching the edges of SM), and the willful and cruelest twisting of people’s beliefs and grief for personal profit.

      Stan is a haunted young man when readers first meet him in a traveling Ten-in-One (a sideshow usually with ten acts in a row, some involving “freaks,” for one admission). He has plenty of ghosts in his past, all issuing from psychologically trying childhood. Imagine the worst things a boy can see and you’ll have foresight into Stan’s motivations. He learns much about carney life, including what a geek is, an alcoholic who will do anything for a bottle, even bite the heads off live chickens to amuse the yokels. He also meets Zeena, a mentalist, from whom he learns the tricks of the trade and with whom he carries on an affair. Her husband, while not a geek, is an alcoholic who comes to what most assume an accidental end. Stan steps into the act, and why not, as he’s already been in the man’s bed.

      At the Ten-in-One, he meets sweet, young Molly, the electric girl. He carries on with her while perfecting his skills as a mentalist and also delving into the world of spiritualism (basically, the belief that the soul exists after death, with the added feature that the dead wish and try to communicate with the living). Stan harbors and cultivates the vision of hooking a big fish and taking him or her for a bundle. He even goes so far as to gain ordination in the spiritualist church. Stan’s quite the smart fellow, well versed in mentalism, electricity and devices, religion, and most important of all, the human desire to believe. It’s this entire span of the novel, the Act 2, if you will, that really elevates it and sets it apart from the general run of American noir. Tossed into this is psychology, particularly after Stan, haunted even more by his past, visits psychologist Lilith Ritter. If Stan defines blackguard then Lilith is the scoundrel who sets off his petard. It is she who supplies him the mark he’s hungered for. And it nearly all works out for Stan, if only he had been able to surmount his nightmares.

      Everything, then, devolves in the last act, wherein Stan finds himself older, sicker, addicted, and sliding into his past, to where he began, only now as the freak. Really, though, will you be able to muster even a dollop of sympathy for him?

      Noir writers of the period tended to live hard lives and few were unfamiliar with the bottle. Gresham, who committed suicide at 53, partially blind and suffering with cancer, led a particularly eventful life that included folk singing in Greenwich Village cafes, jobs in journalism and advertising, more than a year as a medic with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Later his first wife, Joy Davidman, and he became enamored of C.S. Lewis and said’s return to and advocacy of christianity. Joy Davidman, after her marriage to Gresham dissolved, married Lewis. Gresham went on to explore other spiritual interests, among them occultism and L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics. In other words, a most interesting fellow.
    • 3/5
      Dang if I don't hate being the person who just doesn't gush about a novel when everyone is throwing out 5 stars. Here's my beef specifically. I don't care about these characters, and I'm not at all shocked by their behavior. Not by today's standards at any rate. Looking at it as it was written in it's time I can imagine it was jaw dropping, now it's just dated and I don't get sentimental over aged books.
    • 5/5
      I love Crime Noir, the old stuff from the pulp magazine world is entertainment at its best. This was moody and dark, perfectly written. I loved the perspective of the narrator. Wonderful.
    • 2/5
      I think it was It was June 24th! I was on my way to B&N Union Square I was having such a hard time reading this book but then something amazing happened! I began to understand what this book was all about! All the sudden everything on it started to make sense! Hell! The whole universe began to make sense! I kept thinking how this book explained everything! EVERYTHING!!! All the sudden I was aware! I didn’t want to stop! But as usual the universe plotted against me and my train arrived on time to my destination! When I got there I immediately started babbling to my friend about how awesome this book was! How it contained everything! The meaning of life! The secrets of the universe! The secrets behind the Kennedy assassination! A recipe for the perfect cupcakes! !!!! The secrets to obtain immortality! How to legalize gay marriage in NYC! EVERYTYHING!!!!!!! What I didn’t realized was that to gay guys that started to check my out the moment I walked into B&N were listening to everything I was saying! And they decided to take the book from me and use it to legalize gay marriage in NYC! At whatever cost!!!! While I was distracting talking with my friend about the awesomeness of this book the gay guys attacked me from behind! (no surprise there) and tried to use The One Thousand Years of Death on me!!! but what he didn’t know is that every time I leave my house I cast level 10 Iron Butthole on me! which gives me protection from foreign objects being inserted up my butt! Poor guy broke both of his fingers! But as I said they where willing to do anything to get this book from me! to keep me from learning all its secrets! From finishing it!!!!! and to legalize gay marriage in NY!!!! So they called from backup! Next thing I know I’m surrounded by a gay angry mob! It was all pink and stuff! But still scary!!! I didn’t want to give that book! Cuz I don’t know if y’all know this… but my BFF Esteban send it to me cuz they mention Hialeah in it! still! Long story short! I could not defeat the gay angry mob! And they took the book away from me! and then try to rape me! but my level 10 Iron Butthole was still in place! Shit! Which reminds me! anybody knows of an iron mouth spell? I could use one for future fights… shit! Where was i!oh yeah! They took the book! And did some stuff to my mouth that I dot wanna talk about… and now I will never be able to finish it! or know the secrets of the universe! Nor the recipe for the perfect cupcakes! But I know the gays in NY have it! cuz that same day they legalized gay marriage in NY!



      THAT’S MY SIDE OF THE STORY AND I’M STICKING TO IT!!!!!
    • 5/5
      This is a fantastic novel that holds up surprisingly well considering its original publication date was in 1946. At one point it was heavily censored, but the newer version I have was released with the original language. If you have ever seen the movie version (starring Tyrone Power) and found it intriguing, I highly recommend that you read the book. The unfiltered language is authentic and the details regarding the “cons” are fascinating.
    • 5/5
      This book has the greatest, and most horrifying, ending in literature. It's a great read. It'll stain your soul.
    • 5/5
      Genius ~ pure genius. Characters well developed, descriptions of surroundings vivid, rich. Story line also rich. Gresham does an excellent job of only telling us what we need to know, not all story lines are followed up, just like in real life. you meet people and never learn what happened to them. the "negro man" he meets on a train has a story surrounding him but we will never know what it is...and the deal with the cat hair and the blinking machine he never explains which must have frustrated the psych to no end. you almost understand how he did it but just almost. Genius!The double crossings, triple...are amazing as you can still follow the story without getting overwhelmed. I liken this book to Windsburg, Ohio for its engaging character development of the average American and its readability. Any book that make you want to wash your hands after reading it is cleverly written. Steinbeck also gives me the same feeling. Mark Edward's book Psychic Blues being equated to this book is clear phrase. 3-2011
    • 1/5
      I was very disappointed by this book.
    • 4/5
      Nightmare Alley was intriguing on many different levels. It was the ultimate "what goes around comes around" story. The lives of carnival entertainers serves as the backdrop for Stanton Carlise's rise and fall. He joins the carnival and soon picks of the tricks of Zeena, the Seer. Once Stan the Great learns the craft (an inadvertently commits murder) he leaves the carny and sets out on his own as a Mentalist, becoming greedier and greedier for taking the sucker's buck. Soon he passes himself off as a priest with the capability of bringing loved ones back from the dead. Constantly running from troubles in his own life Stan gets himself deeper and deeper until no one is trustworthy.
    • 5/5
      Written in 1946 (my copy is from 1948), I would imagine that this book was a shocker when it came out. It is a classic version of the rise and fall type story, and very well done, considering that it took the author about 4 months to write it.The basic premise is this. Stanton Carlisle works in a carnival, becoming an assistant to a woman who did a sort of mind reading trick, based on the principle of "cold reading." You know, like that show "Crossing Over," with John Edward that was on TV for some time (and beautifully made fun of on South Park). It's totally fake, of course. He's doing well at the job, but for Stanton, it's not enough. After an unwanted marriage to another carnival girl, Molly, he decides that he needs to get out of the carny life and take his own mentalist act on the road. He learns quickly in the carnival act that he can gain power over people based on knowing what they fear and exploiting that knowledge. So he gets some theater gigs, then it's off to private homes where he is like the party entertainment, and then it's life as the Reverend Carlisle as he works his way to the top. Carlisle just wants to find that one mark who's loaded who can send Carlisle to the peak of success. But along the way he runs into trouble in the form of a psychiatrist who makes him look tame.The story is very circular in nature, and I would imagine extremely sordid for its time. It's unputdownable, from the carnival behind-the-scenes chapters to the very cool descriptions of how seances are faked. The author really gets into Carlisle's head and this is very well written in a few bursts of stream of consciousness.I would HIGHLY recommend it.