Nightmare Alley

Fiction & Literature, Crime
Cover of the book Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham, New York Review Books
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Author: William Lindsay Gresham ISBN: 9781590174289
Publisher: New York Review Books Publication: April 6, 2011
Imprint: NYRB Classics Language: English
Author: William Lindsay Gresham
ISBN: 9781590174289
Publisher: New York Review Books
Publication: April 6, 2011
Imprint: NYRB Classics
Language: English

*Nightmare Alley *begins with an extraordinary description of a freak-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 bimbo (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.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

*Nightmare Alley *begins with an extraordinary description of a freak-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 bimbo (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.

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