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Nightmare Alley is a novel by American writer William Lindsay Gresham, published in 1946. It is a study of the depths of show business and its immoral inhabitants—the dark, shadowy world of a second-rate carnival filled with hustlers, scheming grifters, and Machiavellian femmes fatales.
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.
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...
Nov 30, 2021 · Upon its publication, in September 1946, Nightmare Alley was an acclaimed and successful novel, and a damned and banned one. For thirty years after the first edition of 1946, every edition remained corrupt and censored.
Apr 6, 2010 · As a portrait of the human condition, Nightmare Alley is a creepy, all-too-harrowing masterpiece.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post "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 ...
May 25, 2021 · William Lindsay Gresham’s first book—the sordid carnival-sideshow noir Nightmare Alley—was the author’s only considerable literary success. A controversial best seller upon its publication in 1946, the novel was quickly followed by a film adaptation the next year.
Nightmare Alley is a novel by William Lindsay Gresham published in 1946. It is a study of the lowest depths of showbiz and its sleazy inhabitants — the dark, shadowy world of a second-rate carnival filled with hustlers, scheming grifters, and Machiavellian femmes fatales.
