How Do Magicians Cut a Card in Half Then Make It Whole Again

"How helpless they all looked in the ugliness of slumber. A third of life spent unconscious and corpselike. And some, the not bad majority, stumbled through their waking hours scarcely more awake, helpless in the confront of destiny. They stumbled down a dark alley toward their deaths. They sent exploring feelers into the light and met fire and writhed dorsum again into the darkness of their bullheaded groping."

Stan Carlisle is an ambitious man looking for a style to make the large score. He is working for a t

"How helpless they all looked in the ugliness of sleep. A third of life spent unconscious and corpselike. And some, the great majority, stumbled through their waking hours scarcely more awake, helpless in the face of destiny. They stumbled down a nighttime alley toward their deaths. They sent exploring feelers into the light and met burn down and writhed back once again into the darkness of their blind groping."

Stan Carlisle is an ambitious man looking for a manner to make the big score. He is working for a ten and one carnival testify. He is having sex with the married fortune teller with lustful intent, simply also considering she has a book outlining an act that will put him in the big coin.

"Oh, Christ, why do you lot take to grow up into a life like this one? Why do yous e'er have to want women, desire power, brand money, make love, keep up a front, sell the act, suck around some booking agent, get gypped on the check—?"

All people want some or all of those things, just most people aren't in the bustle that Stan is to reach those things. Brusque-cut Stan would be a very appropriate nickname. He wants all those possessions, only without working hard to go them. And he wants them Now.

"Nothing matters in this goddamned lunatic asylum of a earth just dough."

He is a quick report and learns the routine quickly, basically it allows an assistant in the crowd to convey a question that a rube has asked to the conjurer on stage by subtle, imperceptible motions. Stan can then human activity like those questions take been sent to him mentally from someone in the oversupply. He has the perfect assistant in mind, Molly the electric girl. When a cop is nearly to arrest Molly for indecent exposure, Stan steps in and uses the insights almost people that he has been learning from Zeena, the fortune teller, to convince the cop that Stan knows his life story. Information technology is a gift for sure, almost on par with Sherlock Holmes, to notice things near people such every bit the location of calluses on their easily or the condition of their apparel showing a woman's touch, and most importantly watching their faces. As Stan shares his acute best guesses their reactions volition tell you if you are hot or cold.

Molly now owes him.

"Stan, honey, you practise love me--don't y'all?"
"Certain I do, baby."
"And y'all won't tell a soul. Promise me you won't tell. Because I never let any man practice it to me earlier, honest."
"Are you sure?" Stan thrilled at his ability over her. He wanted to hear her voice with fear in it.
"Yep, honey. Yes. Honest. Y'all hurt me something terrible at first. You know--"
"Yes."
"Darling, if I'd e'er washed information technology before y'all wouldn't have hurt me. Only I'chiliad glad you hurt me, honey. I'grand glad. Considering y'all were the kickoff."

Stan understands the power of fear. He learned it from watching the sideshow geek.

"The geek was fabricated past fear. He was afraid of sobering up and getting the horrors. Merely what made him a drunk? Fearfulness. Find out what they are afraid of and sell it back to them. That's the key. The key!"

Well Molly is merely the first of many to hand the key to Stan.

There is a 1947 motion picture based on this book that is supposed to be really good, but I've not had a chance to run into it notwithstanding.

Stan gains conviction and keeps calculation more and more than splendor to his shows. He sends away through the mail for a spiritual ministry building certificate that allows him to phone call himself Reverend Carlisle. Add together some faith to the mystery and suddenly you take a strong combination just made for milking money out of rubes, but more importantly for Stan someone more substantial with a guilty conscious.

Stan hooks upward with Lilith, a psychologist. "The gray eyes seemed as big as saucers, like the optics of a kitten when you agree its nose touching yours. He looked at the minor mouth, the total lower lip, advisedly tinted simply not painted. She said naught. Every bit he started to push button past her he seemed to fall; he found his arm around her and held on knowing that he was a fool, knowing something terrible would strike him dead, knowing he wanted to cry, to empty his float, to scream, to become to sleep, wondering as he tightened his arm around her….

Stan thinks Lilith tin can be usefully to him. She knows things. Just similar a cat she is hot and cold with her angel keeping Stan off balance just as he feels he is gaining control.

"Yous've got enough stuff in that bastard tin file cabinet to accident 'em all up. I know what you lot've got in there--society dames with the clap, bankers that take information technology up the ass, actresses that live on hop, people with idiot kids. You've got it all downwardly. If I had that stuff I'd requite 'em cold readings that would have 'em crawling on their knees to me."

Stan forgets not everyone other than himself is a rube. Lilith thinks he might be useful too. Who figures out who is playing who is the wild ride to the stop.

William Lindsay Gresham wrote two books about the funfair. As well this novel he wrote a nonfiction book titled Monster Midway. He grew up in New York and while living in that location he adult a fascination with the sideshow acts on Coney Island. Afterwards a failed suicide attempt in 1939 he started editing true law-breaking magazines, got married, and had kids. He became a raging alcoholic, abusive married man, and a unreliable father. Every bit Nick Tosches mentions in the forwards to this edition alcohol plays a prominent role in this novel.

"Nothing worth reading was ever written by anyone who was drunk while writing information technology; just Nightmare Alley evinces every sign that its writing was binge-riddled. Alcohol is so stiff an element in the novel that it tin can almost exist a graphic symbol, an essential presence like Fates in aboriginal Greek tragedy. The delirium tremens writhe and strike in this volume like the snakes within.

The vernacular, the drinking, the knife edged dialogue, the scheming, the drinking, the deceptions, the slang, the naked appetite, the callousness, the greed, the exploitation, the fright and the the the…"Dream. Nightmare. Delusion. Cypher...nothing real. Tongue...naked...talk...coin...dream...nightmare.".

There are no softboiled moments in this book. Gresham kept it hardboiled all the way. This is certainly one of the best examples of 1940s noir that I've read. For all the flamboyancy of the topic the novel comes across equally real. By the cease, this reader, was convinced that these characters walked and breathed in real life. Gresham looked into his own gray-tinged soul and found the darkest deeds and wet eyed desires and put them on paper.

Unfortunately in 1962 Gresham lost the battle with himself and took his ain life. I hope he found the peace that his life never gave him.

William Lindsay Gresham

"We suck, we chew, nosotros swallow, we lick, we try to brew life into us like an am-am-amocha God damn it! Somebody lets us loose similar a toad out of a matchbox and nosotros jump and jump and spring and the guy always behind us and when he gets tired he stomps us to expiry and our guts squirt out on each side of the boot of All Merciful Providence. The Son-of-a- bitch!"

**********************4.25 stars*********************

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Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7140096-nightmare-alley

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