Nightmare Alley (New York Review Books (Paperback))

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.