Saturday, August 27, 2022

NIGHTMARE ALLEY by William Lindsay Gresham

 Finished Fr 8/26/22

I saw this movie a few weeks ago and later found out that this is the second film made from this novel. The first was made soon after the book was released in the late 1940's. Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett star in the new film.

From the New York Review of Books:

"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 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 assistant (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."

An excellent review from 'Mythopoeic Society' website:


"Reissued last year with an introduction by Gresham scholar Nick Tosches was Nightmare Alley, the book that made William Lindsay Gresham famous (and $60,000), and which was adapted quickly for the big screen. This noirish crime tale from 1946 does have an indirect bearing on Inklings studies.


Joy Davidman Gresham, who was later married to C.S. Lewis, was first married to and had two children with William Lindsay Gresham. They both had eclectic political and religious interests, and were later Christian converts because of C.S. Lewis’s writings. William Lindsay did not remain a Christian and appeared never to have conquered his demons, the seeds having fallen on barren rock, as it were. Inklings scholars will easily see how Nightmare Alley relates not just to Joy Davidman (to whom it is dedicated) and to C.S. Lewis, but it also resembles somewhat the dark supernatural thrillers of Charles Williams. It should be remembered that Gresham wrote an introduction to The Greater Trumps. Nightmare Alley differs markedly in style from the works of the Inklings, which generally lack sex and petty criminals. It is more of a crime novel than the supernatural thrillers of Charles Williams, but though it follows a different course, it is generally of the same milieu.

The novel uses the cards of Tarot as chapter titles providing both symbolism and metaphor. The story centers on the carnival with also its advertisements of encounters with the supernatural. [Gresham is not the only novelist to turn to the Tarot for inspiration. Another notable example, Italo Calvino’s The Castle of Crossed Destinies (1973), constructs a narrative entirely out of Tarot cards. —Editor.]

Nightmare Alley tells the story of Stan Carlson, a carnival hustler who later becomes a religious charlatan. It is a bleak picture that Gresham paints of a man seeking escape from the strange world of sideshows and geeks. The novel was collected by The Library of America as one of the most notable crime novels of the 1930s and 1940s, but it is not so hard bitten as many others of its like. Sometimes sympathetic Stan has religious yearnings and caters to others with the same yearnings, even if he does so disingenuously, looking only for enough money to get away from the whole mess.

As Tosche notes: “As piercing as the psychological probings of Nightmare Alley are, eerily the tarot alone is bestowed at times with a hint of ominous gravity and credence amid all the other spiritualist cons of the novel that are to Gresham and his characters nothing more that suckers’ rackets.” Nightmare Alley gives one a sense of what the Greshams were trying to leave behind. Here is the claustrophobic world of society’s disconnects and strays. Creatures still human but some so geekish, so odd, that people would pay money just to see them. They may also see parts of themselves in them.

William Lindsay Gresham “was” Stan, whose despair is tempered by a dream of paradise — something which he had in common with the Inklings. In his story one finds also a desire for life to have meaning, for there to be something to strive for. Gresham writes of Stan: “Ever since he was a kid Stan had had the dream. He was running down a dark alley, the buildings vacant and menacing on either side. Far down at the end of it a light burned, but there was something behind him, close behind him, getting closer until he woke up trembling and never reached the light.” Down there at the other end of the dark tunnel of life there was also possibly light, as the Inklings believed. There, one could hope for a happy ending or salvation. But only Joy Davidman Gresham was able to escape, crossing the Atlantic with their children. William Lindsay Gresham was left behind. It is beside the point of this review to consider why she left, but Gresham was an alcoholic, insolvent, a womanizer, and sometimes violent. Surely, these would have been reasons enough.

She may also have found more fresh air in epic fantasies rather than the strange world of the carnival. William Lindsay Gresham wrote other works about the “carny” life, and even one about Houdini, not being able to escape himself. He committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills in September, 1962. Like Charles Williams, William Lindsay Gresham never lost his interest in the supernatural, and he never found the light at the end of the tunnel. But Nightmare Alley succeeds as a great study of the individual trying to cope with a difficult and bizarre world. The book may be a bit risqué for young Inklings readers; it contains expletives and adult themes. It has, in fact, been banned for such reasons in the past. The Inklings in their heroic fiction tends to focus more on clean-cut folks with worthier aspirations. This book is more an exploration of the desperate places of the soul — but not without its merits for all that, or perhaps even because of that."

I learned that Janny owns a copy of 'SHADOWLAND', the movie that deals with the relationship between C.S. Lewis and Gresham's wife, Joy Davidman and I'm going to ask to borrow it the next time I see the Brandenburgs. Anthony Hopkins played C.S. Lewis and Debra Winger played Davidman. 


 

UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN: A Story of Violent Faith

 Finished Su 8/21/22 and this is one of my new hardbacks that I received from Amazon on Mo 8/15/22.

This might be one of the best of  the entire 'True Crime' genre. The premise is that the author is writing about a murder that happened just south of Salt Lake City. A woman and her toddler were not only brutally murdered, but they were almost decapitated. Police were stumped because this was not the kind of crime that occurred in Utah until someone said that it might have something to do with 'multiple marriages'. Then, the author (Jon Krakaurer) delves into the history of the Latter Day Saints and how the theory of multiple marriages evolved. 

I loved the book and although I could have borrowed this from the library, I'm glad that I now own a copy.

From the book's page on Amazon:

"Jon Krakauer?s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders. At the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this?divinely inspired? crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion,savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America?s fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

Krakauer takes readers inside isolated communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who answer only to God. Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five ?plural wives,? several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and preach that any day now the world will be swept clean in a hurricane of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents.

Weaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism?s violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism. The result is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior."

Mormon view of Blacks; "...beasts of the field, which were the most intelligent of all animals that were created, for they did walk upright as a man doeth and had the power of speech".

"One mighty and strong"- This phrase refers to Mormon men who experience 'revelations' from god. Men in the Mormon faith (never the women) are encouraged to 'listen' to what god is 'telling' them.

Fun Fact: Utah is the 'fraud capital of the world'. Saints are invited to invest in dubious schemes by other Saints. "People need to realize that god is not a good investment adviser."

Utah has the highest birth rate in the US.  


Thursday, August 18, 2022

JACK & JILL by James Patterson

Finished We 8/17/22

This is a paperback novel that Janny lent to me when they were over to 'repair' the hose spigot.

Usually I wouldn't read a Patterson novel, but this was an early Alex Cross and I loved that series.

'Jack and Jill' are killers who are preying on V.I.P.'s in the Washington DC area. Soon authorities realize that these names are used by the secret service to refer to the president of the US. Is he the next target.

In the end, it's revealed that the perps were the husband and wife that headed a national security agency.

It's a great 'comfort read'.  

From the book's page at GoodReads:

"In the middle of the night, a controversial U.S. Senator is found murdered in bed in his Georgetown pied-a-terre. The police turn up only one clue: a mysterious rhyme signed 'Jack and Jill' promising that this is just the beginning. The two are out to get the rich and famous. They will stop at nothing until their fiendish plan is carried out.

Meanwhile, Washington, D. C., homicide detective Alex Cross is called to a murder scene only blocks from his house. Far from the corridors of power where he spends his days. The victim: a beautiful little girl, savagely beaten--and deposited in front of the elementary school Cross's son, Damon, attends.

Could there be a connection between the murders? As Cross tries to put the pieces together, the killer - or killers - strike again. And again. No one in Washington is safe - not children, not politicians, not even the President of the United States. Only Cross has the skills and the courage to crack the case, but will he discover the truth in time?

A relentless roller coaster of heart-pounding suspense and jolting plot twists, 'Jack and Jill' proves that no one can write a more compelling thriller than James Patterson--the master of the nonstop nightmare."  

Friday, August 12, 2022

SAMARITAN by Richard Price

 Refinished We 8/10/22

This is one of my old hardbacks that I bought at a 'Sun City Book Sale' on Th 11/28/22 and finished Xmas Eve 2006, Sa 12/24/06 before I saw 'BLOOD DIAMOND' at Parkway Point.

From the book's page at GoodReads:

"Ray Mitchell, a former TV writer who has left Hollywood under a cloud, returns to urban Dempsy, New Jersey, hoping to make a difference in the lives of his struggling neighbors. Instead, his very public and emotionally suspect generosity gets him beaten nearly to death. Ray refuses to name his assailant, which makes him intensely interesting to Detective Nerese Ammons, a friend from childhood, who now sets out to unlock the secret of his reticence. Set against the intensely realized backdrop of urban America, the cat and mouse game that unfolds is both morally complex and utterly gripping."

The story is set in a housing project in NYC.

Ray Mitchell teaches children in a low income area. He grew up in the neighborhood and seems to feel guilty that he 'made it out'. 

Mitchell is attacked in his apartment and almost killed. A black female detective (who also grew up in the area) takes the case because she appreciates his input to the community. 

He became involved with a black woman whose husband was in jail. When he is released everyone thinks that this ex-con was the perp, but it's his teenage son who bashed the teacher on the head.  

The kid commits the assault because he couldn't accept the fact that Ray was going to breakup with his mother. Ray was the first male that had ever paid serious attention to him in his whole life. 

The book was well written and covered an interesting subject. I'd read more by this author in a second. 

Thursday, August 4, 2022

ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell (Eric Blair)

 Finished We 8/3/22

This is one of my ancient paperbacks and there is no note on the flyleaf when I read it.

I watched a movie called 'MR. JONES' and it dealt with the Holodomor. The film was 'bookended' by the writing of this novel. 

THE REBELLION

THE PRINCIPLES OF ANIMALISM

"Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad"

"I Will Work Harder"

'Beasts of England'- The animals patriotic anthem 

***Mr. Jones***Napoleon***Snowball

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others"

"If you have your lower animals to contend with, we have our lower classes"

What's to say? An obvious classic novel

The link to the book's page on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm