--------Thanks for the link to Dirda's review of Nightmare Alley. I first read this excellent, noirish novel in 1970 and recently reread it. It held up to the second reading and in fact I enjoyed it even more and gave it an even higher rating than when I first read it 40 years ago. By the way, the movie version is very good and a classic of film noir but it's not on the same level as the novel. I'll be watching it again tomorrow, saturday. It's on the Fox Movie Channel at 9:00 am and will be repeated in June. Also available on the Fox film noir dvd.
------Walker Martin.
--- On Fri, 5/14/10, Mark Sullivan <DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net> wrote:
From: Mark Sullivan <DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net>
Subject: RARA-AVIS: Dirda on Nightmare Alley
To: "rara-avis" <rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Friday, May 14, 2010, 10:17 AM
Michael Dirda gave a rave review of Nightmare Alley in yesterday's Washington Post:
"While I've known for a long time that William Lindsay Gresham's "Nightmare Alley" (1946) was an established classic of noir fiction, I was utterly unprepared for its raw, Dostoevskian power. Why isn't this book on reading lists with Nathanael West's "Miss Lonelyhearts" and Albert Camus' "The Stranger"? It's not often that a novel leaves a weathered and jaded reviewer like myself utterly flattened, but this one did. . . ."Certainly, Gresham's book chronicles a truly horrific descent into the abyss. Yet it's more than just a steamy noir classic. As a portrait of the human condition, "Nightmare Alley" is a creepy, all-too-harrowing masterpiece."
Full review at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/12/AR2010051204784.html
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